Davison's Doodle

Celebrating 400 Years of the King James Bible
by Martin E. Marty | November 29, 2010

Thanksgiving weekend gave those who live off or for the media an excuse to slow down, turn off some signals, and settle back to football, turkey, and family—or to shop. For those who keep the Christian calendar, yesterday was also a significant change-of-pace day, since it was the beginning of a new church year. Readers of Sightings who are distant from Christian observances cannot have escaped the carols and wreaths which resound and decorate public spaces. Looking for ways to celebrate the season and anticipate 2011, we were aided by an editorial from the Observer in the UK.

Here’s the deal: 2011 is the 400^th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, an event that merits observance far beyond the circles of librarians, antiquarians, and classicists. Anyone who keeps files on the fate of the KJV in the twentieth century and ever since will find many controversies to pass on the way to the book and its cultural import. Thus I have files, books, and personal recall of the way defenders of the King James edition fought off new translations. The Revised Standard Version, backed by the National Council of Churches, was scorned as “Stalin’s Bible” because it seemed to some to slight the virgin birth of Jesus. Burnings of the Bible at mid-century, when the Revised Standard Version appeared, drew attention just as the planned burning of the Qur’an recently did.

Expect debates all anniversary year over whether the authorizer of the KJV, King James I, was homosexual, bisexual, or falsely pointed to as “different” in his time as in ours. When fundamentalists have a slip of tongue or memory and speak of him as the “Saint James Bible,” selective readers of the evidence will pounce and proclaim him as a homosexual saint. This is a second distraction on the way to the celebration.

And there is much to celebrate, as the Observer editorial makes clear. More than any other writing, including the plays of Shakespeare, KJV did so much to formalize written English and do so with majesty. The Observer: “as well as selling an estimated 1bn copies since 1611,” it went into our literary bloodstream. Shakespeare needed 31,000 words to bless that bloodstream, while the KJV needed only 12,000.

Among the 12,000 words that the translating committee of King James adopted from the Hebrew and Greek were “long-suffering,” “scapegoat” and “peacemaker.” We might need all three as the antagonists line up on both sides of “Stalin’s Bible” and the sexually-complex battles mentioned above. Those who mourn the loss of the Version’s hegemony will side with Raymond Chandler, who said that the Bible was “a lesson in how not to write for the movies.” It was a lesson in how to write for elites and masses alike.

References

Robert McCrum, “How the King James Bible Shaped the English Language,” The Observer, November 21, 2010.

Global Warming and American Christianity
– Martin E. Marty

Those who long recognized that the public has to take a long view, should it wish to address global warming, learned in the recent election that they have to take a longer view. The Tea Party, which makes its first appearance in Sightings today, massively opposes small measures and even serious attempts to bring up the topic. Not a few Tea Partiers undergird their opposition with theology of the biblical sort. Last October 20 in The New York Times, John M. Broder did a close-up of typical action in campaigns at Jasper, Indiana. Global warming? “It’s a flat-out lie!” shouted the founder of the local T.P., basing his view on theologian Rush Limbaugh and “the teaching of Scripture. ‘I read my Bible. . . [God] made this earth for us to utilize.’” Lisa Deaton, a founder of Tea Partyish “We the People Indiana,” added gloss: “Being a strong Christian, I cannot help believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country, and it’s not there to destroy us.”

It would be easy to refute and dismiss such proclamations, but they are generously backed. Broden: “Those views in general align with those of the fossil fuel industries,” which subsidize—at the rate of [by now well over] $500 million in the last two years—lobbying against legislation that would help postpone The End. Such industries can always find some dissenter against the overwhelming scientific consensus which warns against the destruction of the planet. Ron Johnson, the new senator from Wisconsin, settles it all scientifically. Climate change? “It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity.” Or part of an every ten-thousand year cycle. Wait and see.

Bill McKibben, whom the utilities lobbyists and the Tea Partiers most hate, is an advocate of measures to confront climate change. In The New Republic, he writes: “On what is quite possibly the single biggest issue the planet has faced, American conservatism has reached a near-unanimous position, and that position is: pay no attention to all those scientists.” He skewers the “tiny bunch of skeptics being quoted by right-wing blogs.” McKibben, who includes churches as he rides the speaking circuit to awaken publics, is not a total pessimist. He thinks true conservatives, who would like to conserve the earth, will come to see through the conspiracy theorists, utilities lobbyists, and beyond the crack-pots—and help make sacrifices to bring about change.

McKibben, long a favorite of readers of The Christian Century, has begun to get support from editors who know what real conservatism means. So it was cheering to see LaVonne Neff commenting in Christianity Today on McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. She quoted stories identifying the author as “probably the nation’s leading environmentalist” and “the world’s best green journalist.” He is also, she notes, “a churchgoing, Sunday-school teaching Methodist, who wants to see Christians leading the environmental movement,” and makes a theological case for their doing so. McKibben argues for “small and local” ways to help confront the issue. Ms. Neff, contra Mr. Limbaugh and other theologians on the far right, argues that McKibben’s recommendations “fit well with Scripture’s respect for creation” and “its requirement to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

Many Catholics, Jews, and Mainline Protestants, who have worked this theme in their “social justice” preaching, rejoice to hear such evangelical voices. Neff writes, “McKibben is not a doomsday prophet,” but he is a prophet crying in our heating-up wilderness.

References
“Local is beautiful: Bill McKibben believes we can thrive on a planet that will never be the same,” Christianity Today, November, 2010.

John M. Broder, “Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith,” New York Times, October 20.

Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by (New York: Times Books, 2010).

—, “Hot Mess: Why Are Conservatives So Radical about the Climate?” The New Republic, October 6, 2010.