It seems outrageous, but either they really believe their own nonsense, or it’s one of the longest and most convincing trolling campaigns ever waged.
My vote is that it’s 100% sincere. One of Andrew Schlafly’s other misadventures involved harassing the head of a microbiology research team because they had shown evolution in bacteria in a laboratory. Sending formal emails to this one specific scientist seems well outside what someone who was just in it for the laughs would do.
Yah, chronicling the shenanigans at Conservapedia is one of RW’s strong points.
In an academic sense, no, revising the Bible is not heresy (though some branches of Christianity will call you a heretic for it anyhow). Every time one sect or another of Christianity wants to put out a new translation, they will also consider some revisions based on things like newly discovered manuscripts or breakthroughs in ancient linguistics.
That was not what Mr. Schlafly was doing, though. He was taking an already existing English translation of the Bible and rewording it to suit his politics. As such, yes, it would definitely be considered heresy by some people. In fact, his harshest critics were other conservative Christians, especially those with actual academic credentials in the field of Biblical Studies.
Conservapedia is absolutely wacky.
The curator, one Andrew Schlafly, once tried to write a new, improved, “more conservative” version of the Bible. But, Mr. Schlafly is neither a historian nor a linguistic scholar, and he couldn’t consult the source texts. So, his way of “correcting the liberal bias” found in modern translations of the Bible was just to change the words in a modern English translation (probably the 1611 KJV EDIT: Apparently Schlafly prefers the NIV) to better fit his politics.
One of the changes I remember reading about was altering the words in The Beatitudes to be things like, “Blessed are the managers, for they provide for their employees,” and such. He also deleted parts he didn’t agree with, like removing one of Jesus’ utterances from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” According to Schlafly, Jesus’ executioners knew exactly what they were doing and thus shouldn’t have been forgiven.
Honestly, I always liked getting up early on weekends (at least before I had kids). Those hours been 7 and 10 were mine in a way that my other free time wasn’t. Because everyone else wanted to sleep in, I had no social obligations and thus could do whatever I wanted. There was a certain joy to having all my weekend chores done early. Or, if I didn’t want to do chores, I could just relax and not worry about trying to align with anyone else’s schedule.
I’d say this is part of the “zeal of the convert” phenomenon, where someone who converts to a belief tends to be more fanatical than someone raised in that belief.
There’s probably bias in this observation, as a couple of very loud people can drown out dozens of others and make a trend seem more prevalent than it actually is, but I also have personal experience here.
Oof ouch my bones (?)