Fox News’ Shannon Bream on love and friendship in the Bible

CNA Newsroom, May 13, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).

While it’s often said that the Bible is a love story, Fox News Sunday anchor and chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream believes there’s a lot more to it.

In her latest book, “The Love Stories of the Bible Speak: Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship, and Faith” (Fox News Books), Bream digs deeper into several love stories found in the Bible and what they can teach us not only about romantic relationships but also about friendship.

Noting that we are called to love everyone, the introduction to the book mentions St. Paul’s exhortation to “love your neighbor as yourself.” 

“I checked — there are not any exceptions,” said Bream, who speaks often and openly about her Christian faith, in a recent interview on The World Over with Raymond Arroyo. “Sometimes we’re the difficult person to love, but often we have to deal with people like that in our lives. It could be a co-worker; it could be a family member; it could be a neighbor. Whatever it is, God didn’t say, ‘Oh you get a pass for them.’ He says you have to love them the way you love yourself.”

When asked why she chose love stories of the Bible to focus on in this, her third book about the Bible (her previous two books focused on women of the Bible), Bream responded: “Some of [the Bible love stories] are really beautiful, whether you look at the original design for Adam and Eve, and man and woman, and what God had said about them.”

“Sometimes I think he [God] gets lost in the shuffle,” she continued. “People think, oh the Bible’s an old oppressive book and it has outdated notions about marriage. But man, it’s full of really good advice.”

From the Song of Solomon to Samson and Delilah, Arroyo asked what these stories say about the nature of married love.

“God is not surprised about our passion for each other or that we would have desire for each other,” Bream responded. “That’s how he created us, and I feel like he’s endorsing it all throughout the Bible but really … it’s clear that he wants us to nurture the romance in our lives.”

Regarding friendship, Arroyo pointed out that in the book Bream mentions how recent studies show that men are suffering from a “friendship recession” — that a greater percentage of men have few if any close friendships anymore.

“I think we’re created to be in community, and those numbers are so sad to me and really kind of shocking,” she said. “I talked to a number of pastors and priests about that number, and about friendships and why we aren’t better about those in modern society. They said we have not placed a value on them like we used to.”

Bream noted that the places where people (especially men) used to gather, such as the Elks Lodge or at Boy Scout meetings — even at churches — are not necessarily places where they gather anymore.

“We’ve let some of our houses of worship go; people aren’t gathering there in the same ways,” she observed. “So I thought listen, Jonathan and David; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego [were] people who stood together through very difficult circumstances. We all want those kinds of friends but it means we have to be those kinds of friends.”

Watch Arroyo’s full interview with Bream below.