The Southern Baptists denomination, with a long history of defending literal interpretations of the Bible have released the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), which many of its 15 million members do not know is “gender-inclusive.” The church has passed numerous resolutions since the late 1990s publicly condemning Bible translations that attempt to utilize gender-inclusive language, including several revisions of the New International Version.
Inclusive translations abolish many gender-specific terms. For example, they may change “father” to “parent,” “son” to “child,” and “man” to “mortal.” Translations also add words and phrases not found in ancient manuscripts for the sake of inclusion. A common example is the translation of “brother” as “brother or sister.”
While some scholars defend translation decisions like this on the basis that they most clearly express the meaning of each passage, the SBC disagrees, saying that such political correctness threatens the integrity of the Holy Scripture because it is part of a larger cultural push to erase distinctions between genders and diminish masculinity.
The SBC commissioned its own Bible translation “to champion the absolute truth of the Bible against social or cultural agendas that would compromise its accuracy.” Called the Holman Christian Standard Bible, it was released in 2003 and was widely accepted. But when a revision was released last fall, a number of the same “gender-neutral” elements that the SBC previously condemned were inserted. The gender-neutralizing pattern is present in its translation of the Old and New Testaments and parallels the logic laid out on the New International Version website.
Although the SBC’s translation isn’t totally gender-neutral, there are hundreds of verses that fall within the “gender-neutral” category condemned in Southern Baptists’ own resolutions and illustrate the quiet progressive changes that have been deliberately inserted into this conservative denomination’s Bible translation.
Such changes in Southern Baptists’ Bible translation of choice are more than a mere denominational matter. The SBC is America’s largest Protestant denomination and one of its most conservative. If its leaders and members are tolerating a softer, more inclusive approach to gender, it might be a bellwether of things to come in the culture war over gender.
“To many the Bible is as a lamp without oil, because they have turned their minds into channels of speculative belief that bring misunderstanding and confusion. The work of higher criticism, in dissecting, conjecturing, reconstructing, is destroying faith in the Bible as a divine revelation. It is robbing God’s word of power to control, uplift, and inspire human lives.” Acts of the Apostles, page 474.