“Pictures of the father reading the Bible daily with the family, Bible reading and study as a regular exercise of the Christian life, ‘learning the Bible at Mother’s knee’–all sound quaint to the modern ear. What do we have instead? … [T]he transformation of the piety of the Book into Bible study in the Church. We study in groups the history of Hebrew religion, the missionary journeys of Paul, and Johanine theology. This means that our basic relation to the Bible is an intellectual one.”
Edward Farley, Requiem for a Lost Piety, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 32-33.