At 200 years, Bible Society reenacts start

The Massachusetts Bible Society, marking 200 years of handing out millions of Bibles to the poor and the imprisoned, this afternoon staged a small-scale re-enactment of its founding in the warm embrace of the round blue state Senate chamber.

A few dozen supporters of the organization, some dressed in knickers, top hats, bowties or bonnets, read from the founding documents, now tinged with irony, about the aspirations and arguments of Protestant denominations that then wielded considerable power and influence in the Bay State.

The event featured readings from early writings of the Bible Society’s while male Protestant founders, most of them Harvard-educated, who could hardly have imagined the organization's leadership of today: the Bible society’s current president is a Catholic priest, the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, and its executive director is a woman, the Rev. Anne Robertson (above), who is a Methodist minister. But two centuries of modernization has not changed all atop Beacon Hill: as the clergy and lay people of today held their re-enactment, a small gray mouse darted out from beneath the golden drapes behind the podium and scurried unimpeded across the Senate carpet.

The Bible Society, which was the third such organization in the early United States, is one of the lesser-known relics of Massachusetts’ rich religious past, and has undergone considerable downsizing in recent years, selling its longtime headquarters on Bromfield Street, closing its bookstores, and moving its small staff first to the Congregational House on Beacon Street and then, in December, to the campus of Andover Newton Theological School in Newton. The organization’s rare Bibles collection now resides at Boston University, and its printed newsletter is now on-line only. Its endowment, which was $6.4 million a year ago, is now about $3.3 million.

The organization, which once employed 18 colporteurs who traveled around distributing Bibles door-to-door and had a special ministry to the state’s many newly arriving immigrants, still distributes Bibles in prisons, hospitals, on campuses, and through programs for the homeless and the poor. The organization also hosts lectures and publishes articles. But the organization is also trying to reinvent itself for the Internet Age, increasingly emphasizing its web site, and now with a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, and a Twitter feed, and it recently spent $500,000 to construct a media center at Andover Newton that is intended for use training clergy and congregations on use of technology.

“At one time, everybody who was anybody had not only heard of the Mass. Bible Society but was part of it,’’ Robertson said in an interview. “We still have a message, but today we are focusing more on Biblical literacy, understanding and dialogue.’’

In an address to the society members before a ceremonial re-signing of the founding charter (below), Robertson outlined the argument for the future of the organization, which in recent years has emphasized its place as home for a liberal alternative to more evangelical readings of the Bible. The organization has encouraged an interpretive, rather than literal, reading of the Bible.

“Is it a tough road to convince people that the Bible is relevant to our age? Yes, it is,’’ Robertson said. “Is it tougher still to reach out and take the Bible back from those who have ground its contents to such a sharp point that more people seem to feel wounded by it than helped? Yes, it is.’’

After the ceremony, the Bible Society members strolled over to the Omni Parker House for a period dinner featuring turnip soup and pink pancakes (crepes).

Cuenin, the Catholic chaplain at Brandeis and the first Catholic priest to serve as president, said he wanted to be involved with the organization in part because of its history and in part to make sure Catholics were visible in an organization that was long Protestant-only.

“What we’ve been trying to do is figure out where we go for the future, and figure out the electronic means of spreading the Bible,’’ he said. “Two hundred years ago, the purpose was to give out Bibles, but today people have Bibles, so that’s not a big deal. The question is, how do we make it usable?”

Cuenin and Robertson both emphasized the Society’s role in encouraging a debate about the meanings of the Bible in today’s society.

“I’m someone who believes in interpreting the Bible, and not following it literally, and that’s what my church teaches,’’ Cuenin said. “This society would promote an understanding of the Scripture that is more contemporary and open to historical criticism.’’

(Photos, by Yoon S. Byun/Globe staff, show the Massachusetts Bible Society celebrating its bicentennial by reenacting its founding in the Senate chamber of the Massachusetts State House on July 6, 2009.)