“The Invisible Bestseller: Searching for the Bible in America”
by Kenneth A. Briggs.
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2016).
239 pp., $25.
Kenneth Briggs has been a religion reporter for Newsday, The New York Times and National Catholic Reporter. His Methodist background deeply influences his story of mainline Protestant and evangelical readers of the Bible in “The Invisible Bestseller.”
Catholic understanding, interpretation and veneration of the Bible is referred to rarely and usually negatively. Briggs argues, contrary to reality, that the Catholic Church discourages its members from reading the Bible and allows only the clergy to interpret it. This has not been true since the Second Vatican Council.
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Briggs devotes an extensive amount of his book to arguments within the Society of Biblical Literature between evangelical and mainline Protestants, which he rightly sees as an extension of the faith vs. reason debates brought about by the Enlightenment. In this, however, he ignores centuries of internal Catholic wrangling with the relationship of faith and reason and how this debate impacts Catholic understandings of the Bible, as can be seen in Catholic thinkers ranging from Augustine to Aquinas, and beyond.
He is correct to say that the Catholic Church backed away from having its people read the Scriptures after the Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther and its emphasis on “sola scriptura” (Scripture alone), which was misunderstood by Catholics at the time as a rejection of the tradition of the church, not just a reform of it. This was, of course, a misunderstanding of what Luther actually had in mind.
The intensive dialogues between Catholics and Lutherans since Vatican II, both nationally and internationally, have shown our two traditions to be much closer on this and other issues, than once was thought.
But Briggs seems to be totally unaware of the ecumenical movement that has taken place since Vatican II. His idea of mainline Protestantism and its relationship with American Catholicism seems to be frozen in the preconciliar past, as if the council never really happened. Likewise, while devoting great attention to the Society of Biblical Literature he does not refer to the Catholic Biblical Association even once. I guess Catholic biblical scholars don’t exist as far as Briggs is concerned.
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Briggs also seems to have some kind of animus regarding all Christian biblical scholars, blaming them for “debunking” and “discrediting” the Bible and convincing people that it was put together “haphazardly.” He seems to believe that Darwin’s theory of evolution was a crisis with regard to the understanding of the two differing creation stories in the Book of Genesis that was never resolved and is still being fought out.
In terms of Catholicism that is simply false. Early in the 20th century, the pope and the Vatican made clear that both evolution (science/reason) and Genesis (faith) could be true at the same time, each answering different questions: Science tells us the “how” of creation. Genesis explains “why.”
There is much that is good and interesting in this book, but I cannot recommend it to a general Catholic readership, though some may enjoy it.
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Fisher is a professor of theology at St. Leo University in Florida and a retired official of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations.
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Eugene Fisher single-mindedly reduces my book about the disappearance of the Bible in America (“The Invisible Bestseller”) to unfair treatment of Catholicism. In doing so, he resorts to personal innuendo rather than incisive questioning and sadly ignores what the book is about. As its author, I hope it’s not deemed presumptuous to expect that a review will examine the real thing.
The theme explores what has happened to the Bible’s once powerful influence on the country over the past few decades. In it, I make reference to the Catholic church, of course, as a relatively small part of that phenomenon for most of that history because grass roots Bible reading wasn’t promoted. Fisher complains that the church itself doesn’t receive enough attention and, where it does, is misunderstood. Both points can be discussed, but Fisher mainly prefers categorical retorts and unsupported accusations. Attacks substitute for cogent argument.
The actual subject traces how Americans in recent decades have diminished the Bible’s standing by setting it aside. It had been a de facto national guidebook mainly because Protestants looked to it for exclusive authority and were expected to read it, unlike Catholics for whom it shared truth with tradition. Arriving Catholics lived with that Biblical influence in public but weren’t encouraged by the church to read Scripture on their own. Until Vatican II boosted lay Bible reading and study, it was generally considered the primary province of the clergy. The book contains no judgment as to whether that policy was good or bad, only that it limited daily Bible habits cultivated by Protestants.
In terms of the book’s purpose, therefore, Catholics weren’t significant participants in Bible promotion, its rise or decline. In my research, Vatican II changed the signal but that has yet to translate into an upsurge of lay Bible study.
Fisher’s vantage point on the subject is from the rarefied world of scholars. Ecumenical teams have found great agreement, to be sure, but that arena is anomalous, a very small part of the big picture. On the broad map, Bible reading and knowledge have plummeted across church lines. Catholic and Protestant scholars have made remarkable strides, but they mostly exist in a world apart. The wide variety Catholics with whom I spoke almost invariably said that they believed Bible study wasn’t really for them and didn’t believe their non-participation made them less Catholic. Practices may die hard even when directions are changed.
If Fisher believes that before Vatican II that Rome did urge Bible reading by all Catholics and that the Council’s green light continues to increase Bible reading among Catholics, I’d welcome the evidence. That would tie Catholicism to the book’s central inquiry.
His other cavils are tangential and largely based on dubious assumptions and end in confusion. Because Pius XII approved advanced, non-literal Bible scholarship, for example, doesn’t mean the church was fully in accord, retrospectively, with Darwin. Fisher’s fine achievements over the years unfortunately don’t serve him well here. When one’s religious background becomes an excuse to distort and dismiss his book, it’s time to return to square one.
Kenneth A. Briggs
Kbriggs141@aol.com