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'''Scriptural Reasoning''' ("SR") is an evolving practice in which [[Christians]], [[Jews]], [[Muslims]], and increasingly members of other faiths, meet to study their sacred Scriptures together, and to explore the ways in which such study can help them understand and respond to particular contemporary issues.
'''Scriptural Reasoning''' ("SR") is an evolving practice in which [[Christians]], [[Jews]], [[Muslims]], and increasingly members of other faiths, meet to study their sacred Scriptures together, and to explore the ways in which such study can help them understand and respond to particular contemporary issues.


Revision as of 18:13, 9 February 2009

Scriptural Reasoning ("SR") is an evolving practice in which Christians, Jews, Muslims, and increasingly members of other faiths, meet to study their sacred Scriptures together, and to explore the ways in which such study can help them understand and respond to particular contemporary issues.

Method

There is no single "approved" way of doing SR; several different varieties of SR exist, and SR continues to diversify and evolve.

However, it always involves participants from multiple religious traditions meeting, very often in small groups, to read and discuss passages from their sacred texts (e.g., Tanakh, the Bible, and the Qur'an). The texts will often relate to a common topic - say, the figure of Abraham, or consideration of legal and moral issues of property-holding. Participants discuss the content of the texts, and will often explore the variety of ways in which their religious communities have worked with them and continue to work with them, and the ways in which those texts might shape their understanding of and engagement with a range of contemporary issues.

A participant from any one religious tradition might therefore:

  • discuss with the other participants his or her own readings of the texts from his or her own tradition
  • discuss with them their attempts to make sense of the texts from his or her own tradition, and
  • in turn discuss with them the texts from their own traditions.

SR thus helps inculcate in the practitioners a "feel" for the Scriptures and reading practices of other traditions.[1]

Scriptural Reasoning has often been described as a "tent of meeting" - a Biblical mishkan (Heb. משׁכן Ara. مسكن) - a reference to the story of Genesis 18. Steven Kepnes, a Jewish philosopher, writes:

Participants in SR practice come to it as both representatives of academic institutions and particular "houses" (churches, mosques, synagogues) of worship. SR meets, however, outside of these institutions and houses in special times and in separate spaces that are likened to Biblical "tents of meeting". Practitioners come together in these tents of meeting to read and reason with scriptures. They then return to their academic and religious institutions and to the world with renewed energy and wisdom for these institutions and the world.[2]

Key Features

Most forms of SR will exhibit the following features:

  • SR does not ask participants from different faith traditions to focus upon areas in which they are most nearly in agreement, or to bracket their commitments to the deepest sources of their traditions' distinct identities. SR allows participants to remain passionately faithful to, the deepest identity-forming practices and allegiances of their religious communities.[3]
  • SR provides a context in which the participants can discuss those commitments, and perhaps even become more self-aware about them. SR sessions therefore often highlight and explore differences and disagreements between religious tradition, and give rise to serious argument - in order to promote what has been called 'better quality disagreement'.[4]
  • SR does not assume any consensus between the participants as to how they understand the nature, authority or proper interpretation of the texts in front of them. Participants do not have to assume, for instance, that the Bible fulfils the same role for Christians as does the Qur'an for Muslims or the Tanakh for Jews.[5]
  • SR is said to rely upon the existence of honesty, openness and trust amongst the participants, and more generally upon the growth of friendship among the participants in order to provide an appropriate context for disagreement. It is therefore sometimes said that the key to SR is 'not consensus but friendship'.[6]
  • In order to encourage these relationships, the practice of Scriptural Reasoning is often located geographically with a view to engendering mutual hospitality - for example, by meeting in neutral academic spaces such as universities, or by peripatetically rotating between the houses of worship of different faiths (though there have been instances where a Scriptural Reasoning group has met regularly in a space owned by one of the three faith communities). SR groups try to preserve an ethos of mutual hospitality with each participant being both host and guest, and to ensure parity of leadership, oversight or ownership.[7]

Origins

Scriptural Reasoning was invented and developed by a group who now form the "Society for Scriptural Reasoning". The founders of this international group include David F. Ford, Daniel W. Hardy, and Peter Ochs.[8] Its origins lie in a related practice, "Textual Reasoning" ("TR"), which involved Jewish philosophers reading Talmud in conversation with scholars of rabbinics.[9] Peter Ochs was one of the leading participants in Textual Reasoning.[10] When he and Daniel Hardy met as members of Princeton's Center of Theological Inquiry, and included David Ford in their study together, the idea for a mode of reasoning across traditions was developed. Peter Ochs was also involved in an Islamic study group, through one of his doctoral students, Basit Koshul. Gradually, the practice of reasoning in the light of texts from all three Abrahamic traditions became established, as an interfaith and interdisciplinary method of reading sacred texts, with interactions both between people of different faiths and (as in TR) between text scholars and scholars of other sciences. Since then, Scriptural Reasoning has spread and diversified, and now exists in different forms in various countries.

Developments

SR began as an academic practice. Notable academic forms of SR include SRU, the 'Scriptural Reasoning in the University' group (which evolved from SRT, the Scriptural Reasoning Theory group), and the Scriptural Reasoning Group of the American Academy of Religion. The international Journal of Scriptural Reasoning publishes articles on scriptural reasoning. It has an international body of editors and contributors, and is non-refereed. It is part of the international Society for Scriptural Reasoning. There is also an associated Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning.

SR has also become a civic practice, with the formation of groups such as the Central Virginia Scriptural Reasoning Group, which includes members of the local community alongside academics and students. There are several developments of SR as a civic practice in the UK - sometimes using the SR name, such as SR at the St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace; the Scriptural Reasoning Education project, the "Faith and Citizenship Programme", and the Scriptural Reasoning Society (which is not affiliated with the international Society for Scriptural Reasoning). Other UK groups acknowledge roots in SR but carry other names, such as "Tools for Trialogue" and 'Just TXT', which develop modes of scriptural study for young people in schools and local communities.

Footnotes

  1. ^ For an example of an SR discussion, see Mike Higton's detailed description of an SR group's conversation about a particular Qur'anic passage. For a more general description of SR, see David F. Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims" in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold, The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Malden, MA / Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 1-22 and in Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 345-366.
  2. ^ See Steven Kepnes, 'A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning', Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 367-383:368
  3. ^ See the section of David F. Ford, "An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims" in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold, The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Malden, MA / Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 1-22: 1-2, and in Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 345-366: 345-346, on 'Core Identities in Conversation'.
  4. ^ See the Scriptural Reasoning Society Community Preamble. Cf Steven Kepnes, 'A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning', Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 367-383:368 - 'SR is about serious conversation between three religious traditions that preserves difference as it establishes relations.'
  5. ^ David F. Ford gives the following maxim for SR: 'Acknowledge the sacredness of the others' scriptures to them (without having to acknowledge its authority for oneself) - each believes in different ways (which can be discussed) that their scripture is in some sense from God and that the group is interpreting it before God, in God’s presence.' ("An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning between Jews, Christians and Muslims" in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold, The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Malden, MA / Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 1-22: 5, and in Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 345-366: 349, emphasis added.)
  6. ^ The phrase is coined in Nick Adams' description of SR in his Habermas and Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), ch.11; for other examples of its use see theScriptural Reasoning Society website and an interview with David Ford inReligion and Ethics News Weekly. It builds on earlier claims such as that of Steven Kepnes, 'A Handbook for Scriptural Reasoning' (Modern Theology 22.3 (2006), 367-383:367) that SR 'builds sociality among its practitioners'. Cf the claim in the Student Journal of Scriptural Reasoning guidance on Starting SR Groups: 'After about three sessions of this kind, a successful group should begin to nurture a sense of friendship in study and an emergent sense of direction'. See also below some ways in which friendship has been named as an important element in some of the practices of religious textual study that have been identified as historical precursors of SR.
  7. ^ See the Scriptural Reasoning Society's 'Oxford Ethic', p.2: 'It may be appropriate for meetings of a Member Scriptural Reasoning Group to take place in rotation between different venues associated with different faiths, or for meetings to be hosted at a neutral venue such as a secular university or community centre.'
  8. ^ See David F. Ford, 'An Interfaith Wisdom: Scriptural Reasoning Between Jews, Christians and Muslims' in David F. Ford and C.C. Pecknold (eds), The Promise of Scriptural Reasoning (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 1-22: 4.
  9. ^ See David F. Ford, 'An Interfaith Wisdom', 3: 'Scriptural reasoning had its immediate origins in "textual reasoning" among a group of academic Jewish text scholars .... on the one hand, and philosophers and theologians, on the other hand....'
  10. ^ Ford, 'An Interfaith Wisdom', 3-4 describes the involvement of Ochs in Textual Reasoning. The fullest description of Textual Reasoning can be found in Peter Ochs and Nancy Levene (eds), Textual Reasonings: Jewish Philosophy and Text Study at the End of the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), especially in Peter Ochs' and Nancy Levene's introductory essays (2-14 and 15-27). This book also indicates some of the ways in which TR relates to SR - see e.g., Daniel Hardy's essay, 'Textual Reasoning: A Concluding Reflection', 269-276.
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