You have found the companion website of People of the Book: Inviting Communities Into Biblical Interpretation, written by T. Michael W. Halcomb and Timothy C. McNinch. Here, you can browse the site, access resources, contact us, and purchase the book. But you may already be asking, "So what is People of the Book all about anyway?"We wrote this book because we live in an era when the Bible appears to be less and less relevant to mainstream cultures. Those who do care about the Scriptures tend to derive their interpretations secondhand, from the preacher's pulpit or from generalized study guides written by complete strangers. These approaches overlook the communal and conversational nature of the Bible itself. Our view is that, if we hope to recover the transformative power of these ancient texts, and invite our world to reconsider their significance, we will need to engage whole communities together in the bottom-up task of interpretation. Thus, People of the Book was written to offer an organic-holistic approach to communal interpretation, an approach that can work for your community and appeal to your wider culture. Indeed, we envision the Bible as a conversation we are privileged to enter: listening, questioning, wrestling, reasoning, and responding together as authentic people of the Book.
Click HERE to read a brief interview about the book on Asbury Theological Seminary's website. Also, check out what some reviewers are saying:
"For too long we've seen ourselves as culture warriors engaged in a 'battle for the Bible.' Halcomb and McNinch propose a new way through the misery this metaphor makes. What if instead we are conversation partners engaged in a communal search for the meaning and implications of a text that can transform us together? What if this is what it really means to be 'a people of the book'? - Ken Wilson, Author of Mystically Wired: Exploring New Realms in Prayer
"Too many Christian communities cultivate an innocuous church-talk that isn't really about anything and that does not wrestle with Scriptural text. People of the Book offers a rich and compelling alternative in which Christian communities allow themselves to be shaped by their open-ended, holistic, and conversational grappling with the church's book." -Gary Dorrien, Author of Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice
