Refreshing Bible Study

Professor John Riches

Retired Professor of New Testament Studies at Glasgow University John Riches writes:

For eight years in Scotland an ecumenical group of us – clergy, scholars and students –have been developing methods of communal Bible reading, picking up the model well used by the church in Latin America and South Africa. The Bible was once central role in the life of church and society in Scotland but this has been steadily eroded over the last 40 – 50 years. These refreshing ways of reading the Bible are enabling people to rediscover its richness and its ability to help them reflect theologically on their faith and experience. There is now a growing network of people across the denominations who are engaged in Contextual Bible Study (CBS), who themselves have become a resource for further developments in church education and ministry.

Our group grew out of contacts between Glasgow University‘s Department of Biblical Studies and the Institute for the Study of the Bible (ISB) in Pietermaritzburg, Natal. Prof. Gerald West from the ISB visited Scotland in 1995 generating great interest in the work that he had been doing with township groups during the struggle against apartheid. So from the start, our group has been part of an international network, participating in research, aware of practical developments around the world.

At the heart of the CBS approach lies the conviction that reading the Bible with those at the margins of society can lead to personal and social transformation. There are three key characteristics. Firstly, such bible reading is communal: it draws great strength from the group of people who do the reading together. The group listens to each other and have their understanding of the text and of their own faith and context enlarged by sharing together. It is important that those who enjoy positions of relative power and prosperity should hear what the biblical texts are saying to those at the margins. Secondly, it entails a close reading of the biblical text. The Bible has such rich resources to help people make sense of their lives and show them new ways of living to bring renewal to themselves and their society. To achieve this we cannot simply pick out the odd phrase or idea; we need to pay attention to all the different voices in the text, to savour the richness of its imagery and stories and ideas and allow them to inform our own reflections and discussions. Thirdly, it is contextual. It reflects both on the context out of which the biblical text comes and on the context of the current readers. It sees the biblical texts as speaking into a particular situation. It sees the bible as able to empower its readers to address their own situations.

For eight years our group has been developing these ideas for a Scottish context. We have built strong links with groups in the peripheral housing estates of Glasgow. We have developed a style of facilitation which is as non-directive as possible. We like to facilitate in pairs, to dispel the idea that there is one `leader’. We do not start with an introduction, least of all one which draws heavily on historical knowledge of the passage (that would only serve to suggest to those who don’t have those kinds of historical skills that they are second-class readers). We do start with prayer and take time to read the passage carefully a couple of times. We then pose a series of open questions, inviting people to share their reactions to the text and to look closely at what it contains, before we ask people to explore the links between the text and their situation.

We have thought about the group dynamics of the process. Sometimes we break the large group into threes (nearly everyone will talk in a group of three), sometimes we work in sixes, sometimes in the full group, with lots of reporting back and use of flip-charts. This is more participatory: more people get to contribute their insights into the passage and their own situation than if we worked in the full group all the time, where only one person can speak at a time. People contribute who would be reluctant to speak in the larger groups.

It is difficult to convey the excitement of the process. People discover the richness of the biblical imagery and the ability of its narratives to resonate with their own experience. We had been reading the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4. One Catholic group in Glasgow’s – highly sectarian – East End focussed on how as a result of the conversation both Jesus and the woman changed their minds. Asked to identify similar experiences in their own lives, one told of an encounter with a member of the Orange Lodge at a very low point in his own life. The Orange man, he said, was there for him day and night for years afterwards. He was ‘the embodiment of kindness’, ‘the epitome of Christianity’. He ‘opened his eyes, which had been closed by instruction’. It was a revelatory moment and it opened up the text for the whole group.

For the last two years our group, with about seven core members, has been working with the Scottish Bible Society, training facilitators in CBS and building up our library of 87 different study texts, 150 question sheets and 65 summaries of the discussions. We are about to produce a Companion manual for the training sessions that we run for facilitators (usually of six two hour sessions). This has coincided with a remarkable growth in new opportunities. With the Church of Scotland, we will be working in a local ecumenical project in a Glasgow housing estate for the next year. We shall be running bible studies for some 200 senior school students in the autumn. We have just finished running a series of studies on Ephesians with a wide range of groups across Scotland to see to what extent such readings throw up a new agenda and a new ‘incipient theology’ for Scotland. This coming year we shall also be training 80 facilitators for the Scottish Episcopal Church in preparation for their Provincial conference.

There is an exciting sense that what has been developing slowly and quietly is now beginning to be seen as having an important part to play in the lives of the churches in Scotland. Maybe the time has come to develop the links which we have also been building up in England, perhaps with the help of Christian Education and International Bible Reading Association.

This article first appeared in the Autumn 2003 issue of Sparks

© Christian Education

If you would like to hear more about developing Contextual Bible Study in England, please send your contact details to CBS/IBRA at 1020 Bristol Road, Selly Oak Birmingham B29 6LB, fax 0121 472 7575 or e-mail director@christianeducation.org.uk with CBS IBRA in the subject line.