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Ronald Hendel—a humanities scholar who is Jewish—recently published a piece pitting “faith” against “reason” and explaining that he has let his SBL membership lapse because he was increasingly uncomfortable with the Society’s tolerance of evangelicals and loosening of the standards of reason-based critical scholarship. Or, as he more colorfully puts it, “The views of creationists, snake-handlers and faith-healers now count among the kinds of Biblical scholarship that the society seeks to foster.”

Michael Bird deconstructs Hendel’s misunderstanding of the purpose of SBL, and Brad Green looks at Hendel’s misuse of Pascal’s quote that “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”

The SBL leadership offered their own response today, seeking to rebut Hendel’s claims.

Interestingly, they make clear in their response that sharing the gospel or other forms of proselytizing at SBL events and in their publications is strictly prohibited:

Although SBL invites vigorous discussion of all relevant topics, proselytizing activity is neither welcome nor permitted in SBL-sponsored events and publications and is inconsistent with the SBL’s core values: accountability, inclusiveness, collaboration, leadership in biblical scholarship, collegiality, productivity, commitment, responsiveness to change, communication, scholarly integrity, efficiency, and tolerance. Consequently, any instances of proselytizing activity should be reported to SBL staff. Further, we are unaware of any RBL reviews that even “hint” that anyone is “going to hell.” If any SBL member can point us to such a review, we will immediately remove the review and disavow its sentiments.

In other words, the Society of Biblical Literature will not tolerate the intolerance of actually acting upon the worldview and precepts of the biblical literature itself.

Now I don’t think you have to evangelize explicitly at SBL in order to be a faithful Christian scholar. But at the same time, the anti-proselytizing position has always struck me as strange. It reminds me of this video clip from magician Penn Jillette, an avid advocate of atheism:

“I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward—and atheists who think people shouldn’t proselytize and who say just leave me along and keep your religion to yourself—how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

“I mean, if I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.”

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