My name is Abby Harris and I am a junior from Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. My major is Markets, Innovation, and Design and I am very happy that this major and really any major within a liberal arts education, allows for me to explore classes outside of the constraints of my typical domain.
While my family attended a Presbyterian church in my early childhood years, my most influential and relevant experiences with the Bible and religion in general were in middle school where I was a part of a youth group where we would meet every Sunday night and also travel in the summers to a different location to do service work. These mission trips are where I felt most connected to my faith. In high school while I attended two different religiously affiliated schools in which I was required to attend chapel two to three times a week, this interaction with the Bible felt more like a routine and a requirement rather than a connection. It wasn’t until I got to my junior year in college (now) that I made, for the first time, my own choice to interact with the Bible. After encouragement from a friend of mine who is now the leader of the Intervarsity Greek bible study group on campus, I decided to attend their weekly meetings. These meetings allowed me to discover religion on my own terms and see the Bible in a different way than I had before. Growing up in the south surrounded by deeply religious family and friends whose beliefs greatly intersected with their political beliefs complicated my own relationship with faith. Their relationship between politics and faith made me believe that I could not feel the way that I did about certain things and still have a relationship with God. It is with further investigation into the Bible and myself that I have learned that this is not true.
I think that the stories that the Bible has to offer are so interesting and can be interpreted in so many ways. From this class, I hope to explore these stories and maybe gauge a better understanding of these different perspectives.