Spiritual comfort and challenge, guide and warning

March 24, 2025

What’s the Bible for? We asked dozens of writers to respond to this question in seven words or less, as well as to expand on their response in a few sentences. To see all of the responses together as they are posted, bookmark this page.

Spiritual comfort and challenge, guide and warning

The Bible is a spiritual guide that helps remind me I stand in a long line of folks who are striving to bring in the new heaven and new earth—the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

Emilie M. Townes

Emilie M. Townes is professor of religion and Black studies at Boston University. She is the author of Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health and a Womanist Ethic of Care (Wipf and Stock) and Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (Palgrave).

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