Vorkosigan

Goodacre's excellent blog, the NT Gateway Blog links to recent SBL forum pieces that look very interesting:

• Is God Bipolar or Are We Just Crazy? A Psychology and Biblical Studies Section Report: Personality, Aggression, and the Destructive Power of Religion
  
  Clark argues that the problem lies not in the use of biblical text, but in its misuse. Abusers, it appears, have the tendency to read religious texts outside of their broader biblical and cultural context, transforming passages whose purpose is to foster equality between husband and wife, or deliver a message of redemption, into tools of coercion. One example Clark has noted often in his treatment and interaction with couples plagued by IPV is Malachi 2:16. Abusers will use it as proof that "God hates divorce" and force their partners to stay with them in light of physical and emotional battering. Clark brings to attention the ironic misuse of this text. Malachi 2:16 intends to equate divorce with a break with faith, the people of Israel breaking their covenant with the LORD and hence placing "God as the offended wife." Another text often misused by abusers is Ephesians 5: 22-24 ("Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord..."): they demand total submission from their spouses while completely ignoring the following verses that speak about the husbands' equality with and submission to their wives (Ephesians 5: 25-33)!

• Strategies for Moving Students from Faith-based to Academic Biblical Studies
  
  Especially for those in their first year or two of college, this introductory course comes as a surprise on a number of fronts. Students from faith communities expect that the class will be a semester-long Torah or Bible Study. Many of them are sadly disillusioned and angry when it is not; others are ecstatically relieved. Simultaneous with these polar emotional and spiritual reactions to the course's content and tone, a handful of the students, particularly those who are now studying the Bible outside their faith tradition, are encountering marked differences of opinions about the Bible for the first time in their lives. They have never had the opportunity to consider biblical texts alongside someone with a different perspective. A few do not want to and maybe cannot think critically about the Bible; oftentimes, it is this group that reacts defensively, with hostility, or by shutting down. Both successive chairpersons of the Religious Studies department and other faculty members have informed me that this has been an ongoing departmental issue for at least the past fifteen years. It is also an interdisciplinary challenge that other colleagues face. This phenomenon is neither particular to The College of Wooster nor to a liberal arts college; for example, in their articles in Teaching Theology and Religion, both Roger Newell and Michael R. Cosby write of students' disappointment and agitation with academic or scholarly analysis of biblical material. [6] Although at The College of Wooster such students are numerically in the minority, their effect on classroom dynamics and the intensity of their reaction can be most profound. It is reflected, for example, in their comments on final course evaluations.[7]