Achieved similarity: Describing experience in Seventh-Day Adventist Bible study

Abstract

The author analyzes how participants of Seventh-Day Adventist Bible study describe their experience as similar to that of the characters of the Bible stories they are reading. In conversation analytical studies of second stories, it has been shown how the teller of the second story achieves a similarity between her/his experience and that described in the first story. In Bible study, similarity of experiences is also achieved, but the situation is more complex, since similarity must be achieved with a written story. The article shows how the Bible study participants first work with the Bible story so as to find something that can be applied to their own lives. Then the teacher of the Bible study asks a question about the experiences of the participants on the basis of this work. The respondents then describe similar experiences to those in the Bible story. The experiences they describe are categorical, shareable religious experiences. The teachers comment on the answers and display their orientation to and evaluate the shareability of the experiences. The methodology is based on ethnomethodological conversation analysis, and the data consists of audio-taped Bible study interactions in two Seventh-Day Adventist churches in Finland.