Did you know that this week – November 21-28, 2004 – is National Bible Week? The promotion of National Bible Week is sponsored by The National Bible Association . The National Bible Association (and because of the violent events of this past weekend in Detroit, I will not hang the acronym ‘NBA’ on the National Bible Association) has asked Mayors and City Councils around the country to adopt proclamations acknowledging and proclaiming National Bible Week. Their thought is that a public body’s adoption of the proclamation brings more attention to their event, which is certainly very worthy, and furthers their goal of getting more people to read the Bible
We may have received such a request, but I don’t recall seeing it. We receive lots of these sorts of things. National Tree Week. EMT Week. National Literacy Month. And so on and so forth. The City of Eagan, Minnesota got into a bit of hot water with some of its citizens earlier this year when the City Council adopted a resolution recognizing June as being National Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month. We did receive this request. We did not act on it. Instead, we provided the requesting group a copy of Eden Prairie’s Human Rights Manifesto. It makes an affirmative statement about our city government’s position on a number of human rights issues. Then we were done with that one.
The City of Apple Valley, Minnesota is one city that went forward with the National Bible Week proclamation. The St. Paul Pioneer Press is reporting that there might be some second thoughts about the wisdom of making such a proclamation.
I am a Christian. I read the Bible. But I don’t think I could recommend that my City Council proclaim its recognition of National Bible Week. I hope that National Bible Week is a success. I hope it’s a big success. But I think that getting the government hooked into declaring, supporting, or proclaiming November 21-28, 2004 as National Bible Week is not a good idea for too many reasons than I have room to enumerate here.
It’s a good book, and a great cause, but let’s keep the government out of National Bible Week. We’d probably only end up goofing it up anyway.
