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The Message Bible is anti-racist.
I was recently reminded by a @DavidDark tweet that Eugene Peterson began translating the Bible into American to combat racism in his church.
You can find the story on pp. 130-136 in *Eat This Book,* but it’s worth quoting some of it here.
I was recently reminded by a @DavidDark tweet that Eugene Peterson began translating the Bible into American to combat racism in his church.
You can find the story on pp. 130-136 in *Eat This Book,* but it’s worth quoting some of it here.
“In the early 1980’s...a financial downturn had raised anxieties among many in my mostly middle-class congregation. Race riots flaring up in many of the cities of America...exacerbated the anxiety. The entire community in which I lived and worked was suddenly security conscious.
“Neighbors were double-locking their doors and installing alarm systems. Men and women who had never held a gun were buying guns. Racial fears developed into racial slurs. Paranoia infected the small talk I would overhear on street corners and in barbershops.
“To my dismay, all of this seeped into my congregation without encountering any resistance.
“My dismay soon turned to anger. How could this congregation of Christians so unthinkably absorb the world’s fearful anxiety and hateful distrust—and so easily?
“My dismay soon turned to anger. How could this congregation of Christians so unthinkably absorb the world’s fearful anxiety and hateful distrust—and so easily?
“Overnight, it seemed, they had turned their homes into armed camps. They were living defensively, guardedly, timidly. And they were Christians! I had been their pastor for twenty years, preaching the good news that Jesus had overcome the world, defining
“their neighbor with Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan, defending them against the status quo with Jesus’ story of the cautious servant who buried his talent. I had led them in Bible studies that I had supposed were grounding them in the freedom for which Christ had set us free,
“keeping their feet firmly in, ‘but not of,’ the world around us for which Christ died. And they were, before my eyes, paralyzed by fear and ‘anxious for the morrow.’
“As my anger and dismay subsided, I began plotting a pastoral strategy that I hoped would recover their identity
“As my anger and dismay subsided, I began plotting a pastoral strategy that I hoped would recover their identity
“as a free people in Christ, a people not ‘conformed to the word’ but living robustly and spontaneously in the Spirit. Galatians, [‘Paul’s angry, passionate, fiery letter that rescued his congregation from their regression to culture slavery’] seemed a good place to start.”
Now, in that light, read Galatians, especially Peterson’s American paraphrase of Paul’s definition of Christian freedom in Gal. 5. Tell me his litany of fleshly desires (vv. 19-21) doesn’t describe America to a T! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205%3A1%2CGalatians%205%3A13-26&version=MSG">https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...
