Bibliolatry is a term used for the apparent worship of the Bible - the transformation of the Bible into an object of idolatrous worship. Many conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists seem to do it, but why? Generally speaking, they believe that a failure to properly venerate and follow the Bible is the source of all our social ills. They believe this today and they believed it 100 years ago.

In Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism, Betty A. Deberg writes:

In a period of rapid social change, conservative evangelical Protestants used the rhetoric of biblical inerrancy to lend the authority of divine sanction to social convention. They attacked higher criticism of the Bible as “one of the most immoral forces in the world to-day.” Absolute belief in and obedience to biblical codes, as interpreted by the fundamentalists, was the only source of individual morality and virtue. Within this system the authority of the Bible was not given practical value apart from its role in undergirding individual piety and the corresponding obedience to certain social conventions and codes of conduct.

Aside from the comment about “higher criticism,” which you don’t hear much about anymore, this could have been written about conservative evangelicals Christians today.

It gets even better:

The second major theme in the inerrancy rhetoric was that an infallible Bible was the only true source of stability for the larger community — church, nation, and civilization itself. ... An editor of the Bible Champion declared that the “Bible is the bulwark of civilization, and if this bulwark is overthrown our civilization must go with it.” ... Already by 1913, fundamentalists blamed the “disregard, disbelief, and denial of the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God” for changes in gender-related mores — “the gross sins of private life, the appalling corruptions in public life, the indecency and licentiousness of popular amusements, the profanation of the Sabbath, the indifference and contempt for the majority of religion.”

Every ill suffered by the middle-class Victorian family at the turn of the century was attributed to a departure from absolute faith in the truth and accuracy of the Bible. ... The rapid increase in the divorce rate was explained as a logical result of the “revolt” against Paul’s teachings in the Bible. The cure for divorce, said an article in the Western Recorder, “is the restoration of the Bible to its proper place. ... Let the husband and wife realize their God-appointed sphere and duties.” [emphasis added]

If we replace “changes in gender-related mores” with things like abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and so forth, there’s really no difference between what DeBerg is describing of fundamentalists at the beginning of the 20th century and what we find among fundamentalists today. Of course, most of what they complain even today about can be traced to changes in gender-related mores, so even that isn’t nearly as different as it might appear.

In effect, then, nothing has really changed. The complaints are basically the same. The rhetoric is basically the same. The proposed solution is basically the same: the Bible, the Bible, and more of the Bible. Little has changed in all of this because the fundamentalists have changed so little themselves.

Their fight isn’t against any passing cultural fads, but against the entire project of modernity itself. They oppose the loss of male privileges, Christian privileges, and the loss of traditional Christian domination of culture, politics, and society. They no longer get to set the parameters of discussion on every issue — people are free to be indifferent to religion, especially their religion. This infuriates them and is a driving force in their efforts.

 

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