Hey everyone.
I wanted to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately: Bible idolatry, or what some people call “bibolatry.”
The Church of Christ has often been accused of this throughout its history. The criticism is that they don’t just highly value the Bible, but that they almost elevate the book itself to the point where it seems like they worship the words on the page more than the God those words are supposed to point to.
I remember one time our preacher, who was genuinely a nice guy, was teaching from a book during Bible class. The author made the point that sometimes Christians can end up worshiping the Word instead of God Himself. The preacher immediately dismissed the idea as silly.
I remember sitting there thinking, “I’m not sure that’s a silly concern.” It seemed like a genuine question that deserved to be taken seriously.
The more I’ve reflected on it, the more I think I understand the Church of Christ mindset. In their view, the Bible is the only infallible authority. Christianity isn’t a hierarchical institution like Catholicism or Orthodoxy. It’s simply about following the Word of God exactly as they understand it.
If you’re Catholic or Orthodox, feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding your tradition. But my understanding is that those traditions believe the Church itself has a God-given teaching authority alongside Scripture. The Church of Christ rejects that completely. To them, anything that looks like a later development, tradition, or new teaching is immediately viewed with suspicion because it isn’t explicitly found in the biblical text.
I also wonder if this helps explain why the Church of Christ is often cessationist. I don’t think it’s only because of passages like 1 Corinthians 13. I think part of it is that they’re deeply afraid of being deceived. They don’t want to be tricked by false teachers or other Christian groups. In my experience, there was a real suspicion toward outsiders and toward any form of Christianity that didn’t look like the Church of Christ.
Growing up, I constantly heard that other churches only preached the “easy” parts of the Bible while avoiding the difficult passages. The Church of Christ, on the other hand, took pride in saying they believed all of Scripture and were willing to defend even the hard parts.
So here’s my question:
Do you think the Church of Christ crosses the line from having a high view of Scripture into something that could fairly be called “bibolatry”? In other words, do you think they sometimes elevate the Bible itself to such an extent that it almost functions as an object of devotion, rather than as something meant to point people toward God?
I’m genuinely curious what others think.

Forgive my long post but I felt an unexpected connection when I found this subreddit and after several days of reading had to add. Consider it my way of saying thank you!

I’m mid 40’s and was raised by divorced parents from my first year of life. Both were CoC members (long story) but my mother was pretty wild. My father’s family was straight “regular” CoC in TN. My grandfather was a guarantor on the note for the midcentury church building I grew up worshipping in, although he had a wife leave him during World War II and was therefore never an elder.

My grandparents, father, and aunt and uncle were amazingly loving humans, and all have passed now except my aunt. I can recall all the church tropes I find in threads here. I’m also old enough to remember men smoking in suits outside the building between church and Sunday school. I remember the outrage when an African-American family would make a weak attempt to enter our congregation (and remain). I remember prayers for us to be “once again known as a Christian nation.”

Area churches ran their own children’s home and retirement home. I served communion proudly and led long prayers and - when I went mercifully wild in college- even came in from staying with my girlfriend (not CoC), and hung-over, to lead our meager teen Sunday school class. Our church was always about 120 people and never many kids.

During high school, I had the shared experience of attending youth group with friends at a “liberal” CoC across town. Our town has a dozen CoC’s and two were always the black sheep. My dad hated it.

I attended our local private high school, standard CoC fare that came about in the fifties to combat integration. Thankfully, some teachers were outstanding and progressive and friends to this day. Others have gone predictably MAGA.

I consider that public college saved my life, causing me to see the good in people from all walks of life. Although I was encouraged not to let it “liberalize” me, it did it’s job- merely removed me from the bubble. Giving independent thought.

When I was 30, I made a sort of return to a large CoC with my wife (not Coc) and we made friends, but the cracks were showing. We had our first of two kids and after lots of miscarriages and no church support, we gave up on attending. I still held some broad faith until about 10 years ago until the YEC simply could not be ignored with any mental gymnastics, which led me to an overview of other world religions, a study of other creation myths, and definitely the failing of the hebrew historicity of the exodus.

Lots of things just couldn’t add up. I became agnostic and - amazingly- so did my wife in the same timeline.

Even as my politics swung left, I find myself sometimes still finding the 1980’s childhood simplicity alluring at moments. The loving old people and familiar hymns are strong memories. The clandestine walk out to the bathroom or water fountain. Then I find the important memories are so out of place with raising kids to be critical thinkers who aren’t bigots or intolerant of other people just trying to get through life authentically. The nostalgia goes away.

In moments I get frustrated that intelligent friends on Facebook I’ve known all my life are so “Christian Nationalist” CoC. At other times I remind myself just what it costs in cognitive dissonance and social disorder to leave, and I understand huge numbers of people just won’t ever challenge themselves enough to make the jump- intelligent or not.

Thanks for letting me post, it means a lot. I’m I Chattanooga, and I bet a few of you are, too.

Hey, guys.
I realize I’ve been posting so much that this subreddit is basically becoming my diary at this point. 😅 But I just feel like I need an outlet to get these thoughts out, and this has been a good place to do that.
I’m with my family right now, so I’ve been going to church with them. Today I sat in the young adults class, and we started talking about Jesus’ words that the world will hate you because you follow Him. The discussion was about how the world sees Christianity as oppressive and how Christians have to stand their ground when society turns against them.
As I sat there listening, something unexpected happened.
I started feeling empathy.
I’ve spent a lot of time being angry at the Church of Christ, and I still have plenty of criticisms. But as I listened today, I realized that many of the people sitting in that room aren’t trying to be malicious. They’re scared.
They genuinely believe the culture is changing in ways that threaten them. They believe people hate them simply because they’re Christians. They’re afraid of being rejected. They’re afraid of losing what they’ve always believed. Whether I agree with those fears or not, I think the fear itself is real.
That made me feel a little guilty.
I’ve written some pretty harsh posts, and while I still stand by many of my criticisms of the Church of Christ, I also don’t want to forget that the people in those pews are human beings. They’re not cartoon villains or evil monsters. They’re people with fears, hopes, families, and experiences, just like everyone else.
It made me ask myself, Who am I to judge them as harshly as I sometimes have?
I don’t think my criticisms are necessarily wrong, but I do think there have been times when I’ve criticized them in bad faith or let my anger get the better of me. That’s something I want to be more mindful of going forward.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts after church today.

The Pulaski Citizen, Pulaski, TN, July 20, 1866

The rest of the story can be read by clicking the link.

Link: https://www.loc.gov/item/sn85033964/1866-07-20/ed-1/