Migrant Writings as Twenty-First-Century Scriptures

Considering the extent to which New Testament writings may also be migrant writings is certainly of interest for the historical study of these texts, as well as for their academic and, perhaps, theological interpretation. But how might this information allow us better to understand the role of these writings in the twenty-first century? To respond, one must first consider the nature of Scriptures themselves: specifically, one must consider what makes certain cultural productions (writings, recitations, songs, etc.) into Scriptures.

Here, the work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith will be a helpful conversation partner. Smith’s seminal work What Is Scripture? A Comparative Analysis traces the human activity of Scripture-making and Scripture-using across a variety of religious communities and traditions. He finds that

scripture is a human activity.… The quality of being scripture is not an attribute of texts. It is a characteristic of the attitude of persons—groups of persons—to what outsiders perceive as texts. It denotes a relation between a people and a text. Yet that too is finally inadequate.… at issue is the relation between a people and the universe, in the light of their perception of a given text. (Smith, 18, emphasis added)

Smith’s definition makes explicit that those who consider New Testament writings to be Holy Scripture are living in a particular relationship with these ancient texts. This relationship involves more than just a people and their Scripture. The relationship stretches “between a people and the universe, in light of their perception of a given text” (Smith, 18). To use another metaphor, for people of faith, their Scriptures function as a lens through which all things are considered. Scripture helps people of faith to clarify their proper relationships with one another, with the God of their understanding, and with the world.

For the New Testament, an added complication is that not every person of faith has considered every text as equally scriptural, or as scriptural at all. This conflict between what is and is not truly “Scripture” dates as far back as the early second century CE, when Marcion of Sinope rejected those Scriptures he considered “Jewish.” Later Christians have had similar reactions to particular books. Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther had no love for the Revelation to John and the Epistle of James, respectively. As twentieth-century theologian Howard Thurman revealed, among African Americans descended from US chattel slavery, New Testament writings in favor of slavery were held in low esteem, and even “read out” of the Bible (Thurman, 30–31). In Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman tells a story of his grandmother who would not let him read from the Pauline Epistles, with the exception, on occasion, of 1 Corinthians 13. Thurman recounts:

What she told me I shall never forget. “During the days of slavery,” she said, “the master’s minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves.… Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year, he used as a text: ‘Slaves be obedient to them that are your masters as unto Christ.’ Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will that we were slaves, and how, if we were good and happy slaves, God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if I ever learned to read and if freedom came, I would not read that part of the Bible.” (Thurman, 30–31)

Thurman’s grandmother’s quite candid assessment of the New Testament caused her to determine not to treat the proslavery writings of the New Testament as Scripture, even if she had to omit almost every word attributed to the apostle Paul. She refused, in so doing, to use the proslavery New Testament writings as Scripture—as lenses to help her negotiate her relationship to the universe.

Like Marcion, Luther, Calvin, and even Thurman’s grandmother, Christian practitioners still very often select which among the New Testament writings they will treat as Scripture, although they may not do so consciously. More commonly, even among those who claim inerrant divine inspiration for all of the biblical writings, certain texts are seen as “favorites,” or as “the heart of the gospel.” As noted above, each of these writings is also a migrant writing. As a result, unsurprisingly, people of faith very often also end up incorporating into their scriptural lenses not only the theological concepts that the texts propose but also the migrant strategies toward home and host cultures embedded in them. Those for whom John’s Gospel is paramount might find themselves valuing liminality as the ideal interaction with their world. Those who privilege the Revelation to John might find themselves valuing separation. Those who hold to Paul’s letters might find themselves valuing accommodation. These migrant strategies become inseparable from scriptural lenses. As a result, Christians of the dominant culture of a particular country, whose families may not have experienced migration for many generations, may still interact with that culture as though they were migrants in a host culture because of their scriptural lenses.

Within twenty-first-century civic life, this adaptation of migrant strategies may take the form of groups that stay to themselves and are viewed with suspicion because they privilege a separate migrant strategy. In a society in which every detail of human life is readily accessibly through the Internet, the choice of such groups to distance themselves from society at large may be seen as inviting or, by contrast, quite suspicious. Alternatively, it may take the form of groups that vilify both Christian religion as it is typically practiced and the society at large, turning instead to an alternative way of being entirely. Certainly such practices might go unnoticed. On the other hand, when in positions of power, Christians adopting liminal migrant strategies might have profound impact on schools, political parties, and social policy—whether they are found on the left or right wing of the political spectrum. This may seem oxymoronic. However, the liminality in this case is not actual societal power. Rather, these persons adopt a liminal stance toward society because of the Scriptures through which they refract their world, and which counsel them regarding their appropriate interaction with the world.

However, perhaps the migrant strategy that has had the strongest historical stance and still continues to be heard from among Christian practitioners is that of accommodation. In the United States and the Western north, this is in part due to the outsize influence of the writings of Paul in the Protestant churches. It is this strategy that brings us the abolitionist and civil rights movements among African Americans and many other movements for social justice. It is also this strategy that brings us the proslavery movement within the church and the twenty-first-century church’s willingness to accommodate unjust policies regarding poverty and human rights. In each of these opposing cases, Christian interaction with the world is governed not only by what the Scriptures say but also by the scriptural stance of holding on to tradition while finding a way to engage the “world,” which may appear to be hostile. Thus an abolitionist holds on to one set of scriptural sayings and a slaveholder to another set; however, both take the Pauline tack that both holds to the tradition and engages the society. At stake is the argument over what aspects of the dominant culture shall be accommodated and what resisted. Faithful Christians have, over time, responded very differently to these questions.

Each of these strategies persists today, strengthened by the migrant strategies in these ancient writings that continue to be Scripture for twenty-first-century Christians. As students of these texts, paying attention to these strategies may help us to unpack some of the Christianity-related arguments in our civic commons. Pay attention, also, to the sense of rootlessness that undergirds some of the music and culture, particularly of the United States: the sense that “there’s no place like home,” but also that “we’re not in Kansas anymore” that can emerge in the rhetoric even of people whose families have been resident since the days of European colonialism. For this is not simply a product of changing times; times have always changed. In a culture so steeped in these migrant writings, this literary diaspora space called the New Testament, surely some of that rootlessness, some of those uncritically employed migrant strategies can be traced back to these ancient writings, these migrant Scriptures of the Christian church.