APELC Class Notes
Having to tramp in the wet to the bookstore for our texts today severely limited what we could with the Yeats text, “The Second Coming” today, but we talked a bit about it and I said I’d post some links to resources that I think are useful.
The poem is millenarian generally, and millennial particularly, but, I think , essentially a secular (but no less profound) lament about change. Again, Yeats is exploiting familiar biblical motifs of the Christian worldview his majority audience is steeped in. I mentioned four common views of Christian eschatology; one, specifically Dispensational Premillennialism, heavily influences American politics today (in the form of Christian Zionism), but all worthy of noting because I think it’s vital that students, non- and theistically inclined, have an understanding of the Bible and its continued influence in the course of Western Civilization. You might read “The Case for Teaching The Bible” from TIME in 2007 for a corroborating argument . (See also the abstract for a paper on the benefits of bible literacy, “The Relationship Between Bible Literacy and Academic Achievement and School Behavior”, Education and Urban Society. It’s important to note that the study was restricted to a religious school, but perhaps the findings might be extrapolated.)
The trouble one can get into teaching biblical literacy is one of neutrality: How does one “teach the Bible” objectively, that is, as a document of cultural value and historical consequence without evangelizing? Of course, most universities offer some secular courses on biblical literature with little trouble. For a brief overview see the BBC’s Religion and Ethics page on “The Bible”. But I wouldn’t want you to stop there; follow-up by examining the myriad religious texts of the world’s religious worldviews. For even more, see the The Internet Sacred Text Archive. As I’ve said, the influence of religious faith, not just in West, but all over the world, is inescapable. Indeed, most culture of the East is merely the dress of religion. (The former page, BBC’s Religion and Ethics page, is a great place to start exploring worldviews, too. Look to the links on the right side of the page.)