05/06/2026
The inerrancy of scripture is a 19th century idea. More recently, 1978 in what’s known as ‘The Chicago Statement.’
I grew up in what was then called the ‘holiness’ church in the mid 1950s. My dad who was a bishop in the church preached then that the Bible was not the only or last word of God.
The first presiding bishop JD Barber, of the church I currently lead … spoke in NYC in 1920 at the UNIA Convention convened by Hon. Marcus Garvey…in an excerpt from Barber’s speech he is quoted as saying, ‘the Bible is not the final word of God.‘
It seems that these old ideas that had been ignored or squashed for a century are resurfacing. Flunder is the current vessel with the platform and microphone to be heard. I appreciate her using her platform in this way. But she is not the originator nor the only voice proclaiming this truth.
The spell of biblical inerrancy is once again being broken. This does not mean that the Bible is of no value or irrelevant today.
What it means is that we must bring both our faith and our intelligence into the conversation of scripture and to the church house.