Still “People of the Book”?

Abstract

Protestants have long been known not only for the special authority they have accorded the Bible but also for the encouragement they have given to laity to read the Bible and make sense of it for themselves. But for much of their history they have assumed this would be done in the context of worshipping communities, where believers could interpret the Bible together, guided by the results of these communities' ongoing deliberations as codified in creeds, confessions and catechisms. In recent times, however, this has been breaking down because of the rise of increasingly radical forms of individualism. The resulting turn away from creedal religion is celebrated by some as an advance, but it is not without problems. This article identifies some of those problems, and briefly considers how they might be addressed.