The disturbing origins of this custom Bible and the campaign to stop its proliferation.

During Holy Week, Donald Trump posted a video promoting sales for the “God Bless the USA” Bible.

The name is borrowed from a 1984 song of the same name by country singer, Lee Greenwood.

Trump’s shameless peddling of God’s word for profit garnered intense backlash and commentary online, but the saga of the “God Bless the USA” Bible goes back further than the former president’s ad.

Three years ago, I was part of a group of Christian authors who successfully lobbied our publisher Zondervan, a division of Harper Collins publishing, to refrain from entering into an agreement to print the “God Bless the USA” Bible.

HarperCollins Christian Publishing division, which includes Zondervan Publishing, owns the licensing rights to the New International Version (NIV) translation—the most popular modern English translation of the Bible.

The company, Elite Source Pro, petitioned Zondervan for a quote but never entered into an agreement. Nevertheless, marketing for the “God Bless the USA” Bible advertised it as the NIV translation.

Hugh Kirkpatrick heads up Elite Source Pro and spearheaded the effort to produce the “God Bless the USA” Bible.

In an article at Religion Unplugged, where this story first broke in May 2021, Kirkpatrick explained the origins of this custom edition of the Bible.

The idea began brewing in fall 2020 when Kirkpatrick and friends in the entertainment industry heard homeschool parents complain that public schools were not teaching American history anymore— not having students read and understand the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

“We noticed the divide in the public where some people started seeing pro-American images like the flag, the bald eagle, the statue of liberty as weaponized tools of the Republican party, and we didn’t understand that,” Kirkpatrick said.

Then in the height of Black Lives Matter protests, activists began tearing down or destroying statues and monuments they connected to racial injustice.

“In past civilizations, libraries have been burned. Documents torn down. We started seeing statutes coming down and we started seeing history for good or bad trying to be erased,” Kirkpatrick said. “That’s when we started thinking, okay how far does this erasing of history go? Love it or hate it, it’s history. But how far does it go…? Part of having these statues … is so that we don’t repeat those same mistakes.”

A custom Bible inspired by reactionary sentiment opposing Black Lives Matter protests is concerning on its own.

Kirkpatrick apparently failed to understand why Black people and many others would want to remove public homages to slaveholders and the violent rebellion they led against the United States.

Nor did Kirkpatrick manage to spot the irony of printing a Bible that honors the United States while defending statues of Confederate leaders who attacked the Union.

Once the news that Zondervan was in talks to print this Bible came out, several Christian authors who had published with them approached me about publicly opposing the deal.

All of my books, so far, have been published through Zondervan, including my forthcoming book The Spirit of Justice: Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance.

I was eager to join in the protest.

The effort to stop the deal included an online petition that said,

Zondervan/HarperCollins has a been a great blessing to Christian publishing for many years. But a forthcoming volume damages this fine record. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Zondervan has licensed releasing the “God Bless the USA” Bible that will include the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and pledge of allegiance, in addition to the lyrics for the song of the same name by country singer Lee Greenwood., “God Bless the USA.” This is a toxic mix that will exacerbate the challenges to American evangelicalism, adding fuel to the Christian nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiments found in many segments of the evangelical church.

The campaign to stop Zondervan from printing the “God Bless the USA” Bible also included a letter by Shane Claiborne of Red Letter Christians and several other Christian authors, including me, as co-signers of the statement.

The letter read,

This customized Bible is a reminder that the “Christian industry” must do better to stand against the heretical and deadly “Christian” nationalism that we saw on full display on Jan. 6.  It is like a spiritual virus, infecting our churches, homes and social institutions.  Just as we take intentional actions to stop the spread of COVID, like wearing masks and staying six feet apart, we must take concrete steps to stop the spread of this theological virus.

The letter continued with a theological and pastoral word about the Bible.

We don’t need to add anything to the Bible. We just need to live out what it already says.

And if we are to be good Christians, we may not always be the best Americans.  The beatitudes of Jesus where he blesses the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers – can feel very different from the “beatitudes” of America.  Our money may say in God we trust, but our economy often looks like the seven deadly sins.  For Christians, our loyalty is to Jesus.  That is who we pledge allegiance to.  As the old hymn goes – “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness/ On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”  Our hope is not in the donkey of the Democrats or the elephant of the GOP… or even in America.

Our hope is in the Lamb.  The light of the world is not America… it is Christ.

Our endeavors were successful, and Zondervan did not enter into an agreement to publish an NIV translation of the “God Bless the USA” Bible.

That’s when Kirkpatrick decided to pursue a King James Version (KJV) of the Bible because that translation does not require copyright permission in the US.

The fruit of Kirkpatrick’s effort is an official endorsement by Donald J. Trump and Lee Greenwood and the latest push to sell “God Bless the USA” Bibles at a cost of $59.99.

The purveyors of this custom Bible fail to see, refuse to see, or simply don’t care that the United States is not a church or God’s holy nation.

They continue to spew myths that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that the government should favor one religion for special privileges above all others.

Including political documents in a Bible translation is as blatant a blend of religion and politics as it gets. It is a physical flouting of the separation of church and state.

The multi-year crusade to produce the “God Bless the USA” Bible demonstrates that white Christian nationalism is not going away, and its advocates have the will and the means to secure their desired ends.

As we hurtle closer to the 2024 presidential election—likely a rematch between Biden and Trump—Christians must loudly and consistently oppose any movement to make Christianity synonymous with the political power structure.

We must oppose the “God Bless the USA” Bible as white Christian nationalist propaganda because Jesus said, “I will build my church,” not “I will build this nation.”

On Saturday, May 14, 2022 a young man entered a grocery store in predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York and opened fire.

By the time he surrendered a short time later, he had shot a total of 13 people, most of them Black, and left 10 of them dead. They were senior citizens, retired law enforcement, churchgoers, grandparents, brothers, and sisters.

Prior to the crime, the shooter wrote a 180-page manifesto and posted it online. He left no doubt that he intended to target Black people and that his murderous act was a hate crime. He even painted the word n***er on the assault rifle he used.

Commentators rightly identified this perpetrator as a white supremacist. He wrote in his manifesto about the “great replacement” theory—”the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with nonwhite people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.”

But heed this word of caution as the phrase “white supremacist” becomes the topic of national conversation once again.

To identify someone who targets, plans, and homicidally attacks Black people and other religious and ethnic groups as a white supremacist, while accurate, can obscure the ways many others are complicit with white supremacy.

In my first book, The Color of Compromise, I spoke of the “complicity” of white Christians in the racism that has plagued the United States for centuries.

It is convenient to point to slave traders, plantation owners, and Klan members as the “real racists.” We tend to think that only the most severe examples of prejudice constitute racism. But even if only a small number of people actually commit acts of violence in the name of racism, the ideas that lead to such acts are often co-signed by the masses.

As I wrote in the book,

“The most egregious acts of racism…occur within a context of compromise. The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow.”

What was true in the past is true in the present—the most horrific violence done in the name of white supremacy happens within a context of compromise and complicity.

Major news media outlets such as Fox News have favorably cited the great replacement theory on their programs. Right-wing activists are waging a crusade against what they label “Critical Race Theory” in an effort to prevent education about racism and white supremacy. Many churches and Christian institutions are actively suppressing efforts to promote racial progress in the name of opposing CRT and promoting “the gospel.”

If we look at shooters like the one in Buffalo as the only type of people to whom the phrase “white supremacist” applies, then we miss all the daily and common ways that countless others endorse the same ideas that undergirded his murderous actions.

SIGN: RED LETTER CHRISTIAN PLEDGE 

Passivity in the face of white supremacist diatribes—whether on social media, in person, or even in the pulpit—permits the spread of these evil ideas.

Tuning in to podcasters, YouTubers, pastors, pundits and others who play on racist fears to get clicks and build a platform allows white supremacy to remain an influential narrative in this land.

We can look in horror at the actions of a white supremacist terrorist in Buffalo. But he is simply the extreme version and the logical end of what many other people believe and support in other ways.

You don’t have to pull the trigger on an assault rifle to support white supremacy. All you have to do is nothing at all.

As I put it in The Color of Compromise…

“The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.”

This article originally appeared in Footnotes by Jemar Tisby. 

By the time he surrendered a short time later, he had shot a total of 13 people, most of them Black, and left 10 of them dead. They were senior citizens, retired law enforcement, churchgoers, grandparents, brothers, and sisters.

Prior to the crime, the shooter wrote a 180-page manifesto and posted it online. He left no doubt that he intended to target Black people and that his murderous act was a hate crime. He even painted the word n***er on the assault rifle he used.

Commentators rightly identified this perpetrator as a white supremacist. He wrote in his manifesto about the “great replacement” theory—”the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with nonwhite people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.”

But heed this word of caution as the phrase “white supremacist” becomes the topic of national conversation once again.

To identify someone who targets, plans, and homicidally attacks Black people and other religious and ethnic groups as a white supremacist, while accurate, can obscure the ways many others are complicit with white supremacy.

In my first book, The Color of Compromise, I spoke of the “complicity” of white Christians in the racism that has plagued the United States for centuries.

It is convenient to point to slave traders, plantation owners, and Klan members as the “real racists.” We tend to think that only the most severe examples of prejudice constitute racism. But even if only a small number of people actually commit acts of violence in the name of racism, the ideas that lead to such acts are often co-signed by the masses.

As I wrote in the book,

“The most egregious acts of racism…occur within a context of compromise. The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow.”

What was true in the past is true in the present—the most horrific violence done in the name of white supremacy happens within a context of compromise and complicity.

Major news media outlets such as Fox News have favorably cited the great replacement theory on their programs. Right-wing activists are waging a crusade against what they label “Critical Race Theory” in an effort to prevent education about racism and white supremacy. Many churches and Christian institutions are actively suppressing efforts to promote racial progress in the name of opposing CRT and promoting “the gospel.”

If we look at shooters like the one in Buffalo as the only type of people to whom the phrase “white supremacist” applies, then we miss all the daily and common ways that countless others endorse the same ideas that undergirded his murderous actions.

SIGN: RED LETTER CHRISTIAN PLEDGE 

Passivity in the face of white supremacist diatribes—whether on social media, in person, or even in the pulpit—permits the spread of these evil ideas.

Tuning in to podcasters, YouTubers, pastors, pundits and others who play on racist fears to get clicks and build a platform allows white supremacy to remain an influential narrative in this land.

We can look in horror at the actions of a white supremacist terrorist in Buffalo. But he is simply the extreme version and the logical end of what many other people believe and support in other ways.

You don’t have to pull the trigger on an assault rifle to support white supremacy. All you have to do is nothing at all.

As I put it in The Color of Compromise…

“The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.”

This article originally appeared in Footnotes by Jemar Tisby. 

According to a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” and “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.”

The majority opinion argued that only states had the right to decide whether abortion should be legal.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.

The decades-long campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade has deep ties with the Religious Right, political and religious conservatives who often view abortion as murder and a sin.

Opposition to Abortion Did Not Unite the Religious Right, Racism Did

When most people think about the Religious Right, the matter of abortion comes to mind. Like no other issue, the rejection of legalized abortion has come to define the Religious Right.

Repealing Roe v. Wade stands as a perennial high-priority issue for conservative Christian voters, so much so that today it is hard to imagine a time when that was not the case.

But in the early 1970s, abortion was not the primary issue that catalyzed the Religious Right, as it would in later years. Initially, the Christian response to Roe v. Wade was mixed. Instead, conservative voters coalesced around the issue of racial integration in schools.

Abortion has not always been the defining issue for evangelicals. In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, passed a resolution on abortion that called upon Southern Baptists

“to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

W. A. Criswell, pastor of the largest SBC congregation, stated after the Roe v. Wade decision that “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had life separate from its mother . . . that it became an individual person.”

He further explained, “It has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

A poll in 1970 discovered that 70 percent of Southern Baptist pastors “supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the mother, 64 percent supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity and 71 percent in cases of rape.”

Like the Southern Baptists, many other conservative Christians were not uniformly against abortion in the early 1970s.

The Religious Right, Racial Integration, and Bob Jones University

Instead, the impetus that galvanized the Religious Right came from an unexpected source, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Historian Randall Balmer explains that conservative power brokers originally came together as a political force to combat what they perceived as an attack by the IRS and the federal government on Protestant Christian schools.

It only took one school, Bob Jones University, to bring the threat of government-enforced integration to the attention of Christian conservatives and to politically mobilize them.

Bob Jones, Sr. started his school, located in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1927. Politically and in his preaching and teaching, Jones supported segregation as a biblical mandate and stood firm in his convictions all throughout the civil rights movement. Jones died, but his son, Bob Jones, Jr. took over and continued his father’s tradition of racial discrimination.

The university did finally admit its first black students in 1971, but they were only allowed if they were married. The ages-old bugaboo of interracial marriage and miscegenation made the idea of having single black men on campus as potential suitors for young white ladies an unconscionable prospect for the leaders at Bob Jones University.

In 1975, the school changed its policy and allowed unmarried black students to enroll, but as clearly outlined in the student handbook, the school prohibited interracial dating.

Bob Jones III, who served as president from 1971 to 2005, stated in an interview: “There are three basic races—Oriental, Caucasian and Negroid. At BJU, everybody dates within those basic three races.” Anyone involved in an interracial relationship or those who promoted such pairings would face expulsion.

The Civil Rights Act and the IRS’s newly adopted policies meant that Bob Jones University’s stance on interracial dating placed it in violation of racial discrimination laws.

The IRS revoked the school’s tax-exempt status in 1976, but these financial penalties did not deter university officials.

Bob Jones University officials sued the IRS and presented their case as an issue of religious freedom. “Even if this were discrimination, which it is not, though the government disagrees,” Jones III said, “it is a sincere religious belief founded on what we think the Bible teaches, no matter whether anyone else believes it or not.”

Similar to what some proponents of slavery had argued in the Civil War era, segregationists in the twentieth century considered it a “right” to separate people based on race. It was a religious belief with which the government had no right to interfere.

The IRS’s guidelines about racial integration in 1978 sparked national outrage among many Christian conservatives. Department officials as well as members of Congress received tens of thousands of messages in protest. In an interview, conservative operative, Paul Weyrich explained,

“What galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the [Equal Rights Amendment]. . . . What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”

Resistance to racial integration and IRS sanctions provided an initial catalyst that mobilized the Religious Right as a political force. Opposition to abortion and the campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade was not as central to its origin story as many now believe.

This article originally appeared on Footnotes by Jemar Tisby. 

The books definitely were not intended for readers as young as I. Every book had at least three hundred pages and occasionally they dipped into adult themes. But I used context clues and grit to figure out the vocabulary and story elements I didn’t understand. 

There were more than 30 books in the series. I read every single one. 

I would spend hours in my room reading chapter after chapter. It became a ritual for my mom to take me to the bookstore to grab the next book in the series. 

It is because I was a reader at a very young age that I became a writer as an adult.

But reading was more than that. I was very shy during elementary and middle school, and I didn’t have many friends. Oftentimes, books would be my only company and comfort in my loneliness. The written word absorbed me into a strange and exciting world where everything else that troubled me temporarily fell away.

Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done as a kid if it wasn’t for books.

For many of us books are not mere assemblages of pages and words, they represent limitless realities into which we have flown, escaped, found solace.

Books contain knowledge that humanizes and horrifies us. Good books—even if we can’t remember every character’s name or every twist and turn of the plot—change us. They become our friends, our conversation partners, our company when we feel isolated and misunderstood.

The power of books to create a new reality for the reader means there’s something particularly heinous about banning them.

Banning Books

Right now, the regressive forces in our land are coming up with lists of books that should be banned from our schools because of the ways they talk about racism and white supremacy. 

In one of the most well-publicized instances, Republican state representative Matt Krause, disseminated a list of 850 books he thought needed to be removed from school library shelves.

These lists indiscriminately sweep up literary classics to be tossed on the pile marked “forbidden.” A notorious example includes proposing a ban on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. 

The book speaks in explicit terms about race and sex. But Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize-winning author. She is a legend of literature. Whatever she has written is worth a read. 

On the scale of absurdity, banning students from reading a book by Toni Morrison is off the charts.

I suspect the real purpose of these lists is to get a particular politician or individual in the news. They are meant to spark a reaction, either in support or opposition to their view. It doesn’t matter. In these political games, all news is good news.

The common thread among the books on these lists, aside from the clawing for attention, is they all contain books that talk or teach about race.

LISTEN: Jemar Tisby on the RLC Podcast

How absurd the notion that people in the United States should learn less about race and not more. As if the problem is that we know too much about the subject and not too little.

We should invite more books about race, racism, and white supremacy. We should celebrate educators who can effectively explain the confounding reality of race—its development, its perniciousness, and its ongoing effects—to their students.

Instead, legislators and talking heads pull publicity stunts to draw attention to themselves in hopes of winning an election or raising more funds. They hide their minds from the painful reality of this nation’s love affair with racial prejudice and pretend as if all is past. Then they seek to replicate their ignorance among our schoolchildren.

This Book Will Be Banned

If this trend continues, then one day my book, How to Fight Racism, Young Reader’s Edition, may land on one of these banned book lists.

Geared toward children ages 8-12 years old, I talk about concepts such as racism, white supremacy, race-based chattel slavery, segregation, and Black Lives Matter. 

Almost a quarter of the book is devoted to unpacking the history of racism in the United States in order to help kids understand how we got where we are and ignite in them the desire to do something about it.

Chapter titles include: Confronting Racism Where it Lives; How to Explore Your Racial Identity; and Fighting Systemic Racism.

I encourage kids, to embrace their personal agency and their ability to effect change. I tell them that racial justice is an imperative for a well-functioning society and that even, perhaps especially, as young people they should be involved in the fight against racism.

I tell them, 

“This fight isn’t just for grown-ups. Some of the greatest advances in the fight against racism have happened because kids fight too.”

My hope is that How to Fight Racism, Young Readers Edition inspires a new generation of young people to antiracist action starting right now.

The forces of regression panic when the most disempowered in our society learn to embrace their power. Some will do everything they can to suppress the impulse toward independence. They imprison activists, they burn churches, they make it harder to vote. They ban books.

The way to battle the ban is to lean into love. Lean into that timeless, irrepressible love of books. Lean into the feeling of being transported by an engrossing story. Lean in into the satisfaction of feeding our famished brains with new knowledge. Lean into our notorious affair with the written word.

If one day my book lands on one of those lists of banned books, I’m not worried. You can’t ban people from appreciating words, skillfully assembled, soulfully combined. Even if they write lists of banned books as long as a library’s shelves. it won’t douse the fire, and the will, we have to read words.

This article originally appeared on Footnotes by Jemar Tisby. 

For more information on Jemar’s book for young readers and other resources for teaching kids about Jesus and justice, you can watch the RLC Book Club Children and Youth Edition. You can also listen to the RLC Book Club from January 20221 with Jemar on the podcast or YouTube channel. 

As authors published by Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing known for its NIV Bibles, and activists against Christian nationalism, we were alarmed at this news, first reported by Religion Unplugged. We’re delighted today that Zondervan announced it will not support this Bible.

The growing specter of Christian nationalism

From our screens, we watched the rioters on Jan. 6 storm the Capitol. We can’t unsee the Jesus signs next to Trump signs, the Confederate flag paraded, the broken windows, injured bodies and officers assaulted. What some of us remember most are the prayers rioters prayed in the Senate chamber “in the name of Jesus,” including the now recognizable QAnon shaman who wore Viking headgear and publicly thanked God for helping rioters take over the Capitol.

After that day, hundreds of evangelicals, pastors, authors and faith leaders began to mobilize.  We started texting and calling everyone we could, especially friends who transcend partisan politics and are committed to Jesus and the common good.  We jumped on Zoom calls with some of the most influential evangelicals in the country.

Before long we had a movement of evangelical Christians denouncing what happened on Jan. 6 – as well as, and this is important, the conditions and theology that led up to the events on Jan. 6.  Over 5,000 pastors, faith leaders, bishops and authors signed on.  And that was just the beginning.  The momentum has continued to build, as evidenced in new websites like www.SayNoToChristianNationalism.org and www.LamentingChristianNationalism.org.

Last week, some three months after the original petition launched, six different organizations, all led by people of color, organized a week of action to respond to White supremacy and “Christian” nationalism… and the ways that racism tries to camouflage itself as Christianity.

It was during this week of action that we learned about the “God Bless the USA Bible.”  It’s advertised as: “The ultimate American Bible. The Bible and the founding documents of America. Now . . . together in one very unique Bible.”

As Christians around the country organized to address “Christian” nationalism, we heard about this new Bible, with the American flag on the front cover.  It features the text of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the words to the song, “God Bless the USA.”  It’s available for pre-sale on their website for $49.99 and releases in September, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

There are many versions of the Bible and many translations. There is the “Justice” Bible and the “Green” Bible that emphasize the consistent themes in the text that we are to care for the poor and for the earth. There is even a military edition of the Bible, wrapped in camouflage. This is not the first time there has been an attempt to fuse American nationalism with the holy book – in fact Thomas Nelson released “The American Patriot’s Bible” over a decade ago, which was a very similar project.

But what is new is a growing awareness of how dangerous nationalism is when coupled with faith.

American nationalism is its own civil religion, where America rather than Jesus is the center of attention.  Instead of Jesus and the Church being the light of the world and the hope for humanity, America becomes the Messianic force in the world.  Like any religion it has its own liturgy, saints and holidays.  These symbols are on full display in this new Bible – the eagle, the flag, the red, white and blue.  America’s civil religion has its own creeds too in the new Bible – “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” It has its own “worship” songs – like “God Bless the USA” and “I’m Proud to be an American,” both by Lee Greenwood.  It has its own theology – manifest destiny, the doctrine of discovery and American exceptionalism.  And this is precisely why it is dangerous to mesh patriotism with orthodox Christian faith.

After all, the Bible does not say “God bless America.” It says, “God so loved the world.”  The national anthem should not be in the church hymnal, and the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States should not be in the Bible.

There are 66 books in the Bible.  Some streams of Christian faith include 14 others, known as the “apocrypha.”  But no version of orthodox faith has an American apocrypha.  Including the founding documents of America and the theology of American nationalism in the Bible is offensive.  We do not need an “American apocrypha.”  (And there is a verse in the book of Revelation that says: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll.”)

The bombshell article by Meagan Clark at Religion Unplugged that broke the news on this custom Bible had some deeply disturbing quotes from Hugh Kirkpatrick, the creator and driving force behind the “God Bless the USA Bible.” Here’s what he said as the visionary behind it:

 “We noticed the divide in the public where some people started seeing pro-American images like the flag, the bald eagle, the statue of liberty as weaponized tools of the Republican party, and we didn’t understand that… We started seeing statutes coming down and we started seeing history for good or bad trying to be erased…  That’s when we started thinking, okay how far does this erasing of history go? Love it or hate it, it’s history. But how far does it go?… We’ve never heard of anyone throwing a Bible away. It’s always prominent somewhere in the house, it’s either on the coffee table, it’s somewhere that’s accessible. So if the Bible contained holy scripture but it also contained these documents it would be a one-stop shop for people to learn the basics of why the founders built into those documents divine providence.”

This customized Bible is a reminder that the “Christian industry” must do better to stand against the heretical and deadly “Christian” nationalism that we saw on full display on Jan. 6.  It is like a spiritual virus, infecting our churches, homes and social institutions.  Just as we take intentional actions to stop the spread of COVID, like wearing masks and staying six feet apart, we must take concrete steps to stop the spread of this theological virus.

How can we better guard the Bible?

As authors who have written multiple books for Zondervan, we reached out to the people we know and love at the publishing house.  Some of our contacts at Zondervan did not know about the new Bible at all until last week.  Others explained how difficult it is to micromanage every project that wants to print the NIV version of the Bible.  It is a common if not well known practice for publishers who hold the rights to Bible translations to print customized versions of the Bible for organizations and special projects.

We recognize that it is a daunting responsibility to be the guardians of the Bible or to hold a copyright to the “Word of God.”  It is also a daunting responsibility to steward money made from over 450 million copies of the NIV sold worldwide.  The business of Bibles raises questions about how corporate America collides with the revolutionary movement of Jesus of Nazareth.  After all, Rupert Murdoch now owns HarperCollins, Zondervan and as of 2012, Thomas Nelson, which published the so-called Patriot’s Bible in 2009 that is still available at many retailers. For many of us, learning the fact that the man who owns Fox News also owns the company that is the gatekeeper to one of the most popular translations of the Bible is a bit shocking, even concerning.  But that fact is beyond the scope of this article.

We are authors, but we are also activists.  So when we heard about the “God Bless the USA Bible” and the potential it has to fuel the already hot flames of Christian nationalism, we couldn’t help but respond.  We also wanted to do that in a way that is respectful, not just reactionary, and in a way that might actually make a difference.

We are delighted to hear that Zondervan has released a statement today that affirmed this Bible is not their product. They will not be publishing, manufacturing or selling the Bible. They were approached with the product, but it was not something they decided to support. All the marketing on the “God Bless the USA Bible” website was premature. It is entirely possible that the folks crafting this Bible will find another translation with another publishing house, but for now it is on hold, and we rejoice. We hope that future projects like this one will be reconsidered as well.

We don’t need to add anything to the Bible. We just need to live out what it already says.

And if we are to be good Christians, we may not always be the best Americans.  The beatitudes of Jesus where he blesses the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers – can feel very different from the “beatitudes” of America.  Our money may say in God we trust, but our economy often looks like the seven deadly sins.  For Christians, our loyalty is to Jesus.  That is who we pledge allegiance to.  As the old hymn goes – “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness/ On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”  Our hope is not in the donkey of the Democrats or the elephant of the GOP . . . or even in America.

Our hope is in the Lamb.  The light of the world is not America. It is Christ.

This piece first appeared at Religion Unplugged. 

White men lynched Till, a 14-year-old Black boy visiting from Chicago, for supposedly flirting with a white woman at a store in Mississippi in 1955. His murder, along with his mother’s defiant decision to display her son’s mutilated face in an open casket, helped spur the Civil Rights movement.

Upon seeing the photo, one of my first questions was: “What church do these young men attend?”

To ask about their churches is to inquire about the role communities of faith play in perpetuating or dismantling racism in its various forms. The young men may not go to church. They may not even be Christians. But in an area known as the “Bible Belt” the cultural influence of Christianity is strong. So how the church influences the racial understanding of white Christians deserves probing.

The young men positioned themselves in front of this marker like big-game hunters proudly displaying their deceased prize. It’s as if Till, his memory, his murder and his legacy were all just a game to this grinning group.

One of the people pictured even posted the photo on his Instagram account. It garnered almost 250 “likes” before being taken down when reporters started asking about it. One person who saw the photo filed a complaint with the University of Mississippi back in March, but officials there did not take any action. Instead they referred it to the FBI where the case stalled because officers said the photo “did not pose a specific threat.”

Other entities took more decisive action. The three men pictured all belong to the Kappa Alpha fraternity. According to its website, the fraternity cites Confederate General Robert E. Lee as its “spiritual founder.” When fraternity leaders were made aware of the photo last week, however, they immediately suspended all three frat brothers.

Aside from the disciplinary actions, other issues remain.

Did these young men bother to read the historical marker behind them to learn about Till and the significance of his life and murder? Did they think twice about posting this picture publicly and what it communicated about how they regarded Black people? Did the teaching of their churches help or hinder their sensitivity concerning race?

The primary question is not whether churches are endorsing overt racism; they almost certainly are not. The question is about how church leaders understand race and what they are teaching their members about it.

It could be the case that churches are not teaching much about race at all. Pastors remain relatively silent about racism from the pulpit, Bible study groups may not touch the topic, and few church members in homogeneous white congregations ever bring it up.

In other cases, churches may talk about race, but in unhelpful ways. Oftentimes, they try to do so in a “colorblind” way by emphasizing commonality and by minimizing or ignoring differences.

They claim they “don’t see color” and that all believers are brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of their race or ethnicity. These teachings become problematic when the varied life experiences, racial hardships, and history of Black people is blotted out in a blob of contrived sameness. Unity does not mean uniformity.

Other churches may have a truncated explanation for how race works. White evangelical Christians, in particular, tend to think of race in individualistic terms. The problem, they say, is bad relationships — as when a person doesn’t like another because of race, or when someone uses racial slurs. The solution, according to this line of thinking, is to have more positive relationships across the color line.

Relationships with people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds is a necessary part of bringing about racial justice, but it is not sufficient. Personal relationships have little impact on structural racial inequalities such as anti-Black police brutality, high rates of maternity-related deaths among Black women, or the racial wealth gap.

No amount of one-on-one lunches, small group discussions or coffee meetups will automatically impact the broader issue of institutional racism.

White churches have to be attuned to how they may implicitly reinforce racism. Some Christian churches have started private schools. If those schools do not intentionally embed racial awareness into their curricula and practice, they are likely perpetuating misunderstandings.

Some churches, in effect, make adherence to the Republican party platform a litmus test for Christian orthodoxy. Most Black people are not Republican, so political differences can create barriers to belonging.

If churches want to improve the way they teach their members about race, they should start by examining their understanding of the term.

Ask church leaders to define the words “race” and “racism.” Oftentimes there are as many different answers as there are people answering. The key here is to move beyond a narrow concept of racism as only an interpersonal phenomenon. Christians must acknowledge the ways race operates on systemic and institutional levels. Developing a shared language and definitions is a key to improving racial responsiveness.

Churches also have to talk about race. On any divisive topic, the temptation is to avoid discussing it for fear of offending someone. But people are already talking about race — at the dinner table, at work, in group text messages — and they often do so in unhelpful ways. With a shared language and mutually understood concepts, pastors and church leaders can be the guides their members need for talking about race in nuanced, spiritual and morally informed ways.

What if those young men who proudly posed in front of a defaced sign dedicated to a lynched boy had been deeply educated by their church about race and racism? What if they’d had a Sunday School class on the history of American Christianity and race? What if they learned to see what the Bible says from Genesis to Revelation about how to understand and celebrate differences? What if those young men had learned a robust doctrine of the image of God to better grasp the dignity of all people?

No one should need specialized teaching to know that standing with guns in front of a plaque detailing Emmett Till’s murder is racist. An elementary understanding of U.S. history and a modicum of concern for other human beings should prevent such offenses. Yet, whether churches lend more to perpetuating racism or providing remedies remains a pressing concern.

If churches, which have historically had such a large role in driving racism, do not effectively teach their congregants about race, then many Christians will continue to be part of creating racial problems rather than helping enact solutions.

This was not an abstract question for Thurman.

During the Great Depression, he observed already impoverished Black people further crushed by the nation’s worst economic crisis. He saw the political gamesmanship that made the New Deal into a “raw deal” for Black citizens.

During World War II, he noticed the Black women and men who supported America’s war efforts found their service rewarded with racism and discrimination when the war was done.

His experience during the Depression and the war fueled his writing, especially his 1935 essay, “Good News for the Underprivileged,” which he later turned into a book published in 1949.

The issues Black people and other marginalized groups face today are not all that different from when Howard was writing.

Women still do not get equal pay for equal work. Black unemployment has decreased but still remains about twice that of whites. And Americans who are rich and guilty fare better in the criminal justice system than those who are poor and innocent.

Where is the good news in this situation?

Of course, Jesus is good news for the disinherited. But we also might ask, “Can Christians practice politics in a way that is also good news for the disinherited?”

After all, politics have played a role in creating the rampant inequality in our nation. And politics will have to play a role in addressing this issue.

But followers of Jesus have very different views on politics these days and often find themselves at odds with one another.

White evangelicals, for example, remain among President Trump’s most loyal supporters. Among white evangelicals who voted in the 2016 presidential election, 81 percent pulled the lever for Trump.

By contrast, more than 6 in 10 evangelicals of other races and ethnicities preferred Clinton leading up to the election. And a recent study by Lifeway Research of Protestant pastors found that just 4 percent of African-American pastors approve of the president’s job performance so far, while more than half, 54 percent, of white pastors approve.

What could possibly bridge this political divide?

I would suggest starting by putting ourselves in the shoes of those Thurman describes as the “disinherited.”

“The masses of [people] live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed,” wrote Thurman.

In his view, the people with the fewest material resources, the fewest rights and the most obstacles in society constituted the disinherited class.

More affluent and enfranchised Christians ought to intentionally seek ways to develop deep relationships and authentic interactions with the disinherited.

How does this happen?

For me, it came through teaching in public schools.

My rural school in the Deep South was more than 95 percent Black, and 85 percent qualified for free or reduced lunch, a federal measure of student poverty. I came face to face with the problems caused by underfunded and segregated school systems. The surrounding community had almost double the national rate of families living at or below the poverty line. This meant the parents, siblings and extended family of my students frequently faced unemployment, poor health care and higher rates of incarceration.

Firsthand experience with disinherited people changed my perspective on politics.

No longer was it about red or blue but about right and wrong. It wasn’t about keeping power but deploying that power for justice. In our current political morass, we need to constantly remind ourselves that Christians, and their politics, should bring relief and flourishing to those whom the world counts as the least.

Maintaining a focus on the disinherited might give Christians a common starting point to discuss political issues.

If the topic is criminal justice reform, then the conversation can’t just be about punishing the guilty. We also have to talk about honoring the image of God even among the accused and incarcerated. If the subject is health care, then the focus can’t simply be on the amount of taxes we pay. We have to find ways for the poorest people to obtain the best possible service. If the matter is immigration, then discussions can’t solely focus on protecting our borders. We have to think about ensuring safety for both our nation and those who seek to enter it.

This does not mean that all our policy solutions will match. A view of politics from the standpoint of the least powerful will still lead people to different political stances.

But perhaps if more Christians kept the disinherited and their well-being central in discussions of political power, we could have more fruitful dialogue across partisan divides.

Thurman summed up our obligations to one another in the theme of neighborliness.

“Every man is potentially every other man’s neighbor,” he said. “Neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative.”

As a guiding principle of Christian participation in politics, love of neighbor puts us all in service to one another.

This article originally appeared at RNS.

“What does the gospel have to do with justice, particularly social justice?”

Justice has been a frequent topic these days — in the face of a stream of cellphone videos capturing instances of police brutality, conflict over the presence and future of Confederate monuments and racially charged responses to the nation’s changing demographics.

Christians, both as people of faith and citizens of this country, have pondered what to do in this current social climate. They have called for Christians to join or start movements for change as an explicit expression of discipleship and obedience to the prayer that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

And they have called for the church to make amends for the racial divisions of the past and present.

Others take a different view.

Where some see calls for biblical justice, they see heresy.

This week a group of Christians published “The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel,” a response to what they call “questionable sociological, psychological, and political theories presently permeating our culture and making inroads into Christ’s church.”

The statement comes just after a short blog series posted by well-known Christian preacher and teacher John MacArthur, warning of the dangers of social justice.

MacArthur calls social justice a distraction from the gospel.

“Evangelicalism’s newfound obsession with the notion of ‘social justice’ is a significant shift — and I’m convinced it’s a shift that is moving many people (including some key evangelical leaders) off message, and onto a trajectory that many other movements and denominations have taken before, always with spiritually disastrous results,” he wrote.

MacArthur is one of the initial signatories of The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, which echoes his blog posts.

While Christians from many traditions, races and ethnicities have displayed a concern for social justice, it is a topic that particularly concerns black and brown folks. We have endured a long history of race-based discrimination that did not simply disappear after the March on Washington, the passage of the Civil Rights Act or the election of the nation’s first black president.

Statements that dismiss social justice send a message that the ongoing marginalization many minorities still experience and struggle against is of no concern to their fellow Christians.

Or to God.

Or to the Bible — despite ample scriptural evidence that demonstrates God’s concern for the poor and the powerless and anger toward those who create oppressive conditions (Amos 5:24, Micah 6:8, Psalm 103:6, Isaiah 10:1, Luke 1:52-53, Luke 4:18).

Although much about this statement needs discussion, I will highlight one section in particular.

It reads: “We affirm that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better than those of other cultures because of the biblical truths that inform those worldviews that have produced these distinct assumptions.”

The best word to describe the assertion above is “ethnocentric.”

Who gets to decide which cultures and which assumptions are closer to biblical truth? For most of American history, white Christians have claimed that privilege. That privilege is now being challenged.

I’m tempted to refute the recent statement on the gospel and social justice point-by-point — showing how it falls short of the Bible’s call for justice. But I think our time would be better spent on other pursuits. There’s too much work to be done — work that will be delayed by endless debates.

Here’s my advice.

Many of the people who authored and signed this statement have large ministries and platforms.

Avoid them.

Find other authors, preachers and teachers from whom you can learn. People like Austin Channing Brown or the podcasters and bloggers at Truth’s Table or The Witness, where I am a contributor. Or read Howard Thurman, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bryan Stevenson, James Baldwin or the other writers who have explored issues of justice.

If the supporters of statements that dismiss social justice as a distraction from the gospel headline a major conference, state your concerns to the organizers. If nothing changes, then don’t go.

If they do an interview on a podcast, find another episode to listen to. If they write more blogs to state their case, share other ones instead.

Statements like these are a distraction. They siphon off energy and attention that could be used to create new organizations and initiatives that help bring about justice and equality.

Instead of writing a rebuttal to the statement on social justice, why not write a proposal for a new scholarship to help underrepresented groups go to college and stay out of debt? Why not donate money to support ministries run by and geared toward racial and ethnic minorities? Why not research a cause and find out how you can get involved?

Refusing to give more attention to the people who oppose social justice is not a statement on their standing with God. This does not mean they are not sincerely attempting to follow Christ. It does not mean that they have not said helpful things on other topics in the past.

It simply means that in this case, they have made statements so troublesome that we must register our objections in visible ways.

Christians should never give up hope that people can change. Yet going back and forth, especially online, about social justice with those who see it as a dangerous intrusion into the church often does not alter anyone’s opinions and may lead to more frustration.

In the end, I think more people will be persuaded to change their minds about social justice by looking at the fruit of the people who engage in it rather than by arguing on social media about the validity of doing so.

Half a century after the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, it’s easy for people to claim that they would have been among the protesters and marchers and those who risked it all for the cause of justice. Well, the struggle for civil rights never ended. Now is your chance to get involved for love of God and love of neighbor.

This article originally appeared at RNS.