How the American Bible Society Became Evangelical

Thanks Bob, since so many of us are cut off or don't hear about such articles. As I read this, I wondered about how UBS or even how BT work in Africa/Asia/South America interacted with this move. I would say the change might have happened in these regions first before moving and moved to the West/North/Stateside???? I remember thinking 30 years ago how UBS would judge Bible Societies in Africa-- whether they were a success or failure-- based uniquely on distribution figures, which was terribly sad. I am not sure when this turned around, but quite a long time ago. Of course it is very difficult indeed to measure "Scripture engagement"...

Lynell, I refer you first to my reply to Fausto. I suspect something similar is true of many countries in Africa and Asia as well. The Protestantism that you find in these "colonized" countries is largely the cultural product of U.S., and before that, British missionary movements. These missionary movements started out from mainline Protestant denominations, but were mostly of a conservative bent, I think. It took longer for this conservative tendency to reach back into the traditional mainline Protestant culture of the ABS. At least that is a possible explanation of what happened. Now the question is of course is this good, bad, or both? I suspect that it may hurt UBS cooperation with other Christian groups world-wide at times. See my other recent post on Hobby Lobby: https://map.bloomfire.com/groups/28732/posts/1167014-can-hobby-lobby-buy-the-bible But it is also the case that the people who currently support the Bible Societies are those who are interested in seeing the Bible translated, published, and distributed. And if these are mostly U.S.-style Evangelicals, there is really not much we can do about that. More disturbing to me is how this has gone hand-in-hand with the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people (mostly U.S. Evangelicals, by the way-see again the Hobby Lobby post). That means that BT world-wide will likely become more and more focused within an given theological tradition. I do not suppose we would like it if the ABS became predominantly Catholic, or Orthodox, or even mainline Protestant. But we should no more like that it become U.S.-Evangelical, even if we are such ourselves, or came out of that tradition. The Bible Society needs to be a place for all who use and love the Bible, no matter their church tradition.

Steve, Within the U.S. context, it is true that the ABS could become at the same time "Evangelical AND interconfessional" (as you put it). But world-wide (and even within U.S Protestantism), the situation is more complicated. Much of Protestantism outside the U.S. is also divided into conservative and liberal camps, and there are many different flavors of Roman Catholicism as well as Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The trick is to still respond to these clients (and sometime donors) while ABS inevitably becomes more associated with the U.S. version of Evangelicalism-mostly by virtue of the change of the donor demographic. A generation ago, ABS donors were small donors from a wide spectrum of denominations and theological persuasions. Now they are very many fewer donors and nearly all are U.S.-style Evangelicals. One should be grateful for one's supporters, and I trust ABS is. But I for one wish ABS could broaden it's donor base again.

I couldn't agree more with your last statement, and I think I have even written about this shift in ideology as it affects Bible Translation. I studied the renderings of ruach in the OT in CEV and fell upon (without purposely looking for it) a very conservative NT HOLY SPIRIT interpretation/reading back into the OT in this version, which I personally don't approve of. I feel Scripture translation should respect the alterity of the text, but it is clear that at least for this issue/key term, CEV was looking to please/appeal to its audience (evangelical Americans). Audience directed translations are normally a great thing to do, except when it crosses some lines and for me here it distorts the early biblical Jewish view of ruach adonai/elohim. The article is in one of the UBS Scripture publications. A person whose name you would know, someone I greatly respect, who was involved in the project told me NO, it was not true, that they were not influenced by present evangelical takes on Scripture, but I beg to differ. Whether the choice was conscious or not. We will be living in English with our hundreds of versions but here in Africa, there are only a few languages spoken by millions rather than thousands (Lingala, Swahili, Moore) who have the luxury of several versions. We are currently revising some Bibles which may have erred on the side of evangelical bias but also on the side of an overly dynamic approach of the 60-80's (some of which I am sorry to report was tainted with 'these people can't understand, so let's help them to understand'). But coming back to my point, if a language group only gets ONE version and that's it (almost forever, for our generation), then it needs to/must be wide enough theologically and academically (? you know what I mean?) solid enough to embrace all who, as it is said somewhere in that article, "claim (in some way) Christ". Otherwise for me we are not doing our job. I find myself that teaching/educating/training African translators is the way to arrive at such versions, letting them understand what alterity and ideology, interconfessionalism, as well as notions of ambiguity of Scripture text are about and letting them decide on their "translation principles". Even where translators lack higher theological education (which is unfortunately sometimes the case, but getting to be, thank GOd, less and less the case), when they understand the issues, I am seeing (in my experience) in Africa translators make GENEROUS and SOPHISTICATED decisions in translation, often rectifying what were missionary--not errors, I guess we wouldn't want to say, because of the good will behind them--but colorings...All this just goes to show how right C Nord is in emphasizing SKOPOS....the more that is defined, the more transparent is the translation goal/basis/procedures, the happier we all can be...it is worrisome that money drives programs and we are seeing this here in Africa now BIG TIME, trying to get Bibles done in a snap of the fingers...that is the flip side....With no money in hand, many African translators have accepted programs they don't approve of and know won't work (Mark in 3 weeks, sometimes the NT in 3 months) because otherwise they have no income...I do not condemn them...better something than nothing...better to survive than to die....but this money driven way of doing things from the outside is worse than some of the unfortunate approaches of the past...and gets no one very far ..... thanks for sharing both articles, we do need to reflect on these huge 'movements' of our time

Wayne, I assume you are asking how the ABS donor base came to be so different (as I claim it has) over time. I would answer it has to do with two trends in the U.S. over the last 50 years or so: 1. A shift from mainline Protestant to conservative Evangelical churches (for those from mainline churches staying within Christianity at all). 2. A dramatic rise in income inequality, resulting in more money in the hands of fewer people. No matter what one thinks of either of these trends as such, I think they are undeniable and certainly are pertinent to the discussion and to the article.