Prepping Class with Newspaper in Hand

You have heard it said that a preacher should prepare her sermon with a bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. But I say to you, so should the biblical scholar prepare her classes!

I have observed that most of my traditional undergraduates do not read the day’s news reports, listen to weekly political analysts, or even follow current issues on social media. Unfortunately, this lacunae can further the perceived disconnect between the classroom/campus and “real life.”

But such a disconnect between contemporary news reports in “real life” and the historical primary texts we study in the classroom is false, even for biblical studies! What was Jeremiah prophesying about if not “real life” and the political tensions of his day? What was Paul referring to in Corinth except the real tensions of class, background and status that get worked out in religious communities on a daily basis?

It is true that we train biblical professors in 19^th century historical critical methodologies and that scholars focus their historical gaze on understanding first century contexts. But it is also true that many scholars have questioned the objectivity of these historical critical claims and our tendency to give them hermeneutical priority. So today we combine historical approaches with literary, deconstructionist, liberationist, womanist, and post-colonial approaches. We have also worked to recognize the ways our own personal and professional contexts influence our writing and our teaching. As Dr. Cuellar notes, we are embodied teacher-scholars with ethical responsibilities to our students and communities.

So how can a newspaper help? What happens when we put contemporary issues side by side with biblical texts in the classroom? Can we prep class like Jeremiah, one eye on God’s word and the other on the political jungle around us?

Texas, 2014

Let’s take immigration. For months we have read daily reports of over 50,000 children pushing across the southern U.S. border seeking shelter. Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans are fleeing violence and political instability. A few reports, like this New York Times piece, open with an 8 year old boy traveling alone. This sounds familiar. It reminds me of another family, in another time and place.

Egypt, 4 BCE/CE?

2,000 years ago a young couple flees with their only child, a boy targeted for extermination by the local leader in an unstable region of the Roman Empire. Warned of the death threats, they flee south, and barely escape across the border into Egypt before their neighbors’ children are slaughtered in Bethlehem.

Now imagine how students’ investigation of reports about children on the U.S.-Mexican border today might help them hear Matthew 2:13-23 from a completely different perspective.

Lesson # 1: Contemporary perspectives change what we hear in the ancient narrative.

When my students read Matthew’s birth narrative the first time, they reported hearing about a baby lying in a manger surrounded by pacific barn animals. Then I asked them to research children and immigration in the news today. Each student brought an article to class. In small groups, they re-read the news stories side by side with one of the Gospel birth narratives. One group read Matthew 2 in conversation with the report of a 12 year old boy who left everything in Honduras to escape the gangs who were recruiting him.

When they reported back, the emotional temperature in the class room changed. The students heard new emotions beneath Matthew’s matter-of-fact presentation. They had not paid attention to the jealous King’s decree or the soldiers in Bethlehem. They had not imagined the painful loss of so many families. But when they read today’s reports by child immigrants, students must let go of the manger scene and come to terms with the Roman soldiers. Instead of a peaceful manger, they now encounter the plight of a child refugee running for his life. Matthew’s “slaughter of the innocents” is not just 2000 years ago, it is also a few hundred miles south.

When they hear the biblical narrative with the newspaper in hand, students discover that Matthew 2:13-23 is no Christmas story, but the chilling narrative of a refugee family who barely make it out of Bethlehem alive.

Lesson # 2: Contemporary perspectives highlight the author’s tone and rhetorical purpose(s) in the ancient narrative.

Next, students investigate and compare various commentators on child immigrants. Some take Fox News and NBC, I also suggest journalist Juan Antonio Vargas and politician  Marco Rubio. The assignment: identify the tone of each. What are the rhetorical and ideological differences between these reports? Students can easily hear how raw U.S. emotions are around the “problem” of children on the border, how divisive the rhetoric is, and how the journalist or pundit’s tone changes depending on their stance and the community they represent. Both Vargas and Rubio are “immigrants”—but one is undocumented and the other a first generation, natural born citizen; one is Filipino descent and the other Cuban descent. How do their identities and constituent communities influence rhetorical tone?

Next we examine how Matthew has rhetorically controlled tone in his narrative.

Students notice that for such an emotional issue (flight to Egypt, death of many children), Matthew’s presentation is quite matter-of-fact, even calm. We discuss Matthew’s relationship to the narratives—his historical distance from the event, sources used, and possible audience—not a refugee camp, or politicians, but students in a classroom. Students note Matthew’s priorities: he is less concerned with the details of the family’s flight and more concerned to show the Exodus parallels, the fulfillment of scripture, and God’s protective hand.

Lesson # 3: Contemporary perspectives engage us in ethical reflection on interpreting the ancient narrative.

But has Matthew changed Jeremiah’s purpose and tone? And is changing the tone of the original writing an ethical thing to do? Our last move to examine the ethics of writing and political discourse is tricky. In class we examine the tone and context of one of Matthew’s citations, Jeremiah 31. Matthew uses Jeremiah to show scripture-fulfillment in his own narrative. But Jeremiah’s words, “a voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation,” in their original context are much closer to the emotional register of today’s news reports. Students compare Jeremiah’s “Ramah” to last month’s photo of boys’ shadows playing on the beach in Gaza.

I ask my students to think about all three historical situations—the Assyrians in Jeremiah’s time, King Herod in the first century, and the Israeli-Palestinian war today. What is similar? What is different? Has Matthew used his source responsibly? And how are we using the ancient texts in our classroom?

Do we have an ethical responsibility to evaluate our own rhetorical use of the biblical narrative today?

Can churches argue, given Matthew’s emphasis on fulfillment of scripture and God preserving Jesus’ family, that God will take care of the refugees who matter most? This seems anathema. But the suggestion about taking responsibility for ethical reading does invite students to wrestle with the priority of Matthew’s gospel in our U.S. churches, and historically in the canon. What do we like about Matthew? And what might our preference for Matthew’s rhetorical style say about how we relate to contemporary questions of justice today?

“I never thought about it like that,” one student said after class. Excellent. That is precisely the point.

In class we may begin with the ancient socio-political contexts and historical critical reconstruction of the first century social world. But incorporating contemporary perspectives from the news offers additional challenges to students as they develop their hermeneutical practices. Going beyond historical and literary analysis of tone and rhetorical purpose, I invite students to ask each other critical questions about our own historical context, the relationship of biblical texts to contemporary audiences, and the ways in which texts viewed as holy scripture influence how we relate to our world.

Photo Credit: “News of the World” by Surreal Name Given–CC by -SA 2.0

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