At the end of March I co-chaired “The Bible, Narrative, and Modernity,” with Meagan Simpson. This Nanovic Institute-sponsored symposium brought scholars of the 18th– and 19th Britain century together to discuss the significance of religion to this period of “secularization.” The two-and-a-half day event involved approximately 75 attendees, and included both senior scholars and junior faculty from Notre Dame, faculty from other local institutions, graduate and undergraduate students, and interested visitors (ranging from high school students and young workers to pastors and senior citizens) from South Bend and out-of-state. It turns out that in our media-saturated, serial-show streaming world, people are particularly interested in the intersection of the Bible and narratives, in better understanding how the Bible shaped narratives in the past and how reading practices (particularly pertaining to the novel) have shaped biblical hermeneutics and interpretation.
(from left) Jessica Hughes, Timothy Larsen, Richard Gibson, Misty Anderson, Brett Foster, and Meagan Simpson
The three-day event began with a poetry reading by the award-winning poet, Dr. Brett Foster (Wheaton College). His poems, with their breath-taking humor and honesty, set a personal, relational tone, inviting participants to journey together as scholars and people during what promised to be a heady academic event.
The first full day focused largely on the eighteenth century. Dr. Misty Anderson (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) gave a lively lecture on religion as the matrix for re-imagining nationality in light of the Hanoverian succession and led a workshop for graduate students on the role of set-design in fostering a sort of supernatural wonder among audiences. The afternoon session brought together experts in the field of “religion and literature” for a lively discussion about the ongoing influence of an Arnoldean vision of literature as religion and the implications of this vision for both theology and literary studies. Richard Hughes Gibson (Wheaton College) offered particularly helpful directions, suggesting that while scholarship focused on religious propositions is generally bad, there is great work to be done on religious practices, mentalities, and habits of reading in the period.
The second day moved forward to the nineteenth century, featuring a lecture by Dr. Timothy Larsen (Wheaton College) on the Bible’s inescapable influence on Victorian culture, shaping the mentalities even of those who wished to discard and discredit it. Following his lecture, Tim and his colleague Richard walked graduate students through a recently published piece of joint-scholarship focused on appropriation of the evangelical conversion narrative for Victorian autobiography, discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of cross-disciplinary work in the process. The final afternoon session brought theologians, literary scholars, and historians together to discuss the pedagogical issues surrounding teaching the bible outside the theology classroom. Despite the political and cultural difficulties surrounding the Bible, panelists agreed that student ignorance of the Bible creates an absolute need for a multi-faceted approach to teaching the Bible, including the text itself, its traditional uses and contexts, and its history as a book. In various ways the panelists maintained that the collection of stories, laws, poems, biographies, and letters, that make up the Bible remain a strange and untamable text with a complex, heterodox texture that will surprise students if they actually read it!
Before, between, and after these sessions, symposium participants shared meals together. In good 18th– and 19th -century fashion, shared food and drink fostered convivial conversation, laughter, and friendship, with sessions and meals flowing into one another. The conversation and community that developed during the event is already generating more conversations, working groups, and even talk of future symposiums! Many thanks to everyone who took part and helped make this event such a success.
Jessica Ann Hughes