On the Conservative Bible

The Conservative Bible Project.

It’s a project to retranslate the Bible. The King James, the New International, the Revised Standard, a dozen others — these aren’t good enough.

No, the Conservative Bible Project aims to produce a translation free of liberal bias. Among their aims is to promote free-market principles and eliminate the ideals of social justice. Among their benefits: “liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds.”

I’ve seen friends and acquaintances online rant about this. From comments that the religious extreme has jumped the shark to a “How dare they?” commentary that I’ve seen has weighed pretty heavily against the Conservative Bible Project.

I have a completely different view.

It doesn’t fucking matter. Let some right-wing religious whack jobs waste the next ten years of their lives scrubbing the Bible of its “liberal bias.”

Ask yourself. Who is going to use the product the CBP produces?

Churches are conservative. A different kind of conservative. They’re institutional. They are slow to change. A few churches may adopt the Conservative Bible, but most, as in 97%-plus nationwide, won’t.

It’s going to mean that it’s up to the individual parishioner to buy a copy of the Conservative Bible translation. The question at that point is, how much does it actually get used.

Let a bunch of conservative scholars waste their time the next decade, stripping the liberal bias out of Christianity and Judaism’s holy books. It’s not liberal bias that will doom their project, it’s the institutional bias of organized religion. Let them waste their time.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

3 thoughts on “On the Conservative Bible

  1. I liken the project to translating Hamlet in Klingon. That translation really isn’t for Trek fans as a whole, it’s for the segment of Trek fans already familiar with, or who want to learn, the Klingon language. That’s a pretty small piece of fandom.

    Same thing with the so-called Conservative Bible. Hardcore right-wing nutjobs will think it’s the greatest thing ever but, as you said, the rest of the Christians will go on using whatever translation they already use (King James, etc.). The aforementioned nutjobs represent a tiny (yet loud) portion of existing conservative-minded folks. Pretty sure that even most of the town hall asswipes won’t be using it.

  2. Damn those Liberals! How dare they somehow go back in time thousands of years and insert their blatant bias into the Bible!

    Humanity often seems to produce sheer comedy, I must say.

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