Ethics and Biblical Interpretation

Call For Papers: The Ethics and Biblical Interpretation section is planning two sessions at the 2020 Annual Meeting: 1) A joint session with The Forum on Missional Hermeneutics section with the theme Reparations/Reparational Ethics, the Bible, and the Missio Dei. We invite papers on reparations discourse and the biblical text. Questions for consideration: How might reparations be rooted in the Bible, and what contributions might a biblical account of reparations make to debates about reparations and ethics? How might biblical readings be informed by questions from religious communities complicit in racial injustice and challenged by possible reparations? How might biblical texts call for reparations as part of God’s mission? How have historically distorted understandings of mission created a need for reparations (for example, reparations to African American and Native American communities), and how may this harmful history be addressed in light of hermeneutics, ethics, and biblical interpretation? How does the contemporary question of reparations speak to communities’ participation in God’s mission, understood in terms of communal self-understanding and purposiveness? 2) An invited panel on the theme of Museums and the Bible which aims to examine the intersection between museum constructions, biblical interpretation, and ethics. This session seeks to investigate how museums help to elevate the prestige and notoriety of scientifically based biblical scholars; how collecting practices work to reproduce the privilege of elite power structures; and how descriptions of biblical artifacts can reinforce racist ideas about ancient peoples. The session also seeks to examine how museums acquire, describe, and show artifacts;how ancient religious texts and peoples are constructed; what religious or political agenda does this representation serve; and the responsibility of the scholarly guild in constructing alternative encounters.

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