The Re-birth of a Born-Again Christian

Lightly tracing his personal experiences growing up in the Bible Belt as a born-again Christian, James A. Sanders recounts his second rebirth experience and subsequent efforts to battle what can most broadly be called evangelicalism's denial of dignity and human worth to those different from the so-called norm. While Sanders cherishes his early experience of being saved or born again, he has become deeply concerned at what has happened to the evangelical movement in America, especially in its being politicized and removed from any kind of valid interpretation of the Bible itself. Sanders critiques evangelicalism for restricting the Holy Spirit's work to the realm of personal experience and so for denying the Spirit's work in society to move believers beyond the ancient mores and metaphors that biblical authors and editors used to record God's work in antiquity. Sanders proposes that Christians read the Bible honestly in its ancient and moral contexts, and attempt with humility to register its prophetic condemnation of tribal views of God, in order to heed the Spirit's urgings to engage in the advancing monotheizing process that the Bible demands of its adherents. This is the amazing story of someone born in Memphis, Tennessee, in the so-called Bible Belt, with its literal reading of scripture, amid what he called the American form of racial apartheid. Yet he would go on to master and even expand the work of biblical criticism. He also found in the scriptures the truths that allowed him to challenge racism and bigotry that he encountered both in the South and across the United States. --Marvin A. McMickle, President, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School James A. Sanders, who was the first Fulbright Scholar in religion and who helped launch the subdiscipline of biblical study called canonical criticism, has served on the faculties of the Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, and the Claremont School of Theology. Sanders has authored or edited more than twenty books, including The Monotheizing Process (Cascade Books, 2014) and The Canon Debate (2002).