Conservatives Republicans have decided that the world must be remade to match their ideology. First they proposed a “purity test” — a ten-point checklist of conservative positions. In order for a candidate to receive funding from the national Republican Party, they must be able to prove that they support at least eight items on the checklist. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear whether Reagan would have passed this test.
But if that isn’t bad enough, the Conservative Bible Project is attempting to rewrite the Bible to put it more in line with conservative principles. Led by Andy Schlafly, the son of Phyllis Schlafly and founder of Conservapedia.com (the conservative answer to wikipedia.org), they eschew current translations of the Bible because they were all translated by professors, and as we all know “Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world.”
Some of the changes they are making are relatively minor, such as removing gender neutral language. So instead of Jesus calling his disciples “fishers of people”, they want to change it to “fishers of men”. They also don’t like words like “comrade” so it is being replaced by “volunteer”.
But some of the changes are bigger. For example, virtually every translation of the Bible in existence has Jesus on the cross praying for his killers, saying “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” But apparently forgiveness must not be a conservative trait, because the project’s authors claim that liberals put that in — and are removing it.
I’m curious what other changes will be necessary in order to be in line with modern conservative positions (you know, like supporting torture, permanent war, homophobia, racism, etc.).
UPDATE: Stephen Colbert will be interviewing Andrew Schlafly next Tuesday. Also, he did a hilarious report on the conservative rewrite of the bible back in October:
9 Comments
The Old Testament, at least, definitely supports torture, war, homophobia, and racism. A lot of people tend to forget that the Bible says some really barbaric things. Might be why conservatives love it so much.
Schalfy et al are rewriting the history about the translation of the bible as well. The Old Testament has been translated hundreds of times from and to (Ancient) Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The various translations of the New Testament into and from Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek,and Latin was done by primarily by Christian and Catholic monks during the Middle Ages.
I wonder if they also realize that they can thank Arab Muslims (aka the Moors) for the very existence of the Bible. After the fall of Rome it was the Muslims who saved many of the books, scripts, etc from destruction.
Conservatives can primarily follow the old testament if they want to, but then they would have to stop calling themselves Christians.
I wonder if the people who are re-writing the Bible are going to take their version literally.
Starluna’s right, of course. Another interesting story is the “translation” that became the King James Version–which was rewritten, in part, to support James’s politics and his personal biases (he was autocratic and misogynistic).
Some “mainstream” Protestants trust the King James’ Version of the Bible too much, mainly for not knowing the history of its creation.
I read about this a few weeks back but didn’t catch the reference to removing the crucifixion forgiveness line. That’s shocking. The whole basis of the Christian faith, regardless of denomination, is that of forgiveness and grace. They are basically removing a core tenet of the faith. I wonder if the trinity will become a monopoly.
Sammy, your last line made me LOL. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were some kind of profit. 🙂
*nice* 🙂
I just went to Conservapedia.com and they have a listing for Stephen Colbert and 2 examples of “vandalism” of the website by Colbert fans. It’s worth checking out for a quick chuckle.
http://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Genesis_1-8_(Translated)&diff=prev&oldid=709520
http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Stephen_Colbert&diff=709438&oldid=709432