Evangelical Devotionals and Bible Studies of The Pilgrim’s Progress: Fidelity or Bibliolatry?

Abstract

I examine contemporary evangelical Bible studies and devotionals devoted to John Bunyan’s 1678 spiritual classic The Pilgrim’s Progress. Focusing on treatments of Bunyan’s Vanity Fair sequence, I ask whether these resources demonstrate fidelity to the text and to Scripture or whether they are instead examples of bibliolatry. Implications for the design of Bible studies in the ministry of Christian education are offered following theological analysis of the biblical imagination required for such tasks.