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Letter from the Editor by Martin Cothran
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Where Is Palestine?
by Martin Cothran
Iremember teaching a Sunday school class a number of years ago. I was leading several middle and high school students through the Gospel of Mark, and in order to gain some clarity about where the events were taking place I unfurled a map of the Middle East. I asked the students to tell me where Palestine was.
An uncomfortable silence ensued.
In fact, as it soon became apparent, none of the students could answer any geographical question I asked.
This inability to read a map of the Middle East indicated not just a geography problem, but a biblical literacy problem, and it is still one of the many species of biblical literacy issues facing Christian teachers. In fact, this seems to be the case not only with biblical geography but with any biblical knowledge: The vast majority of children, even and perhaps most especially those in our churches, do not know basic facts about the Bible. And the problem does not necessarily go away when we turn our attention to Christian schools.
The problem of biblical literacy is, of course, a symptom of the larger problem of cultural literacy. In other words, it isn't just basic facts about the Bible that are missing from the mental furniture of our students, but basic knowledge in general.
Like general cultural literacy, biblical literacy has suffered from the tendency to place less importance on basic knowledge than on what we consider "higher order" knowledge. We are tempted to teach our children the doctrine of the Trinity or whatever our brand of belief in the Second Coming might be— all before they have a fundamental knowledge of the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Creation story, and the Beatitudes.
Or where Palestine is on a map.
In emphasizing more advanced doctrinal topics, we often neglect the narrative aspects of the Bible. The Bible is, first of all, a story, and we should teach it as a story: the lives of the Patriarchs, the Hebrews in Egypt, the Conquest of Canaan—in addition to the New Testament stories of the birth of Christ, the Passion, and the Resurrection.
Stories appeal to every age, but perhaps most to young people. The bald facts of this or that doctrine are certainly important, but they cannot replace the appeal of a story. In the order of knowledge, doctrines have a higher place. But in the order of learning, stories come first.
So the first reason for the low level of biblical literacy among Christian young people is that we just don't emphasize it enough. What can be known about the Bible is not plain to them because no one has shown it to them. And the second reason is like unto it: Much of our religious education, like the other instruction in many of our schools, lacks seriousness. There are still some places where children are actually expected to memorize Bible verses and catechism answers, but they are too few and far between. Many of the programs available for religious education rely on catchy slogans or promote themselves using flashy and thoroughly non-religious themes.
So, while the first lesson is that we should not teach students to run before they can even walk, the second is that we need to get serious. We need to master the basics. We need to understand that knowledge gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.
When I was young, there were enough biblical references knocking about in our school books and in popular culture that it was hard to avoid getting a certain rudimentary biblical literacy without trying very hard. But that is no longer true today. Much of our culture has either forgotten its biblical roots or explicitly repudiates them.
Our religious instruction has been wandering in the wilderness for too long. It needs a map to put it back on course. I suggest starting with a map of Palestine.
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