"Love for a Bible Not Read: A Call for Biblical Literacy"

Al Mohler calls for the church to wake up to the danger of biblical illiteracy in this Southern Seminary Magazine article, "Love for a Bible Not Read: A Call for Biblical Literacy."  It's fairly brief, so I've posted the entire article below:

While America’s evangelical Christians are rightly concerned about the secular worldview’s rejection of biblical Christianity, we ought to give some urgent attention to a problem much closer to home: biblical illiteracy in the church. This scandalous problem is our own, and it’s up to us to fix it.

Researchers George Gallup and Jim Castelli put the problem squarely: “Americans revere the Bible — but, by and large, they don’t read it. And because they don’t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates.” Researchers tell us that it is worse than most could imagine.

Fewer than half of all adults can name the four Gospels. Many Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples. According to data from one research group, 60 percent of Americans can’t name even five of the Ten Commandments. Americans may demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in the courthouse, but they seem unable to remember what exactly they are.

According to 82 percent of Americans, “God helps those who help themselves,” is a Bible verse. Those identified as born-again Christians did better — by one percent. A majority of adults think the Bible teaches that the most important purpose in life is taking care of one’s family.

One poll indicates that at least 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Another survey of graduating high school seniors reveals that more than 50 percent thought Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham. We are in big trouble.

How can a generation be biblically shaped in its understanding of human sexuality when it believes Sodom and Gomorrah to be a married couple? Many who identify themselves as Christians are similarly confused about the gospel itself. An individual who believes that “God helps those who help themselves” will find salvation by grace and justification by faith to be alien concepts.

Christians who lack biblical knowledge are the products of churches that marginalize biblical knowledge. Bible teaching now often accounts for only a diminishing fraction of the local congregation’s time and attention. The move to small group ministry has certainly increased opportunities for fellowship, but many of these groups never get beyond superficial Bible study.

This really is our problem, and recovery starts at home. Parents are to be the first and most important educators of their own children, teaching them the Word of God. Parents cannot franchise out their responsibility to the congregation, no matter how faithful it may be.

Churches must recover the centrality and urgency of biblical teaching and preaching.

We will not believe more than we know, and we will not live higher than our beliefs. The many fronts of Christian compromise in this generation can be directly traced to biblical illiteracy in the pews and the absence of biblical preaching and teaching in our homes and churches.

This generation must get deadly serious about the problem of biblical illiteracy, or a frighteningly large number of Americans — many church members included — will go on thinking that Sodom and Gomorrah lived happily ever after.

Robert Smith to Deliver Mullins Lectures at SBTS

For those of you in and around Louisville, I highly recommend going to hear Robert Smith deliver the Mullins Lectures at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary this week.  And for those of you who cannot be there in person but would like to listen, you can get the livestream from the Southern website here. 

Dr. Smith will be giving three lectures, one each day (Tuesday-Thursday), and his overall theme is "Preaching as Intra-Trinitarian Presence."  The schedule and the topic of each day's lecture is as follows:

LECTURE I

God of Our Weary Years - Theocentricity 

Tuesday, April 24 (10:00am - EST)

LECTURE II

Theology of the HIMbook - Christocentricity  

Wednesday, April 25 (10:00am - EST)

LECTURE III

The Neglected God - Pneumacentricity 

Thursday, April 26 (10:00am - EST)

Few men have been more influential in my preaching than Robert Smith.  It was a privilege and a joy to sit under his teaching while at Beeson Divinity School and it is a pleasure to call him my friend.

By the way, his book, Doctrine That Dances: Bringing Doctrinal Preaching and Teaching to Life, is an excellent resource for those of you who preach and teach.

Dr. Albert Mohler at FBC Jackson

We will have Dr. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as our guest preacher this Sunday morning, May 22, at First Baptist Church, Jackson, TN.

For those of you in and around Jackson, you are more than welcome to join us. Our morning worship is at 9:00am.

Connecting Church and Home

The videos from the recent "Connecting Church and Home Conference" at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary are now available. Click here to see them.

NPR on Historic Christian Orthodoxy and "A New Kind of Christianity"

NPR's "Morning Edition" did an interesting story this past Friday on an event hosted by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to discuss Brian McLaren's recent book, A New Kind of Christianity. Professors from SBTS (including the President, Al Mohler) rightly question McLaren's view of Christ crucified. While McLaren still wants to hold on to the labels of Christian and evangelical, it is abundantly clear in this most recent book that he has departed from anything close to what can be considered historic Christian orthodoxy. His view of the cross fails to understand the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the triune nature of the Godhead (among other things). Ironically enough, his "new kind" of Christianity sounds a lot like something we've heard before - it sounds like twentieth century theological liberalism dressed up in postmodern clothes. And in the words of Southern professor, Jim Hamilton, "It is a new kind of Christianity that is no Christianity at all."

On the whole, NPR covers the story with a fair degree of accuracy and balance (though they appear to be sympathetic to McLaren's viewpoint, even calling the Southern professors "angry").

You can both read the story and/or listen to it here.

HT: Church Matters