The Good Book, part four

Back in 2012, the Church of England voted down legislation to approve women bishops. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, expressed his frustration, saying that the Church needed to “get with the programme”. They did, of course, “get with the programme” a couple of years later, and so have many other churches. A few churches here and there still haven’t got on board. Why is that? Well, they recognise that the job of a local church is not to get with the programme set by politicians or society. There is another programme that Christians are called to follow, and it is laid out in Scripture. Because of this, they, and the Bible, have been charged with misogyny, i.e., “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women”. This is a serious charge. Is the Bible guilty? Hardly. Let’s look at the facts.

The Good Book, part two

In the first Good Book post we looked at the subject of slavery, and saw that the Bible does not affirm or encourage the slave trade – it is decidedly against it. Another subject that causes people to think the Bible is an immoral book is the slaughter of the Canaanites in the time of Joshua. It is portrayed as an act of genocide – a tribal deity commanding ethnic cleansing. The image is disturbing, but it is distorted.