Constitution as Political Back-Drop

 

The presidential candidates' rival town halls were most interesting to me for their very different choices of iconic staging. While Donald Trump's stage featured a huge star on a circular red field, reminiscent of Captain America's shield, Joe Biden chose to portray himself with a picture of the U.S. Constitution as a backdrop, located in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

 

The calligraphy of the Constitution's opening phrase, "We the People," is iconic in American politics. Its reproduction often appears in left-wing and right-wing protests and its iconography can be touted by conservative pundits. President Barack Obama, with whom Biden served as Vice President, gave a memorable speech about closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp while standing in front of the Constitution's manuscript in the rotunda of the National Archives. 

So Biden's staging not only represents his fidelity to the rule of law in implicit (and often explicit) contrast to the current President. It may also be evoking his connection to Obama, which he regularly highlights.

A First Look at a Slave Bible

NPR is reporting on an exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, that features a Bible used in the Caribbean, during the height of the slave trade.

This abridged version goes by the title, Parts of the Holy Bible, selected for the use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands, and was published in 1807.

The NPR report quotes Associate Curator Anthony Schmidt. "About 90 percent of the Old Testament is missing [and] 50 percent of the New Testament is missing," Schmidt says. "Put in another way, there are 1,189 chapters in a standard protestant Bible. This Bible contains only 232."

In describing this unique artifact, the Museum on the Bible says

The Slave Bible, as it would become known, is a missionary book. It was originally published in London in 1807 on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of enslaved Africans toiling in Britain’s lucrative Caribbean colonies. They used the Slave Bible to teach enslaved Africans how to read while at the same time introducing them to the Christian faith. Unlike other missionary Bibles, however, the Slave Bible contained only “select parts” of the biblical text. Its publishers deliberately removed portions of the biblical text, such as the exodus story, that could inspire hope for liberation. Instead, the publishers emphasized portions that justified and fortified the system of slavery that was so vital to the British Empire.

The exhibit will run through April 2019. I will be taking a trip to DC between now and then, and I will try to take a look, and report back in more detail here.

The Bible in American Life

Coinciding with their national study on The Bible in American Life, The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is soliciting paper proposals for a conference to be held August 6-9 on "how Americans past and present have used the Bible in their daily lives."  This seems like a great opportunity to talk about iconic uses of the Bible in America, adding to the "historical, cultural, sociological, and theological" approaches that the conference claims to highlight.