My Thoughts on the Motion

In my previous post I tacked up an “FYI” about what some folks are hoping to see move forward at SBL this year. Now that I’ve had some time to think on it myself and see it through some other folks’ eyes as well, here are some of my thoughts.

First, it seems to me that the motion needs to be broken into four separate motions to be considered individually. They cover a wide range of issues which, though all aimed at shoring up the scholarship and standards of SBL, come at that issue from three very different angles.

The first motion looks to put the word “critical” back into the mission statement. I’m in favor of that. “Critical scholarship” is not redundant. There is evangelical biblical scholarship, Presbyterian biblical scholarship, Jewish biblical scholarship, agnostic biblical scholarship, etc. Any of these other adjectives may or may not be ways of doing critical scholarship. If so, they should be welcome at SBL, but if not then SBL is probably not the place for them.

Folks at Fuller like to kick around the phrase “believing criticism”. There’s something to that for those of us who are both Christians and in the scholarly guild.

My concern about adding this adjective is whether it is aimed at rooting out certain kinds of faith commitments while skipping by others. More on that anon.

Motion 2 seems the most problematic to me–and as several have pointed out, it’s the most problematically worded. As it reads, it could be taken to indicate that only doctoral students (not graduates or working scholars) are allowed to present papers at SBL.

But this motion is, in my estimation, going about upping the ante at the annual meeting in exactly the wrong way. As I see it, the problem with SBL papers is not that we have too little control over who presents but that too much control is presently being exercised. Too many groups are now invitation only, or narrowly defining what topics they will accept papers on. The centralization of control is weakening the claim of our annual meeting to be a place of genuine peer review and genuine presentation of the latest research being done on the ground.

Centralization of control in the hands of the session chairs is bad for SBL.

I think that rather than making student paper requirements more stringent, we need to use our computer technology to implement at truly blind review process. In that process, not even the convener of the group would know whose paper is being reviewed until after the acceptance and rejection notifications had been sent out.

Here’s my point: If we as scholars cannot put together a good program based on blind peer review then that is our fault as a guild, and not something that should be blamed on students who are trying to establish themselves among our number. SBL should not be an old boys’ club.

Regarding point 3, I understand and to a large degree appreciate its spirit. But it seems to me to possibly have only certain kinds of faith commitments in view, whereas relentless application of the principle would cut the SBL program book in about half. Not only does SBL have sections that examine Christian interpretation of the Bible, it also has groups whose confessions of faith drive them to pursue hermeneutics such as “Queer Theory.” There is a theological presupposition behind both groups, and I wonder if the breadth of groups to which such a restriction might apply has been weighed sufficiently.

Motion 4 is tricky. I wonder if this isn’t moving in the wrong direction. Is it best to strive for a more ruthless separation of church and academy by prying these apart as much as possible? Or should the assumption be, instead, that having as many voices of practitioners speaking into our conversation will make for better outcomes?

In other words, it seems to me that if all our talk about the importance of diversity and hearing a plurality of voices is correct that we could move toward embracing a broad number of religiously affiliated affiliates rather than striving to cut ourselves off from them.

As a final note, I find it interesting that folks are so concerned about the over-theologization of SBL, that the place is losing its secularism. Being a post-conservative evangelical I have seen an equal and opposite reaction on the “right” side of the aisle, where the old guard seems flummoxed at times that a cadre of young evangelicals are trying to hold onto evangelical convictions while dispensing with inerrancy or while acknowledging that early Judaism wasn’t legalistic moralism.

I see in SBL and ETS a microcosm of what’s happening in both politics and the ecclesiastical worlds in the U.S.: there’s an increasing polarization of right and left even as a new generation wants to sit in the middle, mixing up and holding together things that used to define a person as belonging to one camp or the other.

I think we should be aware of the ways that what’s going on here might be mirroring movements elsewhere in church and in state and be careful that we not act in such a way as to try to hold fast to an old way of configuring the world that might be on its last legs. It may be that the future is to be found in joining together what generations thought must be kept separate.