If you had to guess, would you assume that today’s students
know more or less of the Bible than students in previous generations? While you’re
thinking about that, would you assume that students are becoming more or less “liberal”
in their orientation towards scripture?
I think that most people would probably assume that students
don’t know the Bible nearly as well as they used to “back in my day” (whenever
that was) and when they do think about scripture (which is not nearly enough)
they are becoming alarmingly liberal.
On the surface of it, this wouldn’t be a bad assumption. There
is a sort of entropy where cultures will gradually drift over time towards
innovation and “progressivism” and away from older traditions, authorities, and
assumptions unless there is some force exerted to temporarily stem the tide – a
revival, a revolution, a crisis, or just plain nostalgia. To observe a drift
away from traditional understandings or even concern for the Bible may alarm
us, but it shouldn’t surprise us. And anecdotally it certainly seems as if we
don’t read, love, obey, or just plain know the Bible nearly as much as we used
to.
But what I have observed at least in our tiny little corner
of the world doesn’t really support that narrative. Ozark Christian College has
been giving a standardized test from the Association of Biblical Higher
Education on Bible knowledge to incoming students for over 45 years. The
average score for men over that time has been just over 40 percent. The average
score for women is about the same – just under 39 percent. What is remarkable
(at least to me) is that the score for incoming students has remained
relatively unchanged over those years. Not one time did the scores go over 50
percent, and only two years were over 45 percent. In 1969 (the first year I
have records) the average score for men and women was 36 percent. In the most
recent year, the average score was 39.8 percent. You could argue from these
scores that Bible knowledge has always been inadequate, but you can’t argue that
students know less today than they used to.
What about orientations towards scripture? Our society is
undoubtedly more liberal than it was even 10 years ago on any number of
different, specific issues. It’s naïve to think that somehow our students have
been immune to these changes. Before I go any further, let me add this
disclaimer. I am on most things what you would call a pretty conservative
person. But if liberals are guilty of idealism when it comes to the future (which
they are), conservatives are certainly guilty of idealism about the past. Many
of the beliefs, assumptions, and practices of our idyllic past needed to be
called into account and changed (and changed sometimes because frankly we were
getting scripture exactly wrong). There are occasions when progress and change
should be embraced. My point is that not every innovation should be
automatically cursed with the imprecation of LIBERAL. In fact, both sides
should just chill on the name calling in general.
But back to my point. Are students changing their basic
orientation to scripture? I have less data to draw on here, but from what
little data I have, the answer seems to be no. Scot McKnight published a quiz
some years ago designed to measure a person’s interpretive assumptions about
scripture. It asks questions like: The commands in the Old Testament to destroy
a village including women and children are: 1) Justifiable judgment against
sinful, pagan, immoral peoples. 2) God’s ways in the days of the Judges: they
are primitive words but people’s understanding as divine words for that day. 3)
A barbaric form of war in a primitive society and I wish they weren’t in the
Bible. A person’s score on this quiz will show where they fall on a spectrum
from conservative to moderate to progressive. I’ve been giving this quiz for
about five years in my third year biblical interpretation class. I use it as a
way to talk to the students about the hidden assumptions that they make while
interpreting scripture. These are mostly sophomores and juniors who are
ministry majors. Since they are ministry majors you would expect them to be
more committed to scripture than average. But as upperclassmen, you would also
expect them to be a little more reflective and critical than the average
freshman. I didn’t keep the averages from the first couple of years, but my
past three years of classes have all averaged exactly 54.6 on the quiz. That is
remarkable consistency. McKnight says that this score places you squarely in
the “moderate” category and closer to conservative than progressive. In other
words, not only do my students’ scores not seem to be changing, they are also
remaining solidly moderate in their orientation towards scripture.
I know that this is a very thin slice of evidence. I could
be totally wrong about larger trends in the church or in the culture. But as
far as my students are concerned – students coming from mostly a churched
background and demonstrating a desire for some kind of vocational ministry –
they seem to know as little about scripture as their parents and grandparents,
and despite the movement of culture in a more liberal direction, they have generally
remained committed to the authority of scripture.
