“When the Bible Raises Your Blood Pressure: Faithful Wrestling with Challenging Texts”

The Bible is full of embarrassing, offensive, problematic texts that present serious interpretive challenges for contemporary Christian faith and practice.  Should they be repudiated? Discarded? Silenced? Or are there perhaps more effective and faithful ways of handling them?  This retreat will tackle the importance of engaging difficult texts directly, with the expectation that we may encounter the living God in our conversation with them. It will provide the opportunity to wrestle with such texts, to consider interpretive strategies for engaging them with integrity, and to reflect on the authority of Scripture.

Frances Taylor Gench is leading this retreat for the ministers and educators of the South Carolina Presbyteries beginning on Monday, October 22 and ending on Wednesday, October 24 at the Montreat Conference Center.

Dr. Gench is the Herbert Worth and Annie H. Jackson Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond.

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