This episode outlines the basics of the interfaith practice of Scriptural Reasoning.
Episode 37: Scriptural Reasoning Part I. What is SR?
Penny: Scriptural reasoning, sometimes referred to as S.R. is a practice of reading and talking about different religious texts together with folks from diverse religious or faith backgrounds. In this episode, we get an introduction to this practice of scriptural reasoning in the context of interfaith dialog.
Jeff: Scriptural reasoning is a practice more than it is a theory. It's a new way of reading, which brings about new interpretations. And so the rules form as we go along. And so in Bangladesh, we actually called our scriptural reasoning sessions interfaith gossip. That's probably the best translation. It's what university students do when they're hanging out in the park or what people do when they're hanging out in a tea stall. We're just talking. This is open. But instead of reading, say, the newspaper or the recent I don't know what magazine, we're reading scripture and we’re just openly chit chatting, gossiping about it. We put the text into play and we put them into play in different spaces than are normally. So normally we read our scriptures in our own houses. We read them in the church, in the mosque, or in the temple. But with scriptural reasoning, we bring them into a public space. Maybe something like a park, a tent. It's a temporary space, but a playful space.
Penny: Welcome to the Diversity and Inclusion for All project, supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key perspectives, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Diversity and Inclusion for All podcast. Today, our topic is scriptural reasoning, and I'm excited to have three guests with me today who have a varied and really broad experiences with this practice of scriptural reasoning.
Our first guest is Frans van Liere. He is a professor of history at Calvin University. Frans, I’m wondering if you could just introduce yourself briefly for our audience.
Frans: Hi, I'm Frans van Liere and I'm a professor of medieval history at Calvin University. How did I get involved in scriptural reasoning? The first time I did scriptural reasoning in kind of an official setting was through the Kaufmann Institute, and they organized scriptural reasoning sessions. That was done by Doug Kindschi. It was rather a small group, and sometimes there were only Christians in the room. So we had to wait for one Jew and the one Muslim to actually get started. But they gave me, in any case, the idea of what this was, and I was fascinated.
Penny: I'd like to bring in our other guests right now and have them introduce themselves briefly. Doaa Baumi is finishing her Ph.D., and I know it's about scriptural reasoning in Birmingham in the UK. Doaa, I wonder if you could introduce yourself briefly and tell us how you came to the practice of scriptural reasoning.
Doaa: My name is Doaa Baumi and actually I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham. I'm hopefully going to submit my dissertation soon sometime in March or May. I also got my bachelor's from another university back in Cairo and I got two different degrees --one from Chicago University in the States and also the other one …in … seminary …. This is when I first was introduced to SR. I was actually invited to do a group of people at the Jewish Seminary, New York, my first time ever to do SR. And I remember this time very well because I felt really interested more and more SR.
So I heard about the Cambridge Summer School, and this is how I met with a large group of people from all over the world. And we have done official SR. It wasn't only about doing SR, but also about learning about the tools of SR, how to do SR, and what kind of things we have to consider while doing SR. And that's how I felt I'm really more interested in doing SR. Right now, I'm working on a project trying to link students from a .. university back in Cairo with the students all over the world. And using SR-- it's actually like educational tool to have the students know more about the other and also other scriptures, as well.
Penny: I want to bring in our third guest, Jeff Bos, who works at the Al Amana Centre in Oman. Jeff, could you introduce yourself briefly and tell us how you came to scriptural reasoning?
Jeff: Certainly. So my name is Jeffrey Bos. I am a Calvin alum as well as an alumni of Calvin Theological Seminary. I first encountered scriptural reasoning when I was serving in Bangladesh through my mentor, Father David Burrell, who was highly influenced with the Post-Liberal School of Theology from Yale University and a good friend of Peter Oakes. And we were looking around for a way to engage Muslims, Christians and Hindus in Bangladesh together. And what's unique in Bangladesh is at the beginning of every public event, there is a reading of scripture. And it's a reading from Christian texts, Muslim texts, and Hindu texts. And that struck me as profound. I never heard of such a thing in the United States. And as we're thinking about how we can engage people in interfaith dialog, it seems like scripture was a great place to start.
So we formed a scriptural reasoning group in Bangladesh with university students, and then I became acquainted with the Al Amana Centre that was also doing scriptural reasoning in conjunction with the Interfaith Institute at Cambridge. And that's kind of where it just started to blossom, and scripture reasoning has become a passion of mine.
Penny: So, do I have to be like a theologian or a really big thinker to participate in something like this?
Jeff: The answer is absolutely no. In fact, theologians and big thinkers are the worst at scriptural reasoning. When we do scriptural reasoning in Bangladesh, we actually didn't call it interfaith dialog because dialog implies something that academics do, big thinkers do, where academics will get together for a conference and give long speeches and then have a dinner afterwards. Scriptural reasoning is not like that. We can do it deeply at the academic level, but academics who do scriptural reasoning, they don't do it in the conference room. They do it late at night together when they're chatting.
And so in Bangladesh, we actually called our scriptural reasoning sessions interfaith gossip. That's probably the best translation. It's what university students do when they're hanging out in the park or what people do when they're hanging out in a tea stall. We're just talking. This is open. But instead of reading, say, the newspaper or the recent I don't know what magazine we're reading scripture and we're just openly chit chatting, gossiping about it. We put the text into play, and we put them into play in different spaces than are normally. So normally we read our scriptures in our own houses. We read them in the church, in the mosque, or in the temple. But with scriptural reasoning, we bring them into a public space, maybe something like a park or a temporary space, like a tent. It's a temporary space, but a playful space.
Doaa: One of the things that I’ve learned doing SR, we have to avoid bringing our internal library with us. So even if you are an expert, or even if you have like a sort of like a really great knowledge with scripture, you are recommended to just leave this aside and start from scratch and just …let …the scripture itself allows you to do sort of reflection. If you are expecting to have perspective from different background, especially when it comes to insider outsider. It's very hard to sort of like reflect on your own knowledge because you will find within the participants themselves, some people already like they have high knowledge of the scripture, others they don't. And even even for an outsider, it's even difficult because for some people this is the first time ever to read certain text. So it is always recommended that you just start from scratch and just read the scripture itself and start to reflect on them, but not just bringing certain knowledge with you while coming to participate.
Penny: And from what I understand, each person just sort of can reflect from their own personal historical background on how they read their own texts and then ask questions about how other people read their holy texts. Right?
Doaa: Yeah.
Frans: Maybe. Maybe I can add a little bit about how this came about. The history of this with with Peter Oakes and David Swartz in Cambridge. The experience was very often that especially Jews and Christians frequently had sort of academic discussions about scripture. And you know, you studied the same texts from an academic point of view. So those conversations were very frequent. And then, of course, you read these texts as a person of faith in your own faith community and very often, no, there are not people of other faiths present there.
So the scriptural reasoning was actually started as when Peter Oakes and David Swartz and they sort of got the idea of, well, why don't we approach these texts as people of faith across different religions? You know, we talk with Jews and Christians together about these texts already, but from an academic perspective but why don't we approach these texts from a personal faith perspective with people of other religions there. And explore these texts. We already read these texts of each other. But when you are together, very often you don't read them as people of faith. But it's kind of awkward not to have that conversation there when you know that very often the reason why you read these texts in the first place is because they're important in your faith tradition.
So of course, you need to establish certain rules for that to make sure that you don't offend the others and to make sure that you don't try to infringe on somebody else's…. You know, it's it's a very personal topic if you talk about these texts as something you study in your own faith where you're reading your own faith. So once these rules are established, you can have a very open and interesting discussion about these texts.
Penny: What would be some of the rules or ground rules for a scriptural reasoning session?
Frans: Well, I think the most important rule is that you, in the first place, listen rather than try to tell …. One of one of rules is also that you don't tell people of a particular faith tradition, what the text that they are reading of their own faith tradition means. You know, don't don't try to explain such… there’s a term “mansplaining.” Don't do that across religions.
Penny: What are some other ground rules that would be important if we're approaching and starting a scriptural reasoning session?
Jeff: Yeah, that's a challenging question in many senses, because scriptural reasoning is a practice more than it is a theory. You know, reading text is essential to all religions. And when you begin and you grow in faith, you read and you read and you read, and it's almost like the rules come later. And that's kind of the approach I take to scriptural reasoning. Hey, let's just go at this. Let's read and see what happens. And we'll often appoint somebody to be a facilitator, or sometimes we even call them a police person to just say, Hey, stop. We got to address this. This is out of hand. It's getting too hot. But the rules often develop in the context. It's not a game like Monopoly or chess, where the rules are fixed. This is one of the challenges of interpreting scripture because the interpretation is always ongoing and there's new interpretations, and that's really what scriptural reasoning does. It's a new way of reading, which brings about new interpretations. And so the rules form as we go along. But as Frans mentioned, one of the key points is: we really want to focus on listening more than speaking. And I think that's a good ground rule. Listen, listen, listen, listen.
Another good way to approach this is: scriptural reasoning is the kind of conversation you have with friends. So you invite your friend to coffee or tea and you just start talking. You don't know where the conversation is going to go. It's different than, say, a discussion where you're trying to decide what's right or wrong. It's different than a debate, where you’re trying to decide which party, you know, is correct. We're not trying to make a decision. We're trying to learn together and to seek the truth together, and the rules for that are not always all that clear. But it really requires, I would say, an openness, a vulnerability.
And I think one of the key things is: as you come to scriptural reasoning, you are not trying to convince the other, You are trying to see your own blind spots, and others can be very helpful, if you're listening, to help you under uncover your own blind spots and come to new understandings of your text.
Frans: And I don't think that I've had any bad experiences in scriptural reasoning ever, but I think there was one case in which one participant really tried to say, Well, how about this text? Moses says this but how…how can this be this? This doesn't make sense to me. And at one point, you just have to say, well, if it makes sense to the person who is a faithful follower of that text and this faithful reader interprets it in this particular way, you have to accept that. You don't start taking issue with that or disputing somebody else's interpretation of these texts. I mean, some people come with more expertise. Some people come without very much expertise, but everybody reads something in these texts. And these texts are living in that particular tradition. And you shouldn't try to disparage that interpretation that people bring into their … have of their own texts.
Penny: If you're curious to know more about scriptural reasoning, we invite you to listen to episode 38 - Scriptural Reasoning, Part II: Why and How.
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