Tapu Misa: Casting the socialists out of the temple

The folk at Conservapedia - the "conservative encyclopaedia you can trust" (unlike that apparent hotbed of liberalism Wikipedia) - have made a shocking discovery. The Bible is full of liberal bias.

Yes, you read that right: liberal bias.

Well, of course. Conservapedia's creators appear to have homed in on a truth (though they of course call it "liberal distortion") that the Marxists never got: the Bible is on the side of the poor and oppressed. It's never been approving of the excesses of the rich and powerful.

Witness the 2000 or so verses in the Bible proclaiming concern for the poor and vulnerable: the widow, the stranger, "the least of these".

The wealthy, on the other hand, have to work out how to get around the sobering message that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

Indeed, the Bible's pages are suffused with social justice concerns and other dangerous liberal ideas, like human rights and egalitarianism. (If everyone is made in the image of God, then how can it be right to support economic systems that leave so many without the means to meet basic human needs?)

This is all very well if you're a non-believer who thinks of the Bible as outdated and irrelevant, but somewhat problematic for a particular kind of conservative Christian who needs to believe that the inerrant word of God supports his belief in the free market, tax breaks for the wealthy, small government, big business, the death penalty and every utterance of talk radio and Fox News; but doesn't believe in such liberal obsessions as universal healthcare for his neighbour (especially if it means putting his own at risk), or global warming.

Think former US President George W. Bush, who had no problem with the contradictions between the principles of his faith and his self-interested interpretation of them.

No matter, Conservapedia has a solution. It has launched the Conservative Bible Project to produce a "fully conservative" translation of the Bible, expunged of what it calls "liberal wordiness" (because liberals apparently use a "high word-to-substance ratio"), "gender inclusive" language, and "socialistic words" like "comrade" and "labourer". "Government", it has decided, is a liberal word, whereas "volunteer" is a conservative one.

The Conservative Bible would exclude what it calls the "later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic", like the adulteress story, in which Jesus saves an adulteress from an angry mob, with the words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone".

The problem? "Liberals cite this passage to oppose the death penalty", and that's wrong apparently because the Mosaic laws "clearly state death as a punishment for sin".

Apparently, conservatives would have stoned the adulteress.

And, of course, the Conservative Bible would express "Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning".

Or, as American comedian Stephen Colbert quipped recently: "The Bible says Jesus fed the poor. It should say he fed the rich and let the loaves and fishes trickle down."

According to the earnest people at Conservapedia, the Bible is full of "socialistic terminology", which "improperly encourages the 'social justice' movement among Christians".

Improperly? Well, there goes the basis for centuries of Catholic teaching on social justice and the idea of the common good.

Throughout the ages, the Bible has been used by the misguided, the insane and the downright evil to justify all manner of injustice - including slavery, misogyny, war and racism.

That it should also be enlisted to prop up a right-wing economic agenda that flies in the face of Jesus' teachings on poverty and wealth shouldn't come as any great surprise.

Some commentators have labelled the project hubristic. It's certainly that, but I think Conservapedia has done us a service. By trying to rewrite the Bible in their own image, its creators have highlighted exactly what the Bible is not.

In his 2005 book, God's Politics, Jim Wallis writes that "when the poor are defended on moral or religious grounds, it is certainly not 'class warfare', as the rich often charge, but rather a direct response to the overwhelming focus on the poor in the Scriptures, which claim they are regularly neglected, exploited and oppressed by wealthy elites, political rulers and indifferent affluent populations".

Wallis says it's precisely because religion takes the problem of evil so seriously that we "must always be suspicious of too much concentrated power - politically and economically - either in totalitarian regimes or in huge multinational corporations that now have more wealth and power than many governments".

"It is indeed our theology of evil that makes us strong proponents of both political and economic democracy - not because people are so good, but because they often are not and need clear safeguards and strong systems of checks and balances to avoid the dangerous accumulation of power and wealth."

As last year's financial meltdown showed, this is as true now as when the Bible was first written.