Have you seen the Poverty and Justice Bible, published recently the Bible Society? Now check out the Conservative Bible, a project designed by Andy Schlafly as an extension of his right wing Conservapedia project. Schlafly’s a conservative Christian home school teacher in the United States, concerned about the way modern translations of the Bible are buying into socialist, liberal and feminist agendas. He hopes that he can provide a version that protects young American Christians from the pervasive liberal framework that has crept into the Bible.

Schafly explains the reasons he started the project. He states that 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 to capture better the original intent; Defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words that 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 Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, 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.”

Schlafly says that socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the “social justice” movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV (English Standard Version), yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times (Story of Gideon in Judges), “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.

As Tapu Misa points out in her New Zealand article, Casting Out the Socialists Out of the Temple, Conservapedia’s creators appear to have homed in on a truth (though they of course call it “liberal distortion”) that the Marxists never got: the Bible is on the side of the poor and oppressed. It’s never been approving of the excesses of the rich and powerful.

From Wikipedia: “Conservapedia is an English-language wiki-based Web encyclopedia project written from an Americentric, conservative Christian and predominantly young earth creationist point of view. It was started in 2006 by lawyer and social studies teacher Andy Schlafly, son of conservative activist and Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly. He stated that he founded the project because he felt that Wikipedia had a liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American bias.”