Sunday 20 February 2011

Conservative Bible Project

Conservapedia hosts the "Conservative Bible Project", a project aiming to rewrite the English translation of the Bible in order to remove terms described as "liberal bias".[81] The project intends to remove sections of the Bible which are judged by Conservapedia's founder to be later liberal additions.[8] These include the story of the adulteress in the Gospel of John in which Jesus declares "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone".[81] The project also intends to remove Jesus's prayer on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing", since it appears only in the Gospel of Luke and since, according to Schlafly, "the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible".[81] The adulteress story and the "forgive them" line are missing from many early manuscripts, and many modern textual scholars consider that they are not authentic parts of the gospels, though possibly historically valid.[82][83]

The Bible project has met with extensive criticism.[84][85] Rod Dreher, a conservative editor and columnist, described the project as "insane hubris" and "crazy"; he further described the project as "It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'".[13][86] Ed Morrissey, another conservative Christian writer, wrote that bending the word of God to one's own ideology makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around.[87] Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily, stated: "I've seen some incredibly stupid and misguided initiatives by 'conservatives' in my day, but this one takes the cake" and "There's certainly nothing 'conservative' about rewriting the Bible".[88]

On October 7, 2009, Stephen Colbert called for his viewers to incorporate him into the Conservapedia Bible as a Biblical figure and viewers responded by editing the Conservapedia Bible to include his name.[89][90] This was followed by an interview between Colbert and Schlafly on December 8, 2009.[91]

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