JANUARY 21, 2020 BY JAMES F. MCGRATH
I don’t know how I missed coming across this term until now, but I’m so incredibly happy to have added it to my vocabulary. Sarahbeth Caplin referred to “narcegesis” in the context of her comments on Anne Graham Lotz’s remarks about Donald Trump’s removal of troops from Syria perhaps being connected to the “End Times.” She wrote:
Nothing in the Bible was written with 21st century America in mind. It was written for a specific set of people in very specific circumstances. (This is a form of interpretation often referred to as “narc-egesis”: putting oneself in the center of the text.)
I love that there is a phrase for this pervasive way that Americans in particular distort the Bible.