January 3, 2001

Forty years after Harvest of Shame, Edward R. Murrrow’s great documentary on the exploitation of migrant workers, the shame endures. Now overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking, the nation’s estimated 1.5 million farmworkers, are the most vulnerable laborers in the U.S. federal legislation excludes them from many rights most other workers have, such as a minimum wage, overtime pay and the ability to engage in collective bargaining.

The authority of the Bible is a perennial and urgent issue for those of us who stake our lives on its testimony. This issue, however, is bound to remain unsettled and therefore perpetually disputatious. It cannot be otherwise, since the biblical text is endlessly “strange and new.” It always and inescapably outdistances our categories of understanding and explanation, of interpretation and control. Because the Bible is “the live word of the living God,” it will not compliantly submit to the accounts we prefer to give of it.