What Slavery Teaches About Elective Abortion

Martin Luther King Day reminds us of a similarity between the practices of slavery and of elective abortion. Just as cheap slave labor enriches a slaveholding society, so eliminating the need to care for some children enriches a society that permits elective abortion. But neither practice is morally good, and both should be eliminated from societies that value peace and freedom.

Abortion advocates have long argued that the wealthy, the middle class and the poor need this legal ability. When Abortion Was A Crime, a history of pre-Roe America that supports this pro-choice argument, tells how abortion benefitted wealthy women who did not want children and middle class women whose families were struggling to maintain and improve their financial security. The book also tells tragic stories of women in poverty who had no hope of providing the basic necessities for the children they already had, let alone another. With all these stories as evidence, When Abortion Was A Crime argues that elective abortion benefits all social classes.

It will only become increasingly clear that elective abortion is an unjust solution to the problem of economic opportunity, just as slavery was. On the one hand, some pregnant women and their families suffer economic hardship while others strive to provide greater opportunities for the children that they have. On the other hand, humanity has long recognized in law and culture that the baby who emerges at birth is already as human as the older members of the family. With greater and greater evidence, science traces the beginning of a baby’s existence back to the process of conception. The practice of elective abortion is an unjust solution because it allows some people to deliberately, though sometimes with regret, deprive some children of life for the economic well being of others.

Finding a just solution requires grappling with both sides of the problem. It does not take a religious outlook to grapple with them, but it is no surprise that religious people like Martin Luther King, a Christian pastor, have helped lead the thinking and movements that do. In his speech to honor the centennial of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, MLK observed that the practice and legacy of slavery gave black Americans a false sense of inferiority and white Americans a false sense of superiority, argued that the conversion of soul is even more important than legal changes to end that legacy, and articulated the ideals and virtues to guide that conversion.

It does not require a religious view, but religious people will also spot the false narratives of woman versus child that justify elective abortion. More importantly, they will seek and implement practices that care for the social and medical well-being of both mother and child. Among the leaders will be religiously-inspired doctors who have already been practicing medicine without performing elective abortions and who know how to protect both mother and child from life-threatening complications during labor and delivery, avoiding termination of pregnancy when possible.

With MLK, Abraham Lincoln and the American Founders, these doctors recognize that all people are created equal and given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, from the moment their lives begin.

Abortion Is And Is Not A Religious Issue

It is surprising to hear people say, as the New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias reported, that the proposition “Life begins at conception” is a religious belief. It is true that the Catholic Church, many other Christian churches, and many Christian and non-Christian congregations state publicly that life begins at conception in order to argue that elective abortion should be illegal.

But no religious authority ever reasoned to the conclusion that life begins at conception based on divine revelation or any set of religious teachings. In fact, religious authorities got the question wrong in the past when they followed the widely accepted but underdeveloped science of their day, even when also following well-reasoned philosophy. In a famous example, … (continue reading at the National Catholic Register. Thank you NCR.)

The Truly Fearful Stories Offered to Justify Elective Abortion

I have been reading When Abortion Was A Crime to better understand why people in our society before Roe v Wade thought that elective abortion would be a good solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy. The author, Leslie J. Reagan, tells story after story, gleaned from court records, of desperate women who received illegal abortions, endured great physical pain and humiliation, and sometimes suffered painful deaths from poorly performed procedures.

The most common, striking characteristic of these stories is desperation. The author describes women who feared ostracization because they were pregnant but unmarried or were married but already had the number of children that those in their social circle deemed to be enough, or too many. She describes wives and their husbands who feared the time and financial burdens of adding another child to their family. She describes wealthy women who did not want to be bothered by another child, or by children at all. Before Roe, these desperate women had to seek abortions in an illegal underground industry whose practices often humiliated them and whose poorly trained and careless doctors, nurses, and midwives sometimes maimed or killed them.

These stories persuade people to legalize elective abortion, but why should that be the conclusion? Shouldn’t these stories persuade us to shift resources from the abortion industry to organizations that address the social causes of despair, which remain after the child that would have been born has died?

What does it take to turn a women from despair that bringing a child into the world will be a life-wrecking burden to the hope that bringing that child into the world will somehow add to her pursuit of love, social acceptance, and personal security?

Here is one part of it. Some women will need help moving past the shock of seeing positive pregnancy test when they do not want to become pregnant. Even when a woman knows that she could become pregnant, recognizing that she is pregnant must make her think of the definite changes to come, which now have a definitive timeline. If she does not want to have the child, those changes can look like despair.

Her situation sounds strangely similar to that of the accident victim who ends up a quadriplegic and requests assisted suicide. That person’s life has changed quickly and drastically. That person inevitably begins to imagine a future without the pursuits they must now abandon and with disability and perhaps chronic suffering. They turn first to death in order to rid themselves of despair. But medical, pastoral and personal experience have shown that with the right help people can move past desperation by reimagining a future that adds new hopes to the past ones that they may still pursue.

Here is why the women in When Abortion Was A Crime seem to be in a similar position: Life has changed quickly and dramatically. They must imagine different futures for themselves than the ones they had planned. They experience despair. By seeking elective abortion, they turn first to death in order to in order to rid themselves of despair.

To bypass elective abortion, these women not only need help reimagining a more hopeful future for themselves, but they also need family and friends to reimagine their own futures in order to help them through pregnancy and childbirth and either raising the child or allowing adoption. They need organizations near them who are capable of helping them see how their child could become a part of a satisfying life for them, and they for their children.

The truly awful stories that pro-choice advocates tell to justify elective abortion should really lead society in the opposite direction.

303 Creative Not Cooperating

During last week’s oral arguments in the 303 Creative v Elenis trial, Justice Sotomayor offered what would have been a truly bizarre and inexplicable hypothetical if it were not for the obvious historical overtones regarding racism and discrimination against African Americans. The Justice’s point was to ask the plaintiff’s counsel, Kristin Waggoner, if her client’s refusal to do wedding websites for same sex couples did not constitute a similar kind of discrimination against same sex couples today. In the Justice’s own words:

“[A photography] business wants to express its own view of nostalgia about Christmases past by reproducing classic 1940s and 1950s Santa scenes…. But precisely because they’re trying to capture … the feelings of a certain era, their policy is that only white children can be photographed with Santa in this way because that’s how they view the scenes with Santa…”

If the justice’s hypothetical were only about nostalgia for Christmases past and not also about past racism and discrimination, no one would object. Nostalgia generates a legitimate market in photographs, historical facts about a person’s birthday and birth year, and the like. But the Justice implies racism is the real reason behind this hypothetical business model and applies it to the business of 303 Creative. After all, children of color surely sat on Santa’s lap in the 40’s and 50’s, so the only reason left for the Justice’s hypothetical business decision is racism and discrimination.

The very human and American reality that people can honestly disagree about matters as important as sexuality and learn to live together is completely lost in the Justice’s hypothetical.

Let me offer a better framing of business transactions. A business transaction is series of cooperative actions between a buyer and a seller. By creating websites, the owner of 303 Creative, Lorie Smith, cooperates in the wedding project of her customers. But when a potential customer proposes a wedding involving actions with which she disagrees, in this case the exchange of vows of a same sex couple, she does not cooperate. She is not saying they are bad or second class people, only that she disagrees with something important that they are doing.

Viewing business transactions as acts of cooperation between a buyer and a seller better explains why Lorie Smith is willing to create other kinds of websites for gay people. For example, she would be quite willing for her customers to use her work to celebrate a birthday but not to communicate about establishing a relationship that she would not consider to be a marriage.

The Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson argued that public accommodation law requires a business selling Jewish-themed goods to Muslims and Christians. This law would seem to work well unless a Muslim or Christian group buys those goods for an anti-Semitic use, at which point the Jewish business has a right and responsibility not to cooperate, that is not to sell its goods to those people.

Viewing business transactions as acts of cooperation brings to light how buyers and sellers can interact with each other except when they disagree. Disagreement need not mean conflict, but rather the need for each party at that moment to cooperate with a different business and different customers.

The disagreement on trial in 303 Creative v Elenis concerns some of the most fundamental human questions: the nature of marriage and of sexuality. The American political system attempts to preserve pluralism about these kinds of disagreement. But Justice Sotomayor’s hypothetical and the Solicitor General’s use of public accommodation law avoid that disagreement, accuse the plantiff of discrimination, and exacerbate the conflict.

mRNA Based Vaccination Therapy

The Epoch Times thrives upon holding governmental authority accountable. We should expect such an ethos, given the journal’s history with the Chinese Communist Party. Its anti-communist stance is needed today but sometimes generalizes into an anti-government stance with mixed results. Its reporting and editorials about COVID-19 vaccines are a good example. On the one hand, the journal reports on adverse COVID-19 vaccine effects that are not widely reported elsewhere, advocates that patients be heard, and tells the difficult family stories lived out among our neighbors. Its editorial page provides a strong voice for those who oppose government mandates. On the other hand, it sometimes discredits the vaccines themselves.

For example, this article attempts to show that the vaccines produced using mRNA technology are not really vaccines at all. This is misleading. In fact, vaccines produced using mRNA technology are simply a new form of vaccine. Scientific and technological advancement always produces new forms of existing technologies. Gasoline engines are real engines that, historically, followed steam engines, and they are both engines. Similarly, it makes no essential difference whether a pharmaceutical company uses an older method, such as using inactivated particles of the actual virus, or a newer approach, such as mRNA technology, to produce COVID-19 vaccines. Both are vaccines. Science and technology have simply expanded the kinds of available engines and vaccines.

There are a variety of legal and medical definitions of vaccination using a wide range of terminology. They rely on a philosophically complete definition of vaccination includes 1) a therapy that provokes the body’s immune response to a particular pathogen, 2) by introducing into the body a substance that is not the pathogen but fools the immune system into reacting as if it is, 3) given in advance of contact with the pathogen, 4) to produce antibodies that will fight that pathogen if and when the body has contact with the pathogen.

Both inactivated and mRNA vaccines meet all 4 criteria but operate by different mechanisms. In the case of mRNA vaccines, the mRNA instructs some of the person’s cells to produce a spike protein that resembles one on the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Thus the mRNA vaccine triggers the person’s immune system into reacting as if the body has contact with the coronavirus. As a result, the person’s immune system will be primed to produce antibodies to fight off the actual coronavirus in the future when the person comes into contact with it. The familiar inactivated vaccines do the same thing using a killed version of the virus.

The ET article also argues “that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines aren’t vaccines in the medical and legal definition of a vaccine [because] They do not prevent you from getting the infection, nor do they prevent its spread. They’re really experimental gene therapies.”

mRNA vaccines are not either vaccines or gene therapy; they are both: real vaccines based on gene therapy. In general, mRNA technology part of a growing gene therapy industry that has seen some notable failures but some successes as well.

Moreover, vaccines do prevent or lessen infection, depending on a person’s circumstances. Whether vaccinated or not, if a person comes into contact with the coronavirus, and the person’s immune system destroys the virus before it causes the disease COVID-19, then the person’s immune response has prevented infection. Vaccination strengthens the immune system’s ability to prevent it. Whether vaccinated or not, if the person’s immune system cannot prevent coronavirus contact from becoming the disease, it still fights and may lessen the gravity of the disease and its symptoms. Vaccination strengthens the immune system’s ability to lessen them.

It is simply not accurate to claim that mRNA vaccines “do not actually impart immunity” and that “they are not designed to keep you from getting sick with SARS-CoV-2.” They are, but they do not always work perfectly.

A person could have immunity and still become sick. How well this or that individual’s immune system responds to an actual coronavirus infection depends upon many factors. How much coronavirus entered their body? Are they immunocompromised? What other underlying medical conditions increased their vulnerability? Depending on the circumstances, some individuals may have some immunity but still contract COVID-19 and experience its symptoms.

The Epoch Times has proven itself to be a defender of freedom, but in this case people need an accurate understanding of vaccines—pro and con—in order to make decisions in a free and informed manner.

Could the COVID vaccine destroy your immune system? Probably not

I admire the origin of The Epoch Times. It was founded on the power of the pen to check brute force, in this case the Chinese Communist Government’s brutal repression of democracy. The news outlet’s founders have participated in the Falun Gong movement, which retrieves a version traditional Chinese spirituality to counter the soul-sucking culture of communism.

The Chinese government infamously punished the Falun Gong, and The Epoch Times keeps tabs on the current government’s machinations with an understandably anti-government editorial slant. But that slant does not translate well on certain issues, like COVID-19 vaccination, in more free and open societies like the US and Europe.

For example, compare this alarming article How the COVID-19 Vaccine Could Destroy Your Immune System with this sober, balanced, easily accessible explainer by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The ET article mixes scientific sources and some accurate history with statements that COVID-19 vaccines are likely to worsen COVID-19 infections by actually helping the coronavirus infect a person’s cells in a phenomenon called “Antibody-dependent Enhancement” (ADE). By contrast, CHOP explains that researchers discovered long ago that ADE can occur naturally, with no vaccines involved: One form of the dengue virus can actually use antibodies that already fought off another form of the dengue virus to infect the patient again.

CHOP also explains that vaccines for Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), measles, and the dengue virus have provoked ADE, did result in deaths in very few cases, and thus were discontinued. Even so, CHOP adds that “Other viral vaccines that target multiple types of a virus have been safely used, including vaccines against polio (3 types), rotavirus (5 types), and human papillomavirus (9 types).”

ADE is rare, observable, and thus largely preventable. The kind of scientific sources cited by both articles, such as this one, are part of the usual scientific process of catching and responding to vaccine-induced ADE. These scientific sources do not expose a conspiracy to conceal important information from the public.

The ET article reports these scientific sources, but I found the scientific reporting difficult to follow and the alarming conclusions easy to remember. If someone already fears vaccination and reads the article linked above, they will expect that getting vaccinated will worsen their illness the first or next time they get COVID-19. What a shame. I do not see how this conclusion makes sense when millions of people have been vaccinated without high adverse reaction rates.

If ADE were on the rise, the kind of scientific process that caught it with RSV, measles, and dengue virus vaccines would catch it again with the COVID-19 illness. That scientific process would study whether the rising ADE cases were naturally occurring or vaccination provoked, and in either case would continue the search for another safe vaccine to add to polio, rotavirus, and HVP vaccines already on the success list.

No, the COVID-19 vaccine is highly unlikely to destroy any person’s immune system. Of course, each person must inform themselves and come to a judgment in their own case. Here is how to do it.

Why Cremation?

My 17 year old daughter and I recently attended the funeral of her classmate’s father.

During the ceremony, I began to wonder why some people choose cremation, though this man did not. Sites that promote cremation argue for lower cost, convenience, a smaller burial ground, or more options for a final resting place, or places. But I wonder if some people choose cremation to avoid the process of decay. It is disturbing, even devastating to imagine the decaying body of a loved one or one’s own decaying body. Cremation advances that body to its final physical state, like decay, except quickly and deliberately.

Perhaps in this way cremation feels like care. When a loved one dies, we begin caring for the deceased’s body in so many ways—respecting what bodily integrity remains, transporting it, preparing it for burial, placing it at the center of ritual celebration and then carrying it to the place of burial. The pallbearers carry a beautifully lined casket in which their loved one’s body will decay. But cremation bypasses decay, and the deceased’s body quickly returns to dust.

The Christian tradition, offering its witness to the Resurrection, resists cremation. Disintegration is not the body’s final state. When the Apostles and other disciples recognized the resurrected Jesus, they saw a person whose body they assumed to be decaying in the grave. But there he was bearing the wounds of the crucifixion along with all his familiar features.

Decay and cremation both destroy a loved one’s familiar features, but cremation’s destruction does it by a chosen act, even though destruction is not the intent. The practice of cremation involves us in death’s destruction, in spite of ourselves. If the resurrection of the dead is true, cremation acts against our final end.

I still think cremation’s destruction of the body is disturbing, but I can see why some people choose it.

What are the Social Sciences?

The social sciences are essentially branches of philosophy that we moderns study by applying the scientific method to social behavior.

In the popular mind, the social sciences study society and the interrelationship of individuals and groups within it. In a nutshell, their subjects include sociology, political science, economics, psychology and a host of others related to these four, as well as history and law from the humanities.

But today’s social sciences are really combinations of the philosophical and mathematical learning that began with the ancient Liberal Arts tradition. Seen in this way, the infamous decline of the humanities is not as drastic as it is often presented.

What we moderns call “social reality” was already considered by ancient philosophers like Thales of Miletus and Plato, who scrutinized the world, the human person, and society. Plato’s Republic was a study in how to found a society that we moderns still consider. Often thought of as an economic theorist, Adam Smith was essentially a moral philosopher who studied economic activity, hoping to show the Scottish Highlanders a way out of poverty. John Locke was a philosopher who studied political activity, hoping to show Europe a way to expand political freedom and limit war. Auguste Compte imagined a new social order in the wake of the French Revolution, and his positivistic approach planted the intellectual seeds of sociology.

All these ways of thinking assume the fundamentally philosophical insight that reality possesses some order that humanity can know. Ancient philosophers studied this order and an approach to education, the Liberal Arts, that uses logic, language, and mathematics to understand whatever reality—spiritual, physical, or both—that the person encounters. The trivium taught grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium taught math and its ancient applications: geometry, astronomy, and music. Physics, chemistry, and biology are modern applications of math and the scientific method.

The social sciences integrate most clearly the trivium and quadrivium from the ancient Liberal Arts tradition. The hard sciences lean so heavily on math and the scientific process that we overlook the underlying philosophical insight about order. The humanities study human qualities so deeply that we overlook the typical, even universal, structures of personhood and society. The social sciences lean on both because they study human behavior writ large in populous modern societies.

We need the depth of humanistic learning to understand the human beings who act and the breadth of scientific investigation to understand the shifting trends among many actors in today’s large, interconnected populations. The social sciences are a complicated affair, so it helps to recall the holistic vision initiated by the ancients. When we do so, the social sciences stand out as branches of philosophy fostered by the liberal arts tradition, whose seeds lie in both the conceptualization, logic and language skills of the ancient trivium and the mathematical skills of the ancient quadrivium, developed by modern mathematicians, and applied via the scientific method.

The Character That Stays Out Of Poverty

In “The Global Recession of Classical Liberalism” at Law & Liberty, John O. McGinnes recalls that classical liberalism’s successes can erode, and have eroded, the virtues that successfully powered classical liberalism’s best ideas.

Third, and relatedly, at least in the West, there may be diminishing returns on the economic growth that classical liberalism has promoted. It is this relative comfort that allows citizens to focus on prioritizing collective projects or wallowing in their identity even if these tendencies become antithetical to economic growth. That is the reason we now see on the right the claim that liberalism, including classical liberalism, has failed. That contention can become politically resonant in the West only after the memory of the miseries of the pre-liberal world have faded.

McGinnis rightly points out that taking liberalism’s successes for granted makes it easy to cast blame for its failures. The miseries of the pre-liberal world would certainly bring us back to appreciation, but we can still hope that classical liberalism’s best minds will continue to grapple with the vulnerabilities of its best ideas.

A wealthy society such as that of the United States enables us to see a perennial human dynamic in a distinctly modern way. The character that gets out of poverty is not the same character that stays out of poverty.

The character that gets out of poverty accepts limited opportunity, chooses the best (often the least worst) opportunity, works hard often compromising other fundamental goods of health and of marital and family relationships, lives on the minimum, saves the maximum, and spends time and money almost exclusively on activities that generate wealth.

The character that stays out of poverty possesses wealth, enjoys greater opportunity, and must learn to choose wisely under less pressure from want. This character continues to invest time and money in what generates wealth, but the investments have changed. Work for wages becomes work for higher wages, volunteer work, and expanded opportunities for leisure. This character must learn to choose only the best among a surplus of good opportunities.

At bottom, spiritual growth cultivates the character that stays out of poverty. It is difficult work, just as difficult as, but different than the work of the character that gets out of poverty. This character works hard not only at their chosen work but also at identifying and championing the greatest goods of their society. Wealth is a reward but even more is a gift that requires more of the receiver than before the gift was received.

Discerning and cultivating the character that stays out of poverty is, to borrow McGinnis’s language, a proper collective project and question of identity that reaches back to the biblical experience of the Hebrews. Classical liberalism showed a modern way out of the miseries of the pre-liberal world and needs a way of preserving the virtues of its successes that does not rely exclusively on the ever-present threat of poverty.

Profits for All: Flexible Wages in a Free Economy

It makes little sense to complain about capitalism without proposing something better, either a better capitalism or a better system. Socialism isn’t one, and better capitalism might lead us to a better system.

Here is a modest proposal I offer with my former Belmont Abbey colleague, Michael Watson.

Profits for All: Flexible Wages in a Free Economy

by Michael Szpindor Watson & Grattan Brown

Christian Social Thought Series, The Acton Institute, 2020

Creative destruction is a long-recognized and accepted feature of a dynamic market economy. But can this destruction go too far? Should there be no limit to the number of jobs, families, and even entire communities that are sacrificed for the sake of greater economic production and efficiency? Could it be, as some critics claim, that a drastic fettering of markets is the only solution?

Michael Watson and Grattan Brown acknowledge the collateral damage of markets and seek a solution that will temper negative effects without constricting the economic vitality needed for the continued amelioration of material deprivation in our world. Placing remunerative work at the center of their analysis, they identify a promising reform: flexible wage rates. They make the case that permitting compensation to mirror the market more closely will preserve employment, empower workers, and minimize the impact of economic volatility. Understanding that the common good is served by both economic dynamism and family and community stability founded on stable employment, Watson and Brown recommend flexible-wage policies as the best way forward.

Buy the book here.

Why Non-Believers Should Study the Bible and Believers Study It With Them

Some people might say “the Bible is religion, is neither philosophy nor great literature, and therefore should not be considered a Great Book.” Others might say “the Bible is God’s revealed word, rises above what people call Great Books, and therefore should not be considered a Great Book.” Yet there are a variety of reasons why the Bible, especially books like Job, should be studied by all as a Great Book. 

The Bible--both the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, which Christians call the Old Testament--is one of the most influential books in history, certainly in the history of Europe, of societies around the Mediterranean, and generally of Western societies. Other great works reflect biblical ideas and refer to biblical stories. You cannot read great literature like John Milton’s Paradise Lost without knowing who Adam and Eve are, or understand the founding of the United States without knowing certain biblical stories such as the Exodus. In the American colonies and the early United States, the complete works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible were two of the most widely read literary works. You cannot understand the culture of those societies in different eras without recognizing that the Bible was an important source of their thinking and their aspirations. 

In addition, believers and non-believers alike should study the Bible because it implicitly raises the same fundamental human questions raised by the great philosophers and literary figures throughout human history, and it explicitly places humanity in a particular relation to God in order to respond to those questions. The Bible implicitly raises the question of God’s existence but does not give any argument for God’s existence. It presumes God’s existence and tells you about God. The Bible begins by raising, implicitly, the question of the origin and purpose of all things and ends with the question of their destiny. In between, it explores not only God’s relation to humanity, but also humanity’s struggle with all forms of evil, our occasional triumph through the ways of love and courage and all the other virtues, our ongoing search to understand the truth about the many realities we encounter, especially our wondering about the existence and character of God. 

Thirdly, the Bible contains some of the highest quality ancient literature and the best evidence of ancient thought about God and human life. The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrated that ancient Hebrew scribes composed and revised their scriptures with depth and sophistication and produced copies with surprising accuracy. The Hebrews held a consistent set of convictions about the loving yet demanding character of God and the dignified but subordinate place of humanity in creation. The Hebrew Scriptures express these convictions in a wide variety of ancient texts composed in different historical eras and places and brought together over several centuries. In addition, the Christian New Testament represents a paradigm shift in how people understand God: willing to become human in Jesus Christ and to suffer for human benefit while still remaining the transcendent, all-powerful God. Regardless of your personal thinking about God and the biblical view of God and human life, the Bible illustrates ancient views about the most fundamental of human questions. 

Not only does the Bible illustrate ancient thought, it provides a baseline for recognizing some developments of later human thinking. The Bible preserves ancient beliefs in gods as many, domineering, and capricious, even as it advances the Hebrew belief in Yahweh as the only God, fundamentally concerned for the well-being of humanity and solicitous of his people. Today, more philosophically and experientially rich monotheistic or atheistic views have replaced the ancient views of the gods. The Bible also provides a baseline for observing the development of scientific thought. For example, physics has provided scientific explanations of physical forces shaping the universe and has enabled us to understand a timeline of development that is much longer than ancient peoples could imagine. 

For all these reasons, non-believers and believers alike should study the Bible, together.