Many of the Puritans/Pilgrims that left Europe as a result of religious persecution found solace in the story of Moses leading Israel out of a land of bondage, through a period of wandering and finally into a promised land. The Pilgrims eventually began to believe that the story of Israel leaving Egypt was their story too, quite literally.

That's all well and good, until you arrive "in the promised land" to find that it's already inhabited. If you're familiar with story of Israel's exodus you'll know that their promised land was inhabited by Canaanites with pagan religious practices that they had to go to war with. It was all too easy for these European pilgrims to believe that the Native Americans were their "Canaanites" that needed to be removed by any means necessary. They chose the means of genocide over the means of evangelism through love and service.

Similarly, Christian slave owners were emboldened to continue their practice of owning humans based on their erroneous understanding that dark-skinned races were the descendants of Cain and bore the mark that he received in Genesis 4. In fact, many Christian slave owners withheld the New Testament from their slaves because they knew that the New Testament book of Philemon required Christian slave owners to liberate their Christian slaves and treat them as equals.

Both of these terrible periods in American history are the result of the church not knowing how to interpret scripture, specifically allegorizing the Old Testament. These are extreme examples, to be sure, but they demonstrate the need to interpret scripture correctly instead of using it to justify selfish objectives. Bad hermeneutics are responsible for the theological justification of the worst moments of American history.

In a way, this gives me hope that a church that really grasps the Bible could also be responsible for the greatest moments in American history. In order for this to take place, Christians will need to improve their Biblical literacy. Don't just grab a warm cup of coffee or tea and randomly crack open your Message paraphrase for 4 minutes each morning. Don't just read the Bible, STUDY the Bible...it's historical context, the literary genre's that it employs, the language, the authors lives, etc.

America has yet to really see the results of a Biblically literate church.