Reading the Bible With the Damned :

The author, a Presbyterian minister, is executive director of Tierra Nueva and the People's Seminary in Burlington, Washington. He is internationally known for his courses and workshops on reading the Bible. This book originated from a course he teaches with the same title. The stories of reading the Bible with the "damned," which form the book, have been "reconstructed from memory."

For over twenty-five years he has shared in reading and discussing the Bible "in foreign places with unlikely reading partners." He has shared with "campesinos in rural Honduras, with undocumented Mexican immigrants, Chicano gang members, and inmates of the Skagit Jail in western Washington." He writes, "Most of the people I have read Scripture with could be classified as outsiders, marginalized by the dominant classes, because of race, ideology, social class, immigration status, behavior, and lack of education." They often look upon themselves as "damned." The purpose of his book is to present his reflections on reading the Bible and doing ministry with these people on the "margins of the dominant/empire and the mainstream church." It is also his hope that "alienated insiders or those unable to find a home in a church or to remain inside mainstream Christianity will find this book helpful."

He shares his own experience of alienation "within mainstream Christianity" because he could not "measure up to the endless demands of a God perceived as celestial sovereign." He also discovered that many of the images of God communicated to him "keep many of today's outsiders alienated from the church and unable to respond to God positively." Then in the midst of sharing with "the damned" he discovered "the good news that grounds the Scripture with marginalized people recounted through this book."

He believes that people in the mainstream and people on the margins need each other. When mainstream Christians are "absent from the lives of marginalized people the gap only widens, impoverishing everyone." And, he is convinced that unless Christians work to bridge the gap, those on the margins will "assume that Christians stand with the state, the laws of the land, the economic system, over and against the weak and vulnerable. " Moreover, as mainstream Christian people meet and share with people on the margins, they will experience a common humanity and find their ideology and their theology challenged. He writes, "Awareness of the context of struggle and suffering among the marginalized will help mainstream people become more conscious of the demands on them and the Scriptures in order for a word to be truly good news."

Chapter One is devoted to "Reading Scripture for the Liberation of the Not-Yet-Believing." There are three pitfalls to a liberated reading of Scripture. There are theological assumptions that we absorb from our culture which influence our interpretation of Scripture. Then there is the "pitfall of moralism" which leads to seeing texts as instructions for obedient behavior. And there is the pitfall of "heroism and exemplarism" which encourages us to look to the Bible for characters we can emulate. It has been his experience that these pitfalls can be avoided by "consciously broadening our reading community." He then shares how he helps people "understand the deeper meaning of the biblical stories as these stories illuminate their lives and world."

There are eight chapters, each focused on a major portion of the Bible from "New Beginnings Require New Readings: Reading Genesis in and out Jail" to "Following Jesus, the Good Coyote: Reading Paul with Undocumented Immigrants." Each chapter recounts the sharing of the author and participants of a group. They share information, questions, lively discussions and reflections on discerning the relevance of the Scripture for their lives.

Readers of this book will enter into a new world of sharing humanity with the marginalized and broadening their own understanding of Scripture. They will find the experience illuminating and challenging.