The Conservative Bible Project

It has been five years since Andrew Schlafly of Conservapedia started his "conservative translation" of the Bible. This mostly involved Schlafly switching out words and phrases from the Bible and replacing them with his own. "Rich" has been replaced with "miserly." "Murder" has replaced "kill." "Generous" has replaced "liberal." And, strangely, "boundless generosity" has replaced "grace."

In late summer/early fall of 2009, this little project of Andy's went viral. And it wasn't so much the actual "translations" themselves that were the butt of much internet mocking. Rather, it was the declaration at the beginning of the thing that was the source of most laughs. You see, the reason Andy was doing this is because modern translations of the Bible were corrupted by "liberal bias."

Wow…that's…solid evidence…I guess? I wasn't expecting much from a guy who thinks that the New International Version of the Bible has a pro-abortion bias. No, seriously. He really thinks that. He also thinks that modern Biblical translations have been corrupted by socialism as well, and the following quote is his evidence:

ZOMG! A conspiracy, no-doubt! 

This project was featured on the Colbert Report when Andy went on the show for an interview in December 2009. The interview is actually mentioned on Conservapedia as Andy apparently believes that he and his project were cast in a positive light by Colbert for some reason. Andy also coined the phrase "best of the public" in an interview about the project with the Associated Press. It was in this brilliant response to criticism he received from experts at religious studies:

"The best of the public is better than a group of experts."

Andrew Schlafly: Sarah Palin's soul-mate, ladies and gentlemen.

Media interest in Andy's stunt died down around summer of 2010 and the project hasn't been mentioned much until recently. The project is still ongoing, and Richard Schiffman at Alternet has an overview of some of the more recent "translations." Highlights include Andy replacing the word "hypocrite" with "deceiver" because the word "hypocrite" is "often misused politically against Christians" and this lump of inane blather that Andy no doubt thought sounded like critical thinking:

"The simple fact is that some of the precursors of Jesus did know what they were doing," Schlafly points out, proving that, "Jesus might never have said it at all."

I going to bet that this line of logic only applies to things Andy doesn't agree with.