The American Scholar

ZEAL OF THE CONVERT

Most people think that scripture is a noun, but it’s actually a verb. That is, scripture is an event, a relational activity. It’s what happens when people read or hear a text and they transcend themselves. Like mercury releasing gold from ore, scripture releases something pure from people, compelling them to change how they live. Nothing illustrates what I mean better than the story of Segundo Villanueva, a poor Peruvian who in 1948, when he was 21, found a copy of the Bible in a trunk he had inherited from his father.

Bibles were rare in Catholic Peruvian households. You attended Mass to hear

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