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On today’s show, host Sara Gabler speaks with author, scholar, and prominent TikToker Dan McClellan about his new book, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) about Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues. They discuss how Christians derive their notions of sexuality, gender, and authority by going straight to the source, the Bible itself. 

McClellan uses an approach that he calls “data over dogma” in which he strives to put aside any of his own beliefs and assumptions in order to assess what the historical record and the texts themselves say. Instead of using the Bible to uphold preexisting beliefs, he asks, why were these texts written and what was their purpose? With this approach we find that the Bible has many contradictions, and sometimes it upholds ideas that are incompatible with modern life, like slavery and child sacrifice. 

They also discuss what the Bible has to say about sex and what it doesn’t have to say about sexuality, how white Christian nationalists use the Bible to maintain their power, and what McClellan has learned from his time as a public scholar. He says that rather than a jigsaw puzzle that we try to wrangle together, it’s more appropriate to view the Bible as a box full of Lego pieces that may never quite fit.

Dan McClellan is an award-winning public scholar of the Bible. He has over one million followers on social media, and tens of thousands more tune in to his online classes and his Data Over Dogma Podcast. Dan received his PhD from the University of Exeter. He previously worked as an adjunct instructor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University and as a scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Featured image: the cover of The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) about Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues.

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