The interview has been edited, as usual, for clarity and length. So Perry's findings deserve much wider attention, which is why Salon reached out to discuss what he discovered and what to make of it. Evangelical Christians in particular are supposed to revere the literal truth of the Bible, not fiddle around with it to make it sound better to contemporary audiences. It's one thing for politicians to hypocritically switch positions mid-air, or hold contradictory positions simultaneously, but it's quite another thing for theologians - or at least it's supposed to be.
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A similar strategy is used to handle antisemitic language as well, Perry shows. In revisions from 2001 through 2016, Perry shows, the word "slave" first gains a footnote, then moves to the footnote and then disappears entirely - in some contexts, like Colossians 3:22, though not others - to be replaced by the word "bondservant," which could be described as a politically correct euphemism. " Whitewashing Evangelical Scripture: The Case of Slavery and Antisemitism in the English Standard Version ," looks at how successive translations have changed in the English Standard Version of the Bible, for which Grudem serves on the oversight committee. But a new study by Samuel Perry, co-author of " Taking America Back for God " (I've previously interviewed his co-author, sociologist Andrew Whitehead ), finds Grudem himself involved in much the same thing. Long before Donald Trump made attacks against "political correctness" a key theme of his 2016 election campaign, evangelical leaders like Wayne Grudem, author of " Systematic Theology ", have railed against it, particularly when they see it invading their turf - with gender-neutral language in Bible translations, for instance.