Bible, The. The Bible has been a nearly universal presence in American history. Christopher
Columbus thought his voyages had been foretold in Scripture (specifically Isaiah 46:11). Printing began in England's North American colonies with the
Bay Psalm Book of 1640. Since its founding in 1816, the American Bible Society (ABS) has been a leader in promoting the Scriptures, distributing about four billion complete Bibles, testaments, or selections. The Bible's conspicuous place in American public life is illustrated in
Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, which ascribed much of the tragedy of the
Civil War to the fact that both North and
South “read the same Bible.” Even in the more secular twentieth century, biblical allusions frequently appeared in the speech of the famous, including Presidents Wilson, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.
Through much of American history, the Bible was available in the 1611 King James Version, the Catholic Douay Version (1582–1610), or in foreign‐language translations favored by immigrants. The English Revised Version appeared in 1881 and the Revised Standard Version in 1952. By the late twentieth century, numerous translations and paraphrases stood alongside the still‐beloved King James Version.
From the beginning, the Bible provided themes for Americans to define themselves as a people, and then as a nation. New England Puritans believed themselves in covenant with God just like the Hebrews of the Old Testament. During the sectional strife that led to the Civil War, both North and South mined the Scriptures for support. Defenders of
slavery favored Old Testament passages like Leviticus 25:45, which defined conditions for servitude, while
antislavery advocates favored New Testament texts like Galatians 5:1, with its paean to liberty in Christ. If anything, the Bible was more obviously at work in the popular culture of
African Americans than among whites. Blacks sang and preached about Adam and Eve; Moses and the Exodus from Egypt; Daniel in the lions' den; Jonah in the belly of the fish; and Jesus's birth, death, and future return. With profound symbolism, grateful African Americans from Baltimore in September 1864 presented President Lincoln with a pulpit Bible bound in velvet, furnished in gold, with a raised design depicting the emancipation of a slave.
The Bible has penetrated all forms of culture. Composers like William Billings (1746–1800) and John Knowles Paine (1839–1906) wrote musical settings for the Psalms. Novelists have regularly drawn on biblical materials, as in the plotting of Lew Wallace's
Ben Hur (1880), the opening line of Herman
Melville's 1851
Moby Dick (“Call me Ishmael”), or in titles like William
Faulkner's
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and John
Steinbeck's
East of Eden (1952). Ever since religious objects began to be mass‐marketed in the mid–nineteenth century, both Catholics and Protestants have purchased immense quantities of pictures, statues, games, children's toys, refrigerator magnets, jewelry, T‐shirts, greeting cards, and calendars decorated with biblical motifs.
The heart of the biblical presence in America is religious. The Bible has been the focus of private meditations; regular reading by families; and informal study in Methodist cell groups, Catholic retreats, and a multitude of other gatherings. Above all, the meaning of the Bible in America is rooted in the sermon, that ubiquitous vehicle by which for centuries, week in and week out, in churches across the land, biblical language, values, and culture have worked their way into the fabric of everyday life.
See also
African American Religion;
Gospel Music, African American;
Protestantism;
Puritanism;
Religion;
Revivalism;
Roman Catholicism.
Bibliography
Margaret T. Hills , The English Bible in America: A Bibliography of Editions of the Bible and the New Testament Published in America, 1777–1957, 1961.
Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, eds., The Bible in America, 1982.
Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 1993.
Mark A. Noll
