Big dreams, big stakes ahead of Bible Quiz championship

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The students from Cedar View Christian Academy in eastern Tennessee had barely a moment to savor their state championship win over a tough Memphis-area competitor when their coach gave them a stern directive. “Nationals are not like anything you’ve experienced,” Helen Strickland said, making eye contact with each of her seven exhausted […]

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.


(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

(RNS5-APR09) Elizabeth Vannoy, a member of the Bible Quiz team at Cedar View Christian Academy in Kingsport, Tenn., ponders her answer during a practice session ahead of the national championship. For use with RNS-BIBLE-QUIZ, transmitted April 9, 2009. Religion News Service photo by David Grace.

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The students from Cedar View Christian Academy in eastern Tennessee had barely a moment to savor their state championship win over a tough Memphis-area competitor when their coach gave them a stern directive.

“Nationals are not like anything you’ve experienced,” Helen Strickland said, making eye contact with each of her seven exhausted but elated players. “It’s a whole different ballgame. You need to work harder than ever before.”

And with that, the newly crowned state Bible Quiz champs were sent home to drill for next week’s (April 14-16) National Bible Quizzing Championship at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. — where hundreds of Christian students will vie for the top trophy in the American Association of Christian Schools annual contest.

Bible quizzing is a fiercely competitive team sport combining two separate and distinct skills: an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and lightning-fast reflexes.


The competitions originated in the 1950’s, modeled after then-popular TV game shows like Jeopardy and College Bowl, as evangelical youth programs experimented with ways to engage a new generation in the Word of God.

While the contests’ popularity fizzled among many Christian churches by the 1970’s, the quizzing competitions have been embraced in recent years by conservative Christian schools and academies.

For many independent schools that are too small to support a sports team, the high school Bible Quiz contest is the only game in town.

Each team has five players and two alternates. Three teams compete head to head in each round to be the first to answer questions read by the Bible Quizmaster.

Chairs are lined with seat pad containing an electronic sensor that alerts the Quizmaster which contestant leaps up first to take the question.

Students say they practice their stance to have just a portion of their bottoms depressing the sensor, allowing them to “get off their lights” quickly by a shift of position before they fully stand.


Seconds count. Nothing can be left to chance.

Students have 10 seconds to begin an answer and 30 seconds to finish. Wrong answers can erase accumulated points and tosses the question back to the other team. During tournaments, teams play one another in a sudden-death style competition. Once a team has been beaten twice, they are out of the competition.

Like most teams, Cedar View began studying and memorizing passages soon after last year’s national competition. Texts for the 2008-2009 season are the New Testament books of Mark, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John and Jude.

Meeting four days a week at school, Strickland uses a timer to run through mock questions and practice drills. Students are required to memorize whole books of the Bible, with hours spent each day at home studying.

Cedar View found itself at the state finals on March 25, facing off against Heritage Baptist Academy after eight hours of competition and eliminating 53 competitors. To win, one team would have to defeat the other, twice.

In the first round, Cedar View lost, compiling error after error that cost valuable points.

“In John 5, who has the witness…” A Cedar View senior stood to take the question before it has been fully asked, then grew tentative in his response.


“God?,” he said.

That is incorrect, said the Bible Quizmaster.

Next question: “In Mark 12, what did the husband….”

Another Cedar View student stood, but remained silent as she searched for an answer while Strickland, seated in the audience, looked to the floor and shook her head in aggravation.

“We were making lots of mistakes, and it was ridiculous for them to be beating us; we were just giving the game away,” she said.

Cedar View came back to defeat the Heritage team 260 to 70, securing their place in the nationals.

“I was, like, yeah! — just so excited because we knew we were going to nationals and that all our hard work paid off,” said Rebekah Quillen, a Cedar View senior who’s in her fourth year of quizzing.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)

As in all competitions, losing isn’t easy.

“After we lost the second-to-last round, my attitude was `Go at it, just go at it,”‘ said Matthew Clemmons, 16, whose wrong answers to four of the five final questions cost Heritage any chance at competing in the nationals. “Yeah, we were tired, but God’s word makes you confident and we knew we had to focus.”

(END OPTIONAL TRIM)

The team to beat this year is the current national titleholder, Pleasant View Baptist School from McQuady, Ky., an unincorporated town with a population of less than 1,000. The 69-student school has swept the nationals for the past three years, bringing home the only trophies in the school’s 10-year history.


Pleasant View is a sort of Bible Quiz Goliath. Students travel to non-scoring contests to build skills, and practice reading lips in order to anticipate the Quizmaster’s question before he finishes. Team members memorize all of the Bible passages and identify obscure key words that can help them finish the Quizmaster’s question before he does.

While the Pleasant View team loves to win, “we do want to try to control their pride and arrogance,” says coach Debra Massengale.

“Sometimes the competition is rough, but the point of this is that the word of God is written on their hearts,” said Massengale. “When they get older, they might not be able to play ball, but the word of God will be with them their entire lives.”

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!