TITLE: The Bible in American Public Life, 1860-2005
SPEAKER: Mark Noll
EVENT DATE: 04/21/2005
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 63 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
In his talk, "Dilemmas at the Center, Insights from the Margins," Noll, holder of the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library's John W. Kluge Center, explained how using the Bible in a political context can present some interesting questions and dilemmas, such as: Does greater use of the Bible encourage religious integrity, or does it make the Bible seem more exclusionary in a religiously pluralistic nation? He also examined some American groups who were very much committed to the Bible and how they used the Bible despite the fact that they did not appear to capture the attention of the mainstream at the time. Finally, Noll attempted to draw some conclusions about the use of the Bible in contemporary and future public life in the United States.
Speaker Biography: Mark Noll, holder of the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the Library's John W. Kluge Center, is McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and the current president of the American Society of Church History. At the Library, he has been studying the significance of the Bible in American public life, with special reference to the polemics of the Civil War era.
