I absolutely love my Intro to the Bible class

[Reverend_Smitty]

I was a bit worried about it before I walked in there last week. I didn't know if the professor was going to be a fundie or the class would be full of them. However my fears were eased by the first thing out of the professor's mouth...He asked how many were registered to vote and then went on a mini lecture about how important it is, how this is our future and that this election is the most important election in the history of our nation. From that point on, without ever saying it, I knew he was a lefty!

Then he went off on a tangent about "How Americans are by nature a free thinking people but yet rarely question what we are told by religious leaders about the bible...Another thing he said was, 60 percent of Americans attend church regularly but many are completely ignorant about the teachings and stories of the bible...he also added that the French for example attend church far less regularly than Americans but their knowledge of the bible is far superior on the whole" He got us into a discussion on why that is, and I added it all goes back to our puritanical roots, we were taught not to question the bible back then and it still carries over to today. He thought that I made a very good point there...since there were no major arguments over any of this, I think my class will be fundie free!!

So I can actually study the bible in an academic setting and look at it and analyze it from an objective literary perspective without fundies getting all on my back...I'm really psyched about this class!!

[Fridays Child]

1. Too cool. I'd love to dissect the Bible, examining it from an...

...anthropological perspective. How and to what extent does it influence Western society, in general, and our country, specifically? What aspects of that influence are adaptive and what aspects harm our ability to thrive--as individuals and as a group?

[neuvocat]

2. Excellent!

What the freepers don't realize is that the bible is a testimony against them. If they actually read it, they wouldn't try to bash people with it.

[Bertha Venation]

3. Cool.

A far cry from the Bible classes at my alma mater, Los Angeles Baptist College. :eyes:

Enjoy!

[Reverend_Smitty]

5. Ykes!

I guess they would have a bit of an agenda to push in their bible study courses. I am thinking that my east coast liberal elitist New Jersey state university is a far cry from that

[Bertha Venation]

6. OH yes. Big agenda. It was a "liberal arts" college, but the name

was the only "liberal" thing about it.

No matter. I survived, and I'm glad I had the experience.

[Reverend_Smitty]

7. What doesn't kill you...

will only make you stronger. I'm feeling philosophical today :)

[Bertha Venation]

9. Damn right, Cousinit.

That's damn right.

[mconvente]

4. That's great news!

Now that's a religious person who knows the truth about religion, without twisting it for political reasons (ie - repugs). I bet you're exicted to take that class and you should be!

[tjdee]

8. I took a similar class, and it was FANTASTIC.

The entire class wasn't about the bible, but we studied Genesis and the gospels. Very interesting stuff, when you get into why certain chapters were written, and for whome, etc.

I'm a (very very lapsed) Christian, but I still found a secular historical study of the bible valuable in a number of ways. It was one of the most interesting things I learned in college, actually.

[caledesi]

10. Great thread. Keep us up-to-date on this class..sounds interesting. nt

[BlackVelvetElvis]

11. I'm having a similar experience.

A good professor can make the difference, huh?
I'm taking western religions and my professor is a Mennonite. He is so liberal and sees the sacred in all religions-not at all blinded by the legalistics. He loves telling stories about when he taught at a fundie college. He took them to a Buddhist temple and accepted food from them <the horror>. His students got real upset about that.
Enjoy your class!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. I had a class like that at my Lutheran alma mater

At first the professor was cautious, as if he was afraid of the reactions of any possible fundamentalist students.

However, when he started in on the creation story and didn't have anyone jump up and insist that it was literally true, he relaxed considerably.

[NC_Nurse]

13. I'm SO jealous!

That is great! Please share what you learn with those of us who are interested. :)

[UrbScotty]

14. Praise the Lord!

Amen!

[Lisa]

15. I loved the Bible section of my "Western Thought" class ...

Reading this thread sure brought back memories! Our prof was Louis Greenspan, the self-described "dissolute brother" of a famous Toronto criminal lawyer. Anyway, this was in the mid-1980s, and Dr. Greenspan came into class (the very first college lecture for my group) with a grizzled grey beard, sandals -- all he needed was a string of lovebeads and he would have been like a Berkeley prof out of Central Casting. He said, "This month we're going to talk about the Bible." We all stared at him timidly, and he said, "Oh come on people, I'm not going to ask you to burst into hymns!"

It was an awesome course. He had us read "The Jerusalem Bible", and until then most of us didn't realize that there were different versions of "The Bible", with bits that had been left out because they were labelled as heretical later on. As Dr. Greenspan put it, "If God wrote this, we can be sure that He did a lot of drafts. Just as you will on your final paper. Actually my people wrote this book, and one of these days we're going to be demanding royalties. I told my brother to look into this."