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This country is, as everybody knows, a creation of the Bible, … and the Bible is still holding its own, exercising enormous influence as a real spiritual power, in spite of all the destructive tendencies … "1 These words, spoken 102 years ago, came from an unexpected source. Yet as part of an address delivered by Solomon Schechter at the dedication of the main building of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, they echoed what was then a common assertion about the biblical character of the United States. Much more frequently, of course, similar words came from Christian commentators and with specific reference to the Christian character of the Scriptures.
Thus, only a few years after Schechter's address, the governor of New Jersey addressed a crowd of about 12,000 in Denver on the subject, "The Bible and Progress." The occasion was the 300th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version. In his speech, Woodrow Wilson called Scripture "the 'Magna Carta' of the human soul," and he summarized the burden of his remarks like this: "The Bible (with its individual value of the human soul) is undoubtedly the book that has made democracy and been the source of all progress."2 What Schechter and Wilson wanted to say is that without full consideration of the Bible, no adequate account of American national history or of American national ideals was possible.
A century and more later, much has changed. Political, social, legal, and cultural developments have altered the practice of religion, and of everything else, in American life. Yet despite manifold changes, reading of the Bible, reverence for the Bible, reference to the Bible, and debate over whether and how to use the Bible continue as constant features in American public life—evident most recently in the Supreme Court decisions regarding whether and how to display the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other public spaces.
In this ongoing negotiation, two notable Americans provide examples of perhaps the most effective use of the Bible ever in our nation's public history: Martin Luther King, Jr., in the speech he delivered from the east steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Civil Rights, and Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address, which he delivered from the east side of the Capital Building on March 4, 1865.3 Beyond cavil, the extraordinary force of these addresses owed much to their anchorage in Scripture. Yet the two speeches were quite different and so serve to illustrate the various ways that the Bible has been put to use in American public life.4
First, we can see in them a rhetorical or stylistic echoing of Scripture, where speakers, in order to increase the gravity of their words, employ a phraseology, cadence, or tone that parallels the classic phrasing of the King James Version. The most dramatic example in our entire history of such a biblical tone may in fact be King's speech in August 1963, which was filled with biblical-sounding phrases: "the Negro … finds himself in exile in his own land … ; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice … ; Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred … "; and more.
A second usage of the Bible may be called evocative, where speakers put actual Bible phrases to use, but as fragments and jerked out of original context in order to heighten the persuasive power of what they are trying to say for their own purposes. Lincoln used the Bible in this way during his Second Inaugural when he took a phrase from Genesis 3:19 to say it was "strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces."
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