In this final post on James Bielo’s Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Bible Study, I’m writing about both his final chapter — “Negotiating Self and Others” — and his conclusion. Both are relatively short, and in some ways, they work well together. Negotiating Self and Others In this chapter, Bielo uses as […]
Words Upon the Word
Bielo: Bible Study as “Backstage” for Witnessing
This week, the chapter I’m covering from James S. Bielo’s Words Upon the Word: An Ethonography of Evangelical Bible Study is all about “witnessing.” More on what that means in a moment. First, however, I’d like to mention an unexpected cameo. In this chapter, Bielo focuses on a United Methodist Bible study led by Bill, […]
Bielo: The Textual Economies of Bible Studies
James Bielo’s Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study closely observes several Bible studies in Lansing, Michigan. I’ve been reading and blogging about the book this summer as part of my efforts to gain a sense of the academic perspective on evangelical Christians[1. You may have noticed that Bielo capitalizes “Evangelical,” while […]
Bielo: Intimacy in Evangelical Bible Studies
Why do evangelical Christians join – and remain in – Bible studies? That’s how I would characterize the basic themes of this and next weeks’ chapters of James S. Bielo’s Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study, which I have been blogging through as part of my research project on academic […]
Bielo: How Do Evangelicals Read the Bible?
This summer, I’m reading — and blogging about — several books that reflect academic understandings of American evangelicals. The first of these is James S. Bielo’s Words Upon the Word: An Ethnography of Evangelical Group Bible Study. Previously, I wrote about Bielo’s discussion of Bible study as a social institution and how he decided to […]