Sifting Through Biblical Translations In A Woke World

Have I unwittingly entered the Big Tent of the Bible thumpers?

Thom Nickels | July 19, 2026

The woke virus that by now has pretty much claimed academia has even spread into the world of religion and Bible translation, wreaking havoc on original texts that have been a mainstay for believers and scholars for over a thousand years.

The contamination of Bible translations has certain blatant earmarks and is easily detectable. Advocates for traditional translations say that if a new Bible text downplays the existence of Hell or judgment from God, you know that it has been modified. After all, we live in an age where all the deceased have “heavenly birthdays,” or become instant angels after death.

Nobody wants to talk about Hell.

Another red flag is downplaying the deity of Jesus Christ, or eliminating altogether the virgin birth.

Bill Muehlenberg, a scholarly evangelical pastor and writer of a blog called “Culture Watch,” calls this “twisted Scripture,” and says the writers of these translations are “revisionists who conflate description with prescription.”

Muehlenberg believes every effort should be made to ensure “that no contemporary political, ideological, social, cultural, or theological agenda is allowed to distort the original meaning of [scriptural] text.”

After all, why should ancient scripture be revised and recast as woke? “Agenda” is the word that comes to mind here. But this agenda is hardly new. As far back as 1895, 18 women on a serious feminist mission came together to work on and publish “The Woman’s Bible.” The driver behind the project was Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), one of the leaders (along with Susan B. Anthony) of the women’s rights movement.

Stanton was also a Temperance crusader who believed that women had a right to divorce a drunken husband. She believed that marriage was merely a civil contract and had nothing to do with God or the supernatural. One might describe her religious beliefs as “free form Unitarian.” She maintained that men and women had the right and ability to determine religious truth for themselves.

The Woman’s Bible was an attack on religious orthodoxy and so-called “patriarchal privilege.” It was more of a political treatise/rant than a Bible. It was a Bible without a single consoling spiritual passage, but with plenty of political rhetoric to fire up the culturally disaffected.

The most beautifully........

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