From The Word Among Us, Don Blosser, ed.
(Goshen College:PinchPenny Press, 1997)

In a plane bound for Albuquerque last winter, I found myself browsing

through the January issue of American Waymagazine, the airline's

promotional publication. There I came across an interview with Robertson

Davies, Canada's "champion of letters," widely recognized as Canada's greatest

writer. After speaking about everything from David Letterman to whether

there is a kind of evangelical mission in his writing to his non-use of

computers, Davies turned his attention to the Bible.

In earlier speeches Davies had spoken about the loss of the Bible not

only as a religious guide but as a shared source of literature for our culture.

When asked about this by the American Way interviewer, Davies said, "Well,

it's a source of reference, you see, and it's a very great thing in any culture to

have some classical literature to which you can refer with the confidence that

most of the people you're talking to share it and know what's in it. That used to

be the case with the Bible because it is a classical literature . . . which

everybody used to know. But they don'tknow it anymore and that means that a

big frame of reference has been lost."

Moments after reading the interview with Davies I was off the plane

and at the Society of Christian Ethics' annual conference. Ironically, the first

session I attended that day included a paper titled "Does Scripture Matter?

Scripture as Ethical Norm in a Time of Ecclesial Crisis."The paper began with

a reference to Ezra and Nehemiah's accounts of the return of the Hebrew