Jesus Christ

Seriously. Conservatives (some conservatives more appropriately) have taken one more step towards the edge of the flat earth they inhabit. A new project on Conservapedia (yes, a conservative vehicle to combat the liberal bias of wikipedia) aims to create a new conservative Bible translation. To make that happen, they will create a Bible that will do the following:

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[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] 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";[5] 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."

How one can both eliminate liberal wordiness and also not dumb down the Bible is not explained. Nor, is it explained how Mark and John's open-mindedness fits in with the rest of the close-mindedness presented here. But all in all a pretty good explanation of what they want to do. The question is, why would they want to? Well, there is an answer for that too.

• mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
• mastery of the English language, which is valuable
• thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
• benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
• liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this,
  and that will open their minds

I particularly love the final reason here. Lest you think they don't have compassion and concern for the wicked, they want to let you know that those heathen liberals might be tricked into reading the Bible. What a plot.

There's a lot more interesting stuff to read on the Conservative Bible Project page. There is also a lot you could say about the effort. But the Huffington Post article about it contained the best quote from a conservative but sane columnist from Belief.net. He believes this to be...

"just crazy ... like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the
College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'."