WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (ABP) – Freedom of religion and the press are two Baptist gifts important to both church and state, two award recipients said at a May 1 ceremony sponsored by Associated Baptist Press.

On the eve of ABP’s semi-annual board meeting, the independent Baptist news service honored Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest Divinity School with its Religious Freedom Award and R.G. Puckett, editor emeritus of North Carolina’s Biblical Recorder, for lifetime achievement.

Puckett, who edited Baptist state newspapers longer than anyone in the 20th century, said accepting the Greg Warner Lifetime Achievement Award in Religious Journalism was “just as much for” C.R. Daley, the longtime editor of Kentucky’s Western Recorder for whom Puckett worked three years as associate editor, as for himself.

Puckett credited seasoned editors including Daley, who died in 1999; Texas Baptist Standard Editor E.S. James; John Jeter Hurt, who edited both the Baptist Standard and Georgia’s Christian Index; and Reuben Alley of Virginia’s Religious Herald for helping him with a huge learning curve when he took the editor’s job at the Ohio Baptist Messenger in 1958 with no journalistic experience.

“These men taught me what it meant to be an editor — the style, the content, the positions taken and the integrity that’s demanded,” Puckett said. “Without them in those early years, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Puckett said as a young editor his mentors “taught me very quickly how important it was for Baptists to be informed.”

“The effectiveness of any democracy depends on an informed constituency, and if Baptists don’t know, they can’t do,” Puckett said.

After 13 years as editor of the Maryland Baptist, Puckett took over as editor of the Biblical Recorder when the “crisis” in the Southern Baptist Convention was full-blown with leaders like Paul Pressler, Paige Patterson and Adrian Rogers demanding acceptance of biblical inerrancy for convention leaders.

Puckett said North Carolina Baptists were no better off, and “it was a crisis moment for the Biblical Recorder” as well.

“The chairman of the board wanted to be the editor, and he would have handed the Biblical Recorder into the hands of the fundamentalists in North Carolina 30 years ago,” Puckett said. “But I accepted the call to be editor on a split vote and haven’t regretted it a single day.”

Melissa Rogers, who directs the Wake Forest University School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs and is a nonresident senior fellow within the Governance Program of The Brookings Institution, said “the Baptist ideal of religious freedom” has been important to the United States.

“In no small part because of this vision, America has often gotten religious liberty remarkably right,” said Rogers, who previously served as executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and before that as general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

“Americans have great confidence in our ability to make choices in religious matters,” she said. “Faiths in this country are vital and independent, precisely because they are largely free from government interference and support.”

Rogers said “where America has failed” when it comes to religious freedom, it was not the model that failed. Where America has failed, she said, is when this “Baptist model of religious liberty and church-state separation” was abandoned

Puckett is second recipient of the lifetime achievement award, inaugurated and given in 2009 to Greg Warner, ABP’s longtime executive editor forced by chronic back problems to go on permanent disability in 2008 at age 53.

Rogers was the 13th recipient of the Religious Freedom Award, established in 1994 to honor individuals who advance the principles and practice of religious freedom, particularly in the field of journalism.

Rogers accepted her award on “behalf of that Baptist vision of church/state separation and religious liberty.”

“There are some difficult issues to be sure that face us in the nation,” Rogers said, “but I believe that this vision of religious liberty that we share in this room continues to be the best understanding of the Christian gospel, and it also continues to be the best and brightest hope for our increasingly diverse nation to come together and indeed to be a more perfect union as we move forward.”

The banquet event, held at Ardmore Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., was attended by about 125 people, including family members of both recipients.

Previous stories:

ABP to honor Puckett for lifetime achievement

Rogers operates on thin ridge of faith and politics

ABP honors Greg Warner with lifetime achievement award

WACO—If Jesus’ Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations were viewed as a business, it would be booming—at least in terms of short-term mission trips. But is the spiritual profit worth the investment?

The number of United States Christians taking part in trips lasting a year or less has grown from 540 in 1965 to more than 1.5 million annually, with an estimated $2 billion per year spent on the effort, Robert Priest, a missiology professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, reported in a January 2008 article in Missiology journal.

Dennis Horton

Some who study missions have suggested the money might better be spent giving directly to a country’s Christian partners for spreading the gospel and offering medical aid, construction assistance or other help. Some long-term missionaries even have complained that culturally insensitive short-term mission participants do more harm than good by damaging relationships that had taken years to build.

But when it comes to a spiritual return on an investment of time, money and effort, researcher Dennis Horton—associate professor of religion at Baylor University and principal investigator of a study on the effects that short-term mission trips have on mission team members—says the answer to the question “Is it worth it?” is a qualified “yes.”

Research has revealed students who participate in short-term mission trips tend to have lower levels of materialism, greater appreciation for other cultures and a better understanding of missions as a lifestyle. In general, the greater the amount of trip experience, the greater the impact in all three areas, he said.

Two-thirds of short-term trips last two weeks or less, with a host of purposes ranging from evangelism to digging wells or teaching English-as-a-Second-Language classes.

On the surface, Horton said, the trips seem a win-win-win situation—for those who send participants, for team members who make the trips and for host countries.

“It is very much worthwhile. But I’m qualifying that by saying I think a lot of churches and groups need more follow-up to help mission team members incorporate what they’ve learned on their trips into their daily lives,” Horton said. “Long-term involvement, whether global or local, is where you see transformation taking place.”

About 600 students, most from Texas universities, and 48 short-term mission trip leaders participated in the study conducted by Horton and four Baylor University undergraduate research assistants—Claire Aufhammer from Pasadena, Calif.; Matt Berry from Idalou; Daniel Camp from Garland; and Amy Rozzi from Spring.

For long-term effects on those who go on short-term mission trips, some studies show little difference between those who have participated short-term trips and Christians who have not, Horton said. Patterns are similar in terms of giving, materialism and believing one’s culture is superior to others.

Every year, more than 1.5 million Christians participate in a short-term mission trip.

What makes a difference, according to virtually all studies, is pre-trip training, on-site mentoring and follow-up after the trip, he explained.

“We appreciate the zeal” of students, he said. “They want to be on the streets evangelizing. They say, ‘We need to get out there and share the gospel.’ But the missionaries are saying ‘Wait a minute.’ In many countries, the most effective way to reach others is through friendships built over time rather than quick presentations of the gospel that can endanger the work—and lives—of long-term missionaries and local Christians.

“The study shows that many short-term mission trip leaders are doing a much better job training their team members about cultural issues and connecting with host countries. They’re doing a lot of things right and learning from past mistakes.”

Recent guidebooks are aimed at helping trip leaders aid team members move from mission trips to a lifestyle of missions, Horton said.

“The desire is to ensure that short-term mission experiences become more than spiritual tourism in which participants travel to an exotic place, take a myriad of photos and return to their relatively isolated home environments, as well as their pre-trip behavior and routines,” he said.

But researchers found post-trip follow-up by team leaders, usually from churches, schools or mission agencies, falls short.

Because students may be scattered after the trips, it can be difficult to do much follow-up other than online or through periodic reunions, Horton said. Churches, campus ministries and Christian colleges that offer coursework can play a huge role.

In their study, Horton and his research assistants surveyed students with different amounts of short-term missions experience (and some without any) about their levels of materialism, ethnocentrism and their interest in long-term involvement in missions or ministry.

For some, the trips reinforced a calling to vocational missions. For those who were ambivalent, the trips clarified how or whether they would be involved in vocational mission work.

Many people make a commitment at Christian youth camps to become missionaries, Horton said, but “some find out a little bit more and say: ‘Oh, that isn’t for me. I can do this for a few weeks, but I like my technology, my comforts.’ It wasn’t that they didn’t still have an interest or wanted to work with local missions. But as far as vocational missions, they need to have a definite call and realize this is how God can best use them.”

Some opt against career mission work when they see its challenges.

“In some countries, there are immediate responses to the gospel, with hundreds of people becoming Christians, but in other countries, you could work for years and have only one or two convert to Christianity,” Horton said. “Students hoping to see instant results on a two-week trip may become discouraged in these areas where people need more time before responding in a positive way to the gospel."

Chelsea Nuttall, a Baylor University sophomore English major from Sugar Land, said a short-term trip broadened her understanding of missions: “Missions can be anywhere. It’s not just going global.”

For some, a trip strengthened commitment—among them Matt Lewis, a Baylor University sophomore communications major from Jacksonville. He worked with youth on volunteer student mission trips to the Czech Republic in 2007 and 2008.

He said that between trips: “I spent a lot of time in prayer and really tried to meditate and listen to what God was trying to say to me. … I got to reconnect with some of the youth there from the previous summer. It was great to see that the decisions they made the last year were still apparent in their lives. Seeing this really reinforces my belief that God is calling me into the ministry.”

Research involving students involved in short-term missions focused specifically on levels of ethnocentrism, materialism and involvement in long-term missions and ministry.

Of the 32 students who were interviewed after their trips, 29 said the trips had changed the way they see other cultures, with 17 mentioning increased respect and concern.

Almost half said they were less likely to see their culture as inherently superior. Most of the students who had been exposed to poverty on their trips said they had greater appreciation for what they have—or even disgust for American greed—but only a few mentioned concrete steps they had taken to lessen their materialism.

Horton and the four undergraduate student researchers presented their findings recently at the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies. Research was funded through Baylor’s Undergraduate Research and Scholarly Achievement program.

DALLAS—Shanjula Harris woke up early every morning in the homeless shelter to help her children get ready for school. After she dropped them off, she returned to the shelter, put on her nicest clothes and started walking.

“Every day, Lord knows, I’d walk up and down town and ask for work. And I did it every single day,” Harris said.

Harris had worked for years as a medical assistant at a Dallas hospital, but when she lost her job in 2009, she had nowhere to go. She and her three children—Deon, 14, Precious, 13, and Twquan, 12—were forced to move into a shelter the day before Thanksgiving.

“Since I’m the only provider for my family, when I lost my job, it was very unusual,” Harris said. “I’ve never lost a job before. It was hard … nobody ever wants to be homeless.”

From homeless to hopeful

Harris’ story isn’t unusual. More than 79,000 people experience homelessness on any given day in Texas. Women—most often single women with children—head about 85 percent of homeless families.

“One thing I did (in the shelter) was I prayed a lot,” Harris said. “There were a lot of things I didn’t understand. And some days I didn’t feel like praying. But I knew I had to, because I knew it wasn’t me by myself. I had my kids to think about, too.

“You hear mothers say, ‘I won’t eat to allow my children to eat.’ You know, you hear that, but to actually witness it or have to do it is totally different from just hearing it. I had some days like that.”

In March 2010, Harris received the break she needed when she was offered a job at Baylor University Dental School in Dallas. A few weeks later, she came to Buckner Family Pathways, a self-sufficiency program for single-parent families seeking higher education, where she and her three children could live in their own apartment on the Buckner Children’s Home campus.

“I always wanted to live somewhere there were lots of trees. When I drove up and saw all those trees, I thought, this is beautiful,” she said.

Today, Harris is attending Kaplan University to obtain her degree in psychology while working full time. She hopes to go to medical school after she graduates and be a licensed psychiatrist. The opportunity to study and work full time was an answer to her prayers.

“Buckner Family Pathways has changed my life from having nothing to having something,” she said. “If I wasn’t here, there’s no way I’d be thinking about med school. There’s no way—I know that for a fact. It makes me feel good to know I have a goal set. I want my children to see me graduate, to say: ‘My mom did it. She was a single parent raising three children by herself. If she can do it, I can do it.’”

JoAnn Cole, senior director of campus and family programs for Buckner, said empowerment is the ultimate goal for Buckner’s seven family self-sufficiency programs across Texas.

“When a mother learns that she is worth something, that she can provide for her family and her children see that transformation happen, lives are changed. Generations are changed for the better,” she said.

Buckner currently supports more than 130 single-parent families each year through self-sufficiency programs in Amarillo, Dallas, Lubbock, Lufkin, Midland and Conroe. A new Family Place program will open in Houston in 2011.

From highway to home

Lisa Wallace studies outside class at Angelina College in Lufkin. Wallace is working toward her degree in radiation technology while living at Buckner Family Place. (PHOTO/Buckner)

Lisa Wallace spent most of her adult life on the road. She was a truck driver many years, but when she had her son James eight years ago, she quit. “I can’t have that kind of life and be a mom,” she said.

She moved from Texas to Portland, Oregon, after her divorce, but an unexpected snowstorm combined with car trouble caused Lisa to lose her job in early 2009.

“In Portland, if you’re two weeks late on your rent, they can legally evict you, which is what happened to me. I had to sell everything I owned,” she recalled.

Wallace sold all her possessions to move back to Texas where she moved in with a family friend in Hawkins until she could afford to pay rent. Once she was back on her feet, she thought everything would be OK. But another layoff and health problems knocked her down again.

“I didn’t know what was wrong. It got to the point where I couldn’t move my arm. On New Year’s Day, I finally drove myself to the hospital and within three to four hours, I was in surgery,” she said.

Wallace’s gallbladder was infected and doctors had to remove it immediately. When she recovered, she found herself homeless once again. Her landlady helped find her a new place to live: an abandoned storage trailer behind one of her friend’s house.

“It was the end of January, really cold. We had no running water. The place was completely gutted. There was no kitchen, no sink, no stove, nothing like that,” she said. “I had to bring gallons of water in every week. I had a camping shower that came in really handy.”

Bill Holmes, pastor at First Baptist Church in Hawkins, told Wallace about Buckner Family Place when she was in the hospital. She said this glimmer of hope is what kept her going through the dark times.

“I was depressed, but I had Buckner in my sights,” she said. “I knew that it would come to an end soon.”

In August 2010, she and James moved into Family Place in Lufkin. She had sold her car to make student loan payments in order to be eligible for new school loans at Angelina College.

“I was really excited. It’s such a nice place. The housing is exceptional. James was extremely happy because he had his own room again. We had a shower; he loves to play in the bathtub. We could cook, had a real stove,” she said.

“Midge and Brenda (caseworkers at Buckner Family Place) are my heroes. I’ve never really had a female influence in my life that was positive, and being around these ladies, I realized there’s actually nice women in the world,” she said.

Wallace spends most of her time studying now, walking back and forth between Buckner Family Place and Angelina College, working towards her degree in radiation technology.

“I didn’t think school was ever going to be a possibility again. And the concept of being a full-time student, that was incomprehensible. I’m excited, I’m looking forward to finishing and going out and being a new person.”

James also is learning the importance of school, she said.

“He sees me studying and wants to help me with my homework. Him seeing me go onto school, him being there to see me graduate, it’s going to have a huge impact on his life. He’s going to think that’s exactly what I have to do. I will make sure that it happens for him.”

Transformed life

Michelle Swink found herself trapped in a whirlpool in Aspermont. She was depressed, using drugs and going nowhere fast when she found out she was pregnant at the age of 19.

Michelle Swink plays with her son, Wyatt, outside their apartment at Buckner Family Place in Lufkin, Texas. Swink, a former drug user, said Wyatt was a blessing to her life and a “wake-up call.” (PHOTO/Buckner)

“I went down a tough road. It’s sad to admit what was important about my life then, but God blessed me with Wyatt. Me being pregnant with Wyatt was unfortunately a wake-up call,” she said.

She tried single parenting for a while, but things continued to spin in place. One day, her grandparents told her about a program in Lufkin called Buckner Family Place.

“It was a dream come true,” she said. “It changed my life by putting me on the path I needed to be on.”

Since moving into Family Place, Swink has finished her associate’s degree at Angelina College and is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches. She spends most of her free time studying and playing games with her 3-year-old son Wyatt.

“The most important thing is our kids get to watch us cross the stage when we graduate from college,” she said. “My motivation comes from seeing Wyatt go to school. I want a better life for myself and my son.”

Swink said she’s learned the importance of creating a “happy home” for her family, giving her new strategies and coping skills to overcome bad habits.

“Brenda, Midge and Holly are outstanding people, you can call them anytime,” she said. “They help you shape your life for the better.

“My whole life I’ve been a caterpillar. Through the Buckner program, I’ve become a butterfly,” she said.

To learn more about Buckner transition programs like Family Place and Family Pathways, call (214)758-8050.

DALLAS—Texas Baptist Men collected more than 3,500 cases of bottled water April 21-23 and have begun distributing it to firefighters and victims of Texas wildfires statewide this week.

TBM put out a call for bottled water a few days before it started accepting it for firefighters and wildfire victims. Texas Baptists responded mightily to that call, said Mickey Lenamon, TBM associate executive director.

One woman carried two cases of bottled water with her on a cross-town bus ride. Then she walked with the water another two miles to get it to TBM’s headquarters in east Dallas.

“Our Baptist community has responded to the call to help our neighbors who are caught in the devastating wildfires,” he said.

“We had no idea how many people would respond, but God opened the hearts of His people and they brought us 3,511 cases of water. Now, Texas Baptist Men is taking water this week to the affected area. If your church needs water to give to their people, please contact us (214) 828-5177.”

The men’s ministry is working with the state of Texas and Texas Baptists to distribute bottled water to people who need it. Fire departments across the state have indicated they are running out of drinking water for firefighters and for victims of the fires.

WASHINGTON (ABP) – Two American church-state experts say Friday’s British royal wedding holds lessons about why the marriage of church and state is a bad one.

Anticipating nuptials for Prince William and Kate Middleton at London's Westminster Abbey, the Washington Post’s On Faith blog posed a question April 26 about why, even in secular societies like the United Kingdom, people still turn to places of worship for rituals like coronations, weddings and funerals.

Brent Walker

Panelist Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said for him a more interesting question is how a country like England with deep Christian roots can become so secular in the first place.

Walker surmised that one reason is privilege afforded to an established religion – in this case the Church of England – “sows the seeds of its own attenuation.”

“State support for religion tends to rob religion of its vitality and, for some, turns it into a mere ceremonial exercise,” said Walker, an ordained Baptist minister. “This is one reason why I object so strongly to efforts in the United States to use tax dollars to support religious education and church ministries, allow officially sanctioned prayer in the public schools, and tolerate government-sponsored religious symbols.”

Another panelist, Barry Lynn of American United for Separation of Church and State, noted the irony that in a country with an official church only one in 10 people attend religious services weekly.

The Church of England formed early in the Protestant Reformation after Pope Clement VII refused over a number of years to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon. The church in England recognized Henry as supreme head of the Anglican Church in 1531. If Prince William ever ascends to the throne, he will play the same role in the church.

Lynn, also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, said that relationship between church and state causes several things to happen.

Barry Lynn

“First, official ceremonies, including weddings, are held at the place where church and state commingle: the church building itself,” Lynn wrote. “Second, the public ends up finding no need to send resources or put in any time to buttress the fortunes of something that the government is already supporting. Finally, the very idea that a government would select an official religion and, by implication, that God blesses a particular denomination, is itself anathema even to many theists.”

Walker said that even in highly secular societies, non-religious people often continue to turn to religion to “solemnize” important life events because of tradition and “a deep-seated sense of longing for the divine.”

“Religion does a lot better when government gets out of the religion business and leaves it to its own devices,” Walker concluded.

Supporters have called it “the book that changed the world.” Detractors have derided it as archaic and inaccurate. But few dispute the impact the King James Version of the Bible has made over the last four centuries.

Arguably, no other book has had the widespread influence and lasting significance of the King James Version of the English Bible,” said Jeffrey Straub, professor of historical theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minn.

Although popularly known as the Authorized Version, the King James Bible of 1611—unlike the Great Bible of 1539—never carried an edict by king or bishop commanding that it be read in churches. Even so, for at least half its 400-year history, King James reigned over other translations.

How it was created

Contrary to popular misconception, King James did not translate the Bible that bears his name. But he assembled the committee that produced it over the course of seven years of translation, deliberation and review.

“It did not just drop down from heaven on a sheet and end up at the Red Roof Inn,” quipped Scott Carroll, research professor of manuscript studies at Baylor University.

When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England after his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, died in 1603, he inherited a divided Church of England. Puritans within the Anglican Church promptly presented King James the Millenary Petition detailing a long list of grievances.

In response, he convened a conference at Hampton Court the following January. King James dashed the Puritans’ hopes by rejecting virtually all of their demands and letting them know he would not tolerate religious nonconformists.

However, the king responded positively to a call for a new translation of the Bible into English. He saw it as a way to unify the Church of England and displace the Geneva Bible, which he believed undercut the office of bishop and divine right of kings.

A Torah, with a smaller scroll on top displaying the book of Esther, was on display at Baylor University as part of the Green Collection.

So, King James assembled 47 scholars to work under the direction of Bishop Richard Bancroft to create a new translation, using the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 as their guide. In 1611, the King James Bible was published.

Within two generations, the translation’s language became part of the Book of Common Prayer. And within about two centuries, it beat out competing translations as the preferred Bible of the English-speaking world.

Literature & language

At a time when many people bemoan a general lack of biblical literacy in American society, speakers continue to quote snippets from the King James Bible—although often without even knowing it.

The translators of the King James Bible preserved Hebrew idioms such as “fly in the ointment,” “sour grapes,” “skin of your teeth” and “fat of the land.” They also contributed expressions such as “sign of the times,” “holier than thou” and “straight and narrow.” Some literary analysts have asserted the King James Bible is second only to the writings of Shakespeare as a source of common English expressions.

“The King James Bible brought about profound changes in literature,” said Lamin Sanneh, professor of mission and world Christianity and professor of history at Yale University. He spoke at a conference sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

Indeed, from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln to the fiction of Herman Melville and William Faulkner, echoes of the King James Bible can be heard in American literature and language, said Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If there is a single attribute readers attach almost reflexively to the King James Version, it is eloquence,” Alter told the Baylor conference.

Perhaps ironically, the King James Bible translators preserved the beauty of the original language in the Hebrew Bible most effectively in the narrative prose passages, rather than in its poetry, he noted.

“Homespun Anglo-Saxon vernacular offered a good English equivalent of the plain diction of Hebrew” in prose, he said. “It captures the evocative force of the original.”

But in the poetic passages—most notably Psalms and Job—translators demonstrated “indifference to the cadences of compactness of the Hebrew,” Alter said. Even so, they produced classic English in the process.

“After 400 years, its grand language still rings strong,” he said.

Impact on Great Britain

Until the 18th century, the King James Bible competed with multiple other English-language translations for use in churches throughout Great Britain, said David Bebbington, professor of history at the University of Stirling.

“It was not yet a sacrosanct cultural item,” he said.

However, as romantic sensibilities and “esteem for the old” grew in England, so did marked appreciation for the 1611 translation. Instead of looking down on the King James Bible as outdated and vulgar, it came to be seen as “freighted with wisdom,” he noted.

Particularly as revolutions occurred in the American colonies and in France, the British rallied around the Authorized Version as a national treasure “undergirding the fabric of the social order,” Bebbington observed.

When the British and Foreign Bible Society began printing and distributing copies of the Authorized Version, its reach extended to every part of the British Empire, he noted.

“The Authorized Version became a symbol of national culture,” he said.

Ironically, as new English translations have proliferated, the key defenders of the Authorized Version in Great Britain have been secular members of the “cultural elite” who view it as a literary treasure and a few conservative evangelical Christians who view it as divine revelation, Bebbington observed.

“In 2011, the Authorized Version is more warmly appreciated by public intellectuals than by believers in the pew,” he noted.

Impact in the United States

The King James Bible provided “an indispensable reference point” to Americans in the 19th century, said Mark Noll, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.

In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the people of the Union and the Confederacy who “read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” Everyone understood Lincoln referred to the King James Bible.

“It’s not that all the people were Bible readers,” Noll noted, but a Protestant consensus rooted in a common Bible shaped society and culture. “That changed after the end of the war.”

Increasing numbers of non-English-speaking immigrants and the claims of higher criticism that called into question preconceived attitudes about Christianity and the Bible meant a diminished adherence to the King James Bible.

“Internal fault lines became permanent fixtures in American Protestantism,” Noll said. By the time the King James Bible marked its 300th anniversary in 1911, he observed, those fissures could be seen clearly in representative speeches by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan.

The social gospel civil religion expressed in speeches by Roosevelt and Wilson, as well as the anti-intellectual populism to which Bryan appealed, lacked the kind of deep biblical resonance and specific foundation in the King James Bible that naturally had permeated Lincoln’s speeches 50 years earlier, Noll concluded.

Today, the language of public speakers in the United States may be even more impoverished, because they cannot use allusions from the King James Bible with assurance their listeners will understand. Instead, they must rely on more generic references to faith.

“Platitudes, even when biblical, are platitudes still,” he said.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.—The preface to the King James Version of the Bible captures Barclay Newman’s respect almost as much as the holy words the translation contains.

And the longtime translator for the American Bible Society is disappointed modern editions of the world’s most popular version do not include the 11-page opening, simply called “The Translators to the Reader.”

Newman served as a translation consultant in the Asia Pacific region with the United Bible Society 42 years. In 1984, he was asked to research, plan and organize the American Bible Society’s Contemporary English Version of the Bible with Eugene Nida. Newman translated all the Bible except 12 Old Testament books. His wife, Jean, served as editorial associate to Newman and two other translators on the CEV committee.

The Bible society published the CEV New Testament in 1991, the entire Bible in 1995 and the Bible with the Apocrypha in 1999.

The translators of the KJV 1611 edition might be appalled at the reverence some individuals hold for it, Newman believes. The Bible scholar has a facsimile of the 1611 edition.

“In this preface the translators reveal their intentions, concerns, methodologies and even uncertainties with such openness that makes practicing translators want to insist that it be required reading for all King James lovers and serious Bible readers,” Newman wrote, with Charles Houser, in "Rediscovering the Preface and Notes to the Original King James Version."

The KJV translators wanted to make Scripture plain and understandable to the masses. “But how shall men meditate in that which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? …. Indeed, without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well without a bucket or something to draw with.”

The translators faced opposition, as well. Many church leaders of that day wondered why a new translation was needed. While King James had his own, perhaps less-than-holy, reasons, the translators explained in the preface that the Bible in common language opened the Bible to everyone.

“But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canann, that it may be understood even by the very vulgar,” the KJV translators wrote.

The translators also were well aware that people could develop a strong relationship to the words of one translation over others. But they believed in “equality of language,” Newman contends, and analyzed the context as well as the words.

“People tend to become defensive and protective of their religious icons,” Newman said. “But if you read the preface, then you can’t hold on to the idea of its superiority.”

The King James committee believed the translation did not diminish the holiness of the word. “We affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English set forth by men of our profession … containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it,” the translators wrote.

That desire to reflect the holiness of the word in an understandable way to people who generally hear, rather than read, the Bible prompted the CEV translation. “The society decided to do the translation on the conviction that we needed something with oral readability,” Newman said.

A good translation, he contends, “ought to communicate the message of the Bible clearly in terms that they can understand when they hear it.”

WACO—Like the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel’s “wheel in the middle of a wheel,” King James-only churches represent a resilient subculture within the subculture of American fundamentalist Protestants, some scholars insist.

King James-only churches believe God preserved the inerrancy of the 1611 translation of the English Bible—perhaps even using it to correct errors in earlier versions of Scripture, said Jeffrey Straub, professor of historical theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minn.

“Few issues have had the kind of polarizing effect that the battle over Bible versions in general, and the battle for the KJV in particular, have had within some segments of American Protestantism,” Straub told a group during a conference at Baylor University marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

For King James-only Christians, he explained, “the use of the King James 1611—as opposed to corruption of the KJV which include the New King James and even the New Scofield Reference Bible which updated certain words within the text, rendering it a corruption of the original KJV—has become the litmus test for Christian orthodoxy. The sign of a biblical church becomes the Bible version used from the pulpit.”

The King James-only movement grew largely out of opposition to newer translations of the Bible—first the Revised Version of 1881 and American Standard Version of 1901 and later the Revised Standard Version of 1952 and those that followed, he noted.

Peter Ruckman, founder of Pensacola Bible Institute, became one of the movement’s most strident and extreme advocates over the last 40 years, Straub explained.

“Many of his views are idiosyncratic with regard to the general teachings of most KJV proponents. For example, Ruckman believes the (King James) 1611 sometimes is superior to any Greek text,” he said. “That is, when there is a discrepancy between the KJV and the manuscripts, … then the KJV should be considered authoritative.”

While Straub views the King James-only movement as “hyperfundamentalism” as distinguished from “mainstream” fundamentalism, he noted its staying power.

“There does not appear to be any realistic hope that the KJV-only position will die out any time in the near future,” he said. “If anything, the Internet has made the dissemination of even the most extreme forms of KJV-onlyism accessible to a worldwide audience.”

Scholars who study the King James-only movement need to look not just at rational arguments about the superiority of certain manuscripts but at the human side of the movement as reflected in the lives of individual Christians and the churches where they worship, said Jason Hentschel, a graduate of Baylor’s Truett Theological Sem-inary and doctoral candidate at the University of Dayton.

Hentschel spent several months attending worship services and interviewing leaders and members of Charity Baptist Church, a congregation in Kettering, Ohio, that adheres to the “inerrancy of Scripture as preserved in the King James Bible.”

Fear of doubt and a desire for an unchanging objective standard seems to motivate the church members’ commitment to the King James Version of the Bible, he asserted.

“Their insistence that the KJV Bible is the physically present, perfect, inerrant word of God reads, in many ways, as an attempt to certify their Bible’s authority and thus ultimately their faith and salvation,” Hentschel said.

“What Charity seeks is certainty and not confusion, objectivity not subjectivity, constancy not fluctuation. Believing the King James Version of the Bible to be the only authentic, historically and divinely preserved revelation of God is an attempt to achieve such certainty.”

The King James-only proponents, as exemplified at Charity Baptist Church, believe a perfect God not only inspired a perfect Bible but also preserved a perfect Bible, he explained.

“In this line of thinking about inerrancy, the King James Bible is the perfect word of God, which means it is eternally immutable. To add or subtract from it, to argue that we need something more or something different than what is found in it, is to argue against that Bible’s perfection and thus against God’s promise to provide humanity with salvation,” Hentschel said. “Authority and perfection here represent two sides of the same coin.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—An evangelical businessman from Oklahoma has planned a multimillion-dollar, high-tech, interactive museum of the Bible.

The plan was announced first amid 130 biblical artifacts exhibited at the Vatican Embassy and later at a conference at Baylor University in Waco honoring the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible.

The exhibit included samples of Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant treasures from the future museum’s 10,000 manuscripts and texts, one of the world’s largest biblical collections.

Some are as old as pages of the gospel in the Aramaic of Jesus’ time; as political as the only Bible edition ever authorized by the U.S. Congress; and as treasured as first editions of the majestic King James Version, displayed near the king’s own seal.

These will form the basis for “a public museum designed to engage people in the history and the impact of the Bible,” said museum sponsor Steve Green, owner of the Oklahoma City-based craft chain Hobby Lobby.

The Green family has amassed the world’s largest collection of ancient biblical manuscripts and texts including his favorite—the 1782 Aitken Bible authorized by Congress.

While the location, architecture and even the museum’s name stil arel in the works, 300 highlights of the Green Collection will go on tour beginning at the Oklahoma Museum of Art on May 16. The traveling exhibit, called Passages, will move to the Vatican in October and New York City by Christmas.

Meanwhile, scholars at 30 universities worldwide are burrowing into rare texts from the collection and pioneering technology that enables them to bring out the ancient words in the most faded and printed-over manuscripts, said Scott Carroll, director of the collection and research professor of manuscript studies at Baylor University.

Carroll’s primary focus has been finding and authenticating ancient manuscripts that can deepen—or alter—“our understanding of the word of God. The Bible didn’t come from the sky as tablets handed to Moses on Mount Sinai and then wind up in a hotel desk drawer,” Carroll said.

“The Bible is not in a lockbox. It changes across time,” he said, pointing to the earliest known manuscript fragment of Genesis, a section of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a Jewish Torah (the five books of Moses) from the time of the Spanish Inquisition, and more.

Passages also will address the dramatic struggles behind the texts, as translations are a matter of life, death and eternal fate to believers. The illustrated frontispiece of one King James Version shows the king flanked by people who would be burned at the stake within 10 years.

“Translating a Bible is a soap opera of moving political and spiritual parts,” Carroll said.

There already are American museums centered on the Bible. Conservative evangelicals established the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., to walk people through a literal reading of the Bible. And the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan was established by the American Bible Society, which has a Christian evangelizing mission.

Green and Carroll say their museum, opening by 2016, has no theological agenda.

“Think of the great new science museums that take you inside how things work, or the Folger Library’s public and scholarly center for Shakespeare,” Carroll said. “This will be our approach to the Bible. It’s a museum, not a ministry.”

Highlights of the Green Collection include:

• The Codex Climaci Rescriptus, one of the world’s earliest surviving Bibles. Using a new technology developed by the Green Collection in collaboration with Oxford University, scholars have uncovered the earliest surviving New Testament written in Palestinian Aramaic—the language used by Jesus—found on recycled parchment.

• One of the largest collections of cuneiform clay tablets in the Western Hemisphere.

• The second-largest private collection of Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which are unpublished and likely to contribute substantially to an understanding of the earliest surviving texts in the Bible.

• Previously unpublished biblical and classical papyri, including surviving texts dating to the time of the now-lost Library of Alexandria.

• The earliest-known, near-complete translation of the Psalms to (Middle) English.

• Some the earliest printed texts, including a large portion of the Gutenberg Bible and the world’s only complete Block Bible in private hands.

WACO—When many readers describe the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, the word “majesty” tends to enter the conversation.

It’s no wonder, according to Laura Knoppers, professor of English at Penn State University.

The translators King James enlisted to create a new version of the English Bible had an agenda—to provide scriptural support for the divine right of kings, she asserted.

The Dort Bible, a rare second-edition of the Authorized King James Bible, was published in 1613. (RNS PHOTO/Pablo Richard Fernandez)

But Protestant dissidents such as John Milton, in turn, used the same language the translators appropriated to emphasize democratic principles, she observed.

Knoppers examined different views on the term “majesty” in her presentation to a convocation sponsored by Baylor University and its Institute for Studies of Religion that marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

When nonconformists brought a list of grievances to King James at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, James later boasted he “peppered the Puritans soundly” and turned aside nearly all their demands. However, for his own reasons, he embraced their desire for a new English-language translation of the Bible.

A uniform translation could unify the English-speaking people of Great Britain, James reasoned. Also, the king realized, he could use the translation to shore up the Anglican Church and “amend and polish what was amiss” in existing English translations.

For the most part, the translators employed a variety of English words to express a single Hebrew or Greek word.

“One important exception was the reiterated word ‘majesty,’” Knoppers observed. In that case, the translators reversed normal procedure and applied that single English word to multiple words in the original biblical languages. The word “majesty” is used 72 times in the text, headings and notes of the King James Bible and 18 times in the opening dedication and preface, Knoppers discovered.

“Use of the word ‘majesty’ linked the earthly monarch with God himself,” she concluded. The translation blurred distinctions between the attributes of God and attributes of the earthly king.

However, in both his polemical writing and his epic poetry, Milton took the opposite ap-proach—stripping majesty from the office of the king and portraying it as resting upon the people at large.

“For Milton, the emphasis was on the power and dignity of the people” rather than the monarch, Knoppers said.

In Paradise Lost, Satan seeks to claim as his own majesty that rightly be-longs to God and to the couple in the garden created in God’s image—a metaphor for “kingly usurpation of divine majesty,” Knoppers ex-plained.

“Milton dramatizes the danger of usurping the characteristics of God,” she said.

WACO—Translation of Scripture grows naturally out of a central Christian theme—God making himself known by identifying with the commonplace, said Lamin Sanneh, professor of mission and world Christianity at Yale University.

“Translation into the common idiom is emblematic of the incarnation in which the Word became flesh,” Sanneh told a conference sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. “Christianity is embodied faith. It must have a face. … Christianity is a translated religion, and a translated religion is necessarily interpreted.”

Christianity’s view of its holy book, the Bible, stands in sharp contrast to the Islamic attitude toward the Quran, he explained.

Muslims believe the angel Gabriel directly gave Mohammad the pure word of God in Arabic, and it remains immutable. Muslims see value in the words of the Quran, even if they are not understood.

Christians, on the other hand, believe the Bible’s value rests in the message it communicates about God, and efforts to make it understandable to varied cultures and languages are encouraged.

“Once the Quran is translated, it is no longer the Quran,” said Sanneh, who grew up Muslim and attended Islamic schools in Gambia at an early age before becoming a Christian.

“For Christians, the word of God is not sealed in idiom.”

Pentecost signaled the expansion of Christianity beyond the boundaries of one language, race and culture, he noted.

“No language is forbidden, nor is any one language a prerequisite,” he said. Christian mission takes a utilitarian view of language—God provides multiple means of making the gospel known in ways comprehensible to different people in different places, he said.

Sanneh recalled be-ing “scandalized” the first time he heard a question asked by Christian missionaries: “What name do you call God?” For a Muslim, Allah is the one and only name of God, but Christians understand God makes himself known in the language of each of the world’s people, he learned.

“Christianity is both universal and particular,” he explained. “God speaks all the languages of the world.”

God’s revelation of himself in Jesus Christ transcends culture, but at the same time, it must be translated into the language and cultural expressions to each specific culture, Sanneh observed.

“Christianity has to be embraced by an indigenous source before it takes root,” he said. “Understanding is at the heart of the gospel.”

The King James Version of the Bible demonstrated “a power intrinsic to itself that transcended the circumstances of its translation,” he observed. As English-speaking Christian missionaries translated the Bible into other languages, they often used the King James Bible as their guide, and in spite of its flaws, that version proved itself remarkably well-suited to cross-cultural expression.

“The King James Bible brought out the strength and beauty of the simple and ordinary,” he said. Its earthy idioms translated well into societies that lived close to the land, and its lyrical quality appealed to nonliterate people with oral traditions.

“Oral culture is a formidable challenge to a religion of the book,” he noted. However, the beauty of the King James narratives—even when translated into other languages—demonstrated “the triumph of the warm voice over the cold pen.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—For evangelical author John MacArthur, the best way to explain a Christian’s relationship to Jesus is what appears to be a simple metaphor—one often used by the Apostle Paul himself.

“To be a Christian is to be a slave of Christ,” writes MacArthur, pastor of a nondenominational church in Sun Valley, Calif.

His new book, Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ, explores varied practices of Bible translators regarding the controversial term. It’s also drawing mixed reactions among African-American Christians whose ancestors were slaves in 19th-century America.

While biblical texts use the word “slave” to describe actual slave-master relationships in biblical times, English translators often opt for the word “servant” when describing a believer’s relationship to God, MacArthur explained.

“The stigma was just too great with that word to use it to refer to believers, even though they knew that was what ‘doulos’ meant,” MacArthur said, referring to the Greek word for “slave.”

In most translations, the Apostle Paul describes himself as “a servant of Jesus Christ” in Romans 1:1, but the Southern Baptists’ Holman Christian Standard Bible has him using the term “slave of Jesus Christ.”

It’s the same in Luke’s famous Nativity account, where the Virgin Mary calls herself “the Lord’s servant” or “the handmaid of the Lord” in most versions, while the Holman Bible calls her “the Lord’s slave.”

The New International Version, a top-selling Bible whose latest edition was released March 1, continues its translations of Paul as “a servant of Christ Jesus,” and Mary as “the Lord’s servant.”

Some African-American leaders have long stayed away from the slave language, and they differ with MacArthur’s view that it’s the best way to relate to God.

“Your will is broken in slavery, and I don’t think God wants to break our will,” said Joseph Lowery, a retired United Methodist pastor and icon of the civil rights movement. “I’m a little slow to accept the word ‘slave’ because it has such a nasty history in my tradition.”

MacArthur argues that using the word “slave” is just one of many concepts in the Bible that might be unappealing—hell’s generally not a crowd-pleaser, either—but are nevertheless key to reading and understanding the sacred text.

“You can’t let the Bible usage of the concept of slavery be informed by the abuses of the African slave trade,” said MacArthur, who devotes pages in his book to describing first-century Roman slavery. “That’s not the context in which it was written.”

But MacArthur said there’s an important theological meaning to the term “slave,” however politically incorrect the word may be.

“You give obedience to the one who has saved you from everlasting judgment,” he said.

When the more inclusive New Revised Standard Version of the Bible was being developed in the 1980s, its translation committee sought advice from African-American scholars about whether to use “slave” or “servant.”

Cain Hope Felder, a New Testament professor at Howard University School of Divinity, recommended “slave” when describing the institution of slavery, which was a part of the Greco-Roman world known by biblical writers. But he said descriptions of church leaders are “a totally different matter” and “servant” is more fitting.

Mitzi Smith, an associate professor of New Testament at Detroit’s Ashland Theological Seminary, said it is inappropriate to “sanitize” the word by changing it to “servant,” but she disagrees with the idea that the master-slave relationship is the ideal image for God and Christian believers.

“We have so many more examples to show how to be in relationship with God,” she said. “A slave-master relationship is not one of willing obedience and what God seeks is willing obedience and a relationship of love with us.”

Other African-American leaders, however, embrace both the use of “slave” throughout the Bible and MacArthur’s interpretation of it.

Dallas H. Wilson Jr., vicar of St. John’s (Episcopal) Chapel in Charleston, S.C., hosted a three-day work-shop in early February to promote MacArthur’s book.

“I think what we have done is we have translated slavery ‘servant’ and watered it down,” said Wilson, who leads a predominantly black congregation of about 70 people.

“Instead of condemning the system, we should condemn the abuses.”