When Did The Bible Leave The Church?

Was there a time when the Christian and Hebrew Bibles (or New and Old Testaments) were in the pews of Unitarian Universalist congregations as they are in most Protestant and Catholic congregations?  If so, when did the Holy Bible leave the church?  When I worship at other Christian churches, I always find myself flipping through the pages, reading the worship scripture, looking for context, voice, an exegesis-on-the-spot of sorts, and recently finding some comfort in holding the book that I've come to know a bit better since Divinity School.  I do like our UUA Hymnal (greyback) and enjoy reading our own forms of scriptures in the back.

Comments

[Scott Wells]

Perhaps it might be worth asking which Unitarian and Universalist congregations still have pew Bibles.

My last parish did. Goodness, I think the one before that did, and the one I supplied did too. All three were Universalist anti-consolidation churches; hardly what UUs consider mainstream, but they exist.

[Philocrites]

There are Bibles in the pews at King's Chapel in Boston.

[joseph santos-lyons]

Yep, I was at Kings Chapel and saw the Bibles there, I think that is the only place I've seen them. Was there a mass movement to take Bible's out at some point in our history?

[alicia]

i used to have the bible and the gray uu book too. i'd look at the uu hymnal and "scriptures" and think they were so much more inclusive and humane.

[Philocrites]

I wouldn't assume that the Bibles "used to be there" and then were taken out. Hymnals are a 19th-century invention, and I suspect that pew Bibles were a late-19th-century innovation in a certain class of Protestant churches. I'm not sure where to point you to find out more about how this trend arose and how different denominations embraced it. My hunch is that some small minority of Unitarian and Universalist congregations adopted pew Bibles between 1870 and 1930, somewhat in reaction to liberal trends in their own denominations, but I would be astonished if Bibles had been in the pews as a matter of course before that.

(Even the cross in the chancel at King's Chapel is "new": It was added in the 1870s when other Unitarians began talking about their tradition as "post-Christian." Before that, there wasn't a cross in the church.)

[joseph santos-lyons]

by taken out, i intended to imply both that there may have been bibles in "the pews", which i agree, cannot be assumed, but also that the biblical presence through regular use of scripture (sometimes placed next to the pulpit in large letters/numbers on a sign) implied a notion that we bring or at least be prepared to relate with the biblical scripture.

[Philocrites]

Well, as for the disappearance of the Bible as a primary source for Sunday worship, I think you're looking at the period between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s. The 1937 hymnal and service book "Hymns of the Spirit" drew overwhelmingly on biblical materials for responsive readings; the 1960s "Hymns for the Celebration of Life" adapted contemporary literary texts instead.

As a venerable symbol of tradition, pulpit Bibles may have lingered into the 1970s in many old UU churches, but the general cultural dismissal of "tradition" as deserving special recognition in the sixties probably finally did that practice in. Out with the old!

There are still pulpit Bibles in many New England churches, though in some, like First Parish in Concord, the pulpit Bible is no longer in the pulpit and sits like an artifact in an unused corner of the sanctuary.

[every 7th day]

We do not have Bibles out, but we also don't have pews. But here's an idea. I'm teaching a biblical survey course at the moment and a student said she had to search high and low for a Bible that anyone in her family might posess. She showed me what she finally found - a rare translation that will most likely be excluded from all denominations' pews: The Precious Moments Bible. (You know, the large headed, doe-eyed children in schmaltzy pastoral scenes?) Now that's what this religion is missing!

[Donald Wilson]

I know the First UU Church of Ann Arbor had them in their 2nd location (we are on church 4 now), as there are pictures testifying as such, and until the move to the newest location, the bibles themselves were in storage at the church along with older hymnals and Unitarian and Universalist organizational newsletters from the late 1800's on.

Now that you bring this up, I wonder where that archive went. I will need to inquire at the church.