Introduction to the Symposium on Claudia Setzer's The Progressives' Bible

THE PROGRESSIVES' BIBLE: HOW SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION BUILT A MORE JUST AMERICA. By Claudia Setzer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2024. Pp. xviii + 206. $29.00. Reformers from Frederick Douglass to Frances Willard to Fannie Lou Hamer placed appeals to scripture at the center of their rhetorical efforts to persuade others to adopt their causes. Claudia Setzer, Professor of Religious Studies emerita at Manhattan College, provides a fascinating overview of how they went about doing so in her new book, The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America. Setzer focuses on the work of progressives “with a small ‘p,’ meaning people seeking to promote individual rights, create a more equitable society, and reduce suffering from social and legal injustice” (xii). Noting that many readers are likely more familiar with the ways the Bible (broadly defined) has been deployed to justify various forms of oppression, she suggests that equal attention should be paid to the other side of the coin, so to speak. Her goal is not “to ‘save’ the Bible by emphasizing its use in movements that cohere with ideas that most contemporaries accept” but rather to provide “a set of observations on the biblical resources available to reformers and the clever and myriad ways they interpreted the texts” (xii). Setzer organizes her material into five main chapters devoted, respectively, to abolitionism, women's rights in the nineteenth century, the temperance movement, the civil rights movement, and contemporary movements focused on issues such as sexual exploitation, environmental justice, poverty, and corporate responsibility. Within each chapter, she describes key individuals associated with the movement in question, the biblical passages, characters, or tropes that figured prominently in their rhetoric, and the hermeneutical strategies they employed to make those biblical elements relevant to their own days. She also makes clear interconnections between movements, as illustrated by the activism of the same individuals for multiple causes. Others have written about the religious dimensions of these movements, but Setzer's book is distinctive in discussing such a wide range of them in such depth in a single work. The chapter on abolitionism illustrates the book's approach. Setzer compares the biblically infused arguments of Maria W. Stewart, Angelina Grimké Weld and her husband Theodore Dwight Weld, and Frederick Douglass. In some cases, abolitionists relied on “literalist arguments in citing the biblical laws against kidnapping, theft, and returning a runaway slave” (30). In others, however, they undermined defenses of slavery by “going beyond the ‘plain sense’ of certain verses, contextualizing the ancient institution of slavery, and arguing for overriding principles of love and reciprocity” (30). The Book of Exodus provided an obvious resource for abolitionists, but so did numerous other texts. Stewart, for example, found encouragement in apocalyptic texts like Daniel and Revelation, seeing in them the sure promise of God's judgment on hypocritical American Christians who found slavery acceptable. She even found an ally in the Apostle Paul, whom many abolitionists criticized for passages attributed to him that urged enslaved people to obey their masters. For Stewart, Paul modeled suffering for a just cause, and she was confident that he would have sympathized with the suffering of enslaved people calling out for freedom. Setzer also discusses issues such as the so-called “curse of Ham”; Ethiopianism, which interpreted Psalm 68:31's reference to Ethiopia stretching out her hands to God as a prophecy that God would soon liberate and empower enslaved Africans; and the “one blood” doctrine, which read Paul's affirmation in Acts 17:26 that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men” (King James translation) as evidence of a shared humanity that transcended racial differences. Setzer demonstrates a strong grasp of earlier scholarship from both American historians and biblical scholars. Usually, however, she relegates her references to such works to the footnotes, reserving the book's main text for the voices of reformers themselves. It is a choice that makes the book more readable and more appealing to a wider audience. The Progressives' Bible is a must-read for scholars who are interested in the history of biblical interpretation, the use of the Bible in political and social debate, and American religion, especially Judaism and Christianity. Its vivid style and manageable length make it well-suited for courses on those topics as well as those that consider more broadly the relation of religion to American public life, public policy, social justice, or ethics. Those same qualities will hopefully attract a broad swath of general readers as well. (One might also note that the book makes a suitable companion piece for her earlier co-edited volume with David A. Shefferman, The Bible and American Culture: A Sourcebook [London and New York: Routledge, 2011]). At the 2024 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, the Bible in America program unit devoted a session to examining this important new volume. The review essays below reflect the illuminating analyses of panelists Lisa M. Bowens, Marc Zvi Brettler, Joy Schroeder, and Frances Flannery, as well as a thoughtful response by Claudia Setzer. Their collective reflections underscore the value of studying the hermeneutical moves of American reformers for understanding those figures within their own historical contexts, assessing their lasting impacts, and recognizing the interpretive arguments of religiously aligned policy advocates across the ideological spectrum today. Editor's note: This article is part of a Symposium on Claudia Setzer's The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America. This symposium, entitled “Scriptural Sources, Reformers' Voices: The Progressives' Bible,” is in Religious Studies Review Volume 51, no. 1 (February 2025). Other articles include: Mark Chancey, “Introduction to the Symposium on Claudia Setzer's The Progressives' Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America”; Lisa Bowens, “Uncovering and Recovering Biblical Interpretations Aimed Toward Justice”; Marc Zvi Brettler, “The Progressive and Retrogressive Bible: Harnessing the Bible in Modern America”; Joy Schroeder, “Listening to Voices of Protest and Liberation: A Review of the Progressives' Bible”; Frances Flannery, “Reclaiming our Religious Roots in a Time of National Discernment: Suggestions for Enhancing the Impact of The Progressives' Bible”; and Claudia Setzer, “Response to Reviewers' Commentary on The Progressives' Bible.”

Linguistics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Philosophy