Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench - Softcover

Crapanzano, Vincent

3.75

24 ratings by Goodreads

9781565846739: Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565846737 ISBN 13: 9781565846739

Publisher: The New Press, 2001

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Brilliantly observed and persuasively argued, Serving the Word, now in paperback, is an unprecedented look at the prevalence of literalism and the unexpected forms it takes in modern America’s religious and secular life.

Hailed as “thoughtful [and] suggestive” (The New York Review of Books), Serving the Word treats literalism as a modern belief system, analyzing its place in two seemingly contrasting fields: Christianity and the law. Moving from wealthy Angelenos who embrace starkly literal readings of the Bible to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s insisting on the narrowest interpretation of legal texts, leading anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano makes a persuasive claim that the attraction to literal certainty that we associate with fringe fanaticism is in fact deeply embedded in American culture.

This “disturbing but important” book (The Washington Post Book World) examines our society’s very conception of the truth, and poses basic questions about the state of America’s mind and soul.

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About the Author:

Vincent Crapanzano is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Literature in the Graduate Faculty of the City University of New York. His many books include Waiting: The Whites of South Africa. He lives in New York with his wife, the writer Jane Kramer.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A comprehensive overview of the resurgence of fundamentalist thinking in contemporary American religious and secular life. Crapanzano (Anthropology and Comparative Literature/CUNY; Waiting: The Whites of South Africa, 1985, etc.) offers a critical assessment of increasingly conservative interpretations of both the Bible and our Constitution. The first two-thirds of this study surveys fundamentalist approaches toward religion. Concentrating on the literal word, rather than on its interpretation or application, contends Crapanzano, is ultimately ``deadening,'' depriving the Bible of its beauty and complexity. Rather than fostering understanding, it silences it and produces a complacency that further widens the gap between believers and the secular. Creating an either-or world, the fundamentalist emphasis on the literal interpretation of the Bible ``runs counter to the American emphasis on the individual and his freedom.'' Particularly interesting are Crapanzano's accounts of the role of salvation in the lives of fundamentalists and other evangelicals. Despite their varying experiences and diverse backgrounds, all spoke of the security that a literal interpretation of the Bible offered them. Once they viewed Scripture as a guide to their daily lives, they could more confidently chart those lives. Homosexuality, depression, and abuse were all viewed as practices caused by sin and treatable by biblically based short-term counseling. The final third of this study shifts its focus to the increasingly literal interpretation of the Constitution. Perhaps even more threatening than religious fundamentalism, argues Crapanzano, such a view of the Constitution erodes our fundamental rights. When judges approach the Constitution as though it were a religious document rather than a man-made one, they ``give to its words the authority of the Word.'' Crapanzano is especially concerned with how judges may decide to interpret individual rightssuch as reproductive freedomthat are not mentioned literally in the Constitution. Scholarly, accessible, timely, and significant. -- Copyright �2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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