A clarification

Categories: life-and-musings, faith

Date: 09 November 2009 19:33:36

My inability to buy a bible is not evidence of some sort of anti-Christian persecution in the UK, or censorship, or any other "argh, it's the end of the world as we know it, and the Rapture is immanent!" crisis.

It is, however, evidence that I'm a ridiculously picky woman.

Sorry to disappoint the person who linked here screaming about all the above, but I would like to make it absolutely plain that had I wanted any of the following:

King James Bible (with or without the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha)
New King James Bible
New International Version
New Revised Standard Version
Message Bible
Good News Bible
Douay-Rheims Bible
New Jerusalem Bible
Jerusalem Bible
New American Bible
New English Bible
Comparative New Testament
Christian Community Bible
Catholic Truth Society New Catholic Bible
Navarre Study Bible
Greek Interlinear
Greek/Hebrew/English comparative Bible

I could have bought all of them, plus some others I can't remember (except it would have weighed a ton, I'd never have made it back to the office, and my bank manager would have cried).

I wanted a Revised Standard Version, and I now have a Revised Standard Version.

And I also have eight of the seventeen different editions I've listed above, which is greedy. Actually, if you count my Navarre New Testament which is currently in the tender clutches of the Royal Mail, I have eight-and-a-half (the Navarre is published as one book for the New Testament and separate books for the Old Testament, and I've just started buying them). Which, I think, places me firmly in the "damn lucky" camp.

When there are whole churches in some parts of the world who have to share Bibles among the congregation, who can't get Bibles in their own language, shrieking "persecution" because one whiny Londoner has made a totally unnecessary drama out of buying a particular translation does a grave disservice to those who are being genuinely persecuted. The biggest problem in England that I can see is is that most people regard Christianity, and other faiths, as completely irrelevant. And if something is irrelevant, why would you take it into account when drafting laws and setting public policy?