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Why a conservative Mammon-friendly Bible is a bad idea.
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Liberals have often pondered the question: given the choice between giving up limitless acquisition of material goods in accordance with the Bible or changing the Bible to say greed is good, which would conservatives do? Would they repent or dare commit apostasy and blasphemy?
Now, Andy Schlafly, the owner of conservapedia.com answers the question by re-translating the Bible in order to reveal its thorough, conservatism. He is the son of Phyllis Schlafly, who founded the Eagle Forum (among with other disgraces), and like his mother he does not think small, that is merely on the state, federal, or even the international level. How about on the eternal level? This project is a way for conservatives to get rid of those truly pesky, God-given regulations on capitalism. The de-regulation euphoria for these conservatives must be the most intense since 1981.
Schlafly is taking the battle against liberalism eternal, informed as he is by his maternally-inherited, lifetime hunch that liberalism is the most insidious weapon developed by the Soviet Armies of Hell. His stated goal is to do away with liberal bias that purportedly, ". . . is the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations." Yes, the only reason the Bible seems somewhat contrary to conservative aims is that liberals have corrupted the translations, making it impossible for conservatives to win using only their obvious moral superiority.
If de-liberalizing the Bible is the goal, it is hard to know, why, then, conservatives on the site are considering dropping whole passages in the Gospels that were also approved in the 4th century at the same time the rest of the Biblical cannon was. Jesus forgiving the adulteress? Gone. (Forgiving feminine lust is just so liberal.) Schlafly himself expresses suspicion about "Father forgive them for they know not what they do..." (He and neo-Nazi's both do not like that one.) Apparently, the unwritten editorial rule here is that if conservatives do not like the passage, and there is something funny about it historically (like most of the biblical canon), then it should go, or at least put be put up to vote by the First Conservapedia Synod.
What justification do they have? They have a half-educated guess, which has become their firm opinion that liberal bias is Satan's project going all the way back to the first century, when, for example, some manuscripts of Luke are found that suspiciously do not contain the adulteress story. The supposed divine guidance that led the Synod of Hippo in 325 AD to approve which books, and which versions of them, were put into the Bible, is doubted by conservative believers now. Those passages in the books have been used by Christians ever since, and to now drop them is not conservative-- it is new-fangled radical. They think the same forces of evil who made the Pharisees in the first century made liberals today. (It is no coincidence then that a proposal on conservapedia, is to translate "Pharisee" into "intellectual.") Here are Schlafly's guidelines:
Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount:
- *lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
- *lack of precision in modern language
- *translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also decreases due to an increasing vocabulary. But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate.
As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:
1) Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2) Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3) Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4) Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5) Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots"; using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6) Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7) Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8) Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9) Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10) Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."
[Links and footnotes removed, underlined emphasis mine.]
It is hard to know how liberals got the rap for much of this. Not consistently using the word "Lord?" In the scriptures, God calls himself by some three dozen different names. Does this CBP seek to bury this crucial fact just for "conciseness" and consistency? Do you give a true meaning by not referring to God in the way he refers to Himself? Isn't that dumbing down the scriptures as Schlafly said of liberals only a few hundred keystrokes before? How is "casting lots" some kind of liberal term?
"But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate." So conservative principles can dictate corrections to the scriptures? The CBP relys on some questionable assumptions: 1) The Bible translation is presumed to have correctable errors, correctable as in not totally lost in history, or not deliberately obscure from the source manuscripts, or not being meaningful beyond the culture within which it was written; and 2) these errors have been made because of a wicked ideology (liberalism) contaminated them; 3) these errors can be corrected only if one has the correct ideology (conservatism). That would imply that conservatism, does not need the Bible, it already has an inside track to the truth. These guidelines are an Orwellian horror, they too closely dictate the translation results according to political, economic and social ideologies, making religious honesty questionable. Schlafly has already decided how the Revised Mammon-Friendly Bible will be rendered, and all that remain now are word games. A better, more accurate, translation of the Bible is to be encouraged from open-source methods, but Conservapedia's Bible translation project will never be it.
It is only a coincidence that "Capitalism: A Love Story," which was released only a weekend ago, has Michael Moore asking the question: is capitalism compatible with Christianity? The answer he found? A resounding no. (Moore only asked Catholic clerics, however.) This project, though, has inevitably been seen as conservatives' attempt answer the question with: "No. . . but you just wait!" It will be amusing to see how conservatives can torture out quotes from Mammon-Christ that make him sound any different from Moore's satirical "Capitalist Jesus" and Franken's "Supply-Side Jesus," or who in his right mind would follow a savior whose personality is like an unemployed Donald Trump.
Seriously, though, this is the worst religious project in Christianity since Jonestown. It might even have its own body-count eventually, but its immediate negative impact will be on conservatism itself. It immediately threatens to split Catholics off, abortion or no. Catholic bishops (whose teachings are made explicit in Moore's movie) might have a serious problem with a Bible paraphrased specifically to promote conservatism, even if it is a protestant one, the very fact that people feel the need to reconsider the word of God to make conservatism moral will give Catholics pause. What is particularly bad about this for conservatives is that all five conservative Justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic, and causing a conflict between their religion and their politics is the last thing conservatives could want. If they pull one or two votes off of that bloc, the political right is set back thirty years.
That is only for starters. Even to conservative fundamentalists, changing a Bible passage is rewriting God's words. The conflicts arising from this could shatter conservatism itself. Schlafy does not sound particularly cautious. Since it is being done from the Internet, there will be suspicions over how many liberal, radical hackers, Norwegians, Obama-istas and pornographers actually infiltrated this project. (More than likely, close to zero, but there will still be suspicions), or for some, whether Jews did, or whether Catholics did, inflaming conservative factions who are suspicious about both those groups. Lastly, the groups that will be most inspired by the assumptions behind this approach (a supremely truthful ideology needed to save Christianity) are likely to be the most radical, such as the neo-Nazis, who are likely to give their own try at creating their own scripture leaving out the "pro-Jew" bias they somehow know has plagued the translations all along.
The danger may spread from conservatism. Can Schlafly not see it? The publication of the KJV in was followed by 50 years of sectarian civil war in the British Isles. If a re-translation of the Bible does not do that, Schlafly should thank the unbelievers who were not present in the 17th century to dilute the tensions. It is already fairly clear that the Catholic Church will be pro-union in this economic crisis. That certainly does raise the possibility that political and class interests could be made sectarian through this recession.
Additionally, how concerned is Schlafly that his guidelines and bias might actually falsify the scriptures? Does he not see this? On the website discussions, AddisonDM asks him whether the goal creating a work that is specifically conservative could possibly bias them too much to make an accurate translation? Schlafly answers: "I don't think that taking a conservative approach to translation assumes a perfectly conservative result. The conservative approach is simply a substantive alternative to other approaches, such as "word-for-word"or "thought-for-thought" How successful the conservative approach is, or how close a fit the text is to conservative substance, is a good topic for discussion after the approach is taken."
Of course, he is already assured of an overall "conservative result," just not "perfectly conservative" one. The difference between a politically conservative approach and the "word-for-word" or "thought-for-thought" used in other translations is this: those were translation approaches only, whereas conservatism isn't. It is purely an ideology, not at all a system of translation.
Worse, he is presenting a conservative conflict of interest as though it is somehow a different approach. The Bible is all about avoiding eternal damnation and reaching heaven, while conservatism's economic purpose is capitalism, which is to provide people material goods, comforts, and luxuries in this life. His guidelines subordinate the purpose of the Bible to the latter, and use word games to show that the latter can follow from the former. A Pharisees could have done no better.
What is forgotten is that a capitalist can be any religion and any sect and with worldwide capitalism, isn't that self-apparent? There is nothing uniquely capitalist about Christianity, it was just explained in our culture, not in our religious tradition. Adam Smith, the "father" of capitalism was as irreligious as Karl Marx. Strictly speaking, they were both part of "liberalism" before it broke into its conservative and liberal factions.
If Schlafly actually believes his rendering of the Bible is going to be doing the crucial work of guiding souls to heaven, he is showing too little caution. Even atheists would take far more caution on something they believed less crucial, say merely a matter of (non-eternal) life and death. Schlafly, purportedly, does believe, but does he understand? That is a lot of responsibility. Before he re-translates the Bible, he should first read the passages that describe how God punishes those who mislead people about His Word. That is, if his project has not re-written those, yet.
A truly Christian approach here would be to pray before touching a single letter of scripture, and every single time you touch a letter, and finding the voice of God in the early manuscripts first without imposing your editorial rules on on what they say. If he truly has a faith in something greater than earthly materialism, if he truly puts Christianity above capitalism and greed, that is the only good approach. That is the only approach any Christian should trust in a work as crucial as the one that helps them to avoid damnation. Is Schafly actually acting like he believes the "logic of Hell?"
A possibility the Conservapedia Synod will not consider: maybe it is the Bible that influences the language liberals use rather than the liberals who influenced the language that the Bible uses? Would that even be detected with Schlafly's guidelines? The implications there would be that when conservatives actually hear the words of God, they hate them, and they would rather hear the scriptures say something else, pretend someone else is talking, or pretend they are not hearing it right.
Lastly, you know change is in the air when Michael Moore is publicly asking spiritual questions and conservatives are rewriting the scriptures. Suddenly, liberals are discussing religion again while conservatives are committing apostasy in an effort to save their order. It indicates a widespread change in people's thinking. It is an omen of social turbulence. Schlafly may do his part and throw Conservatism into complete disorder, which would be funny, if it were not so much more dangerous.
Sources:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
http://www.abecedarian.org/Pages/namesofGod.htm
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