The Bible: Conservative Edition

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The Conservative Bible Project, a creation of the same group that developed Conservapedia (a counterweight to putatively liberal Wikipedia), is aiming to clean-up the entire King James Bible, cutting out "liberal passages" and beefing up "free market parables." As Newsbusters' Ken Shepherd reminds readers, this is far from the first time the Bible has been re-translated to fit a certain sociopolitical worldview, but that didn't stop the deluge of criticism from across the spectrum. Here are the basic patterns of attack:

Insults

Ed Brayton, Scienceblogs: "Okay, this is so stupid that it seems like it must be a joke. Then again, this is Conservapedia we're talking about here. Stupid seems to be their strong suit."

Rod Dreher, BeliefNet's CrunchyCon: "These right-wing ideologues know better than the early church councils that canonized Scripture?...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'."

Mark P. Shea, Catholic and Enjoying It!: "Right wing dementia marches on apace."

Sarcasm

Amy Sullivan, Time's Swampland: "I look forward to learning the free-market meaning of 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.'"

Dan Gilgoff, God & Country: "A new--and still evolving--conservative translation of the Bible prefers a more populist, Glenn Beckish take: 'The intellectuals watched Jesus to see if he might catch and accuse him of healing on the Sabbath.'"

Salon Staff, Salon: "A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, 'Reagan. Definitely Reagan.'"

Hunger Tallest Palin, Rumproast: "Because Jesus was a big old capitalist. And blond haired, blue eyed and white as a bucket of fresh milk."

Shortsshortsshorts, ShortsandPants: "That scene in Mark or Luke or whatever when he feeds thousands of people in what seems to be an act of Socialism was actually trickle-down economics. Just as GOD INTENDED."

Genuine Concern

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: "The challenge of Christian believers is to adhere to the Word of God, not to bend the Word of God to our preferred ideology. Doing the former requires discipline and a clear understanding of the the Bible. Doing the latter makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around."

Stephen Suh, Cogitamus: "While my atheist friends and colleagues may not understand this [the Conservative Bible Project's] willingness to attack the Bible, to desecrate and blaspheme against it and the God they claim to follow, is the most chilling thing I've seen in a while."

Eduardo Peñalver, Dot Commonweal: "The project as a whole and the specific instances of bias identified are so inane that it's hard to believe someone would actually take the positions asserted. I wish it were a hoax."

Kevin Nelstead, The GeoChristian: "Let the Bible say what it says. It is just as wrong to translate the Bible with a politically conservative agenda as it is to do so with a politically liberal agenda."

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

If Trump were right to blame all of his problems on messaging, perhaps the smooth-talking businessman could solve them. But he’s not.

Watching Anthony Scaramucci’s formal introduction as White House communications director on Friday, it was clear why President Trump wanted him for the gig.

Even though he’s never worked as a spokesman for anyone other than himself (and a great spokesman he was, bringing wide renown to an underachieving hedge fund), Scaramucci looked at home behind the lectern in the White House Briefing Room. Moreover, he was everything that Sean Spicer—the long-suffering press secretary who announced his resignation today—was not.

Where Spicer was nervous, tentative, and likely to stumble over his words, Scaramucci was smooth, relaxed, and confident. Where Spicer’s suits were often ill-fitting, Scaramucci was sharply tailored. Where Spicer was a career cog in the Republican machine, Scaramucci is a swaggering New Yorker who speaks in the same clunky business pidgin as the president and can drop names nearly as prodigiously too. (Goldman Sachs, Yankees president Randy Levine, and Harvard Law School were a few of Scaramucci’s mentions during his brief spell at the mic.) Where Spicer’s professions of praise for the president always seemed mousy, pleading, perhaps a little browbeaten, Scaramucci brought the sincere sycophancy that comes from truly adoring Donald Trump. When did Spicer ever say he “loves” the president?