Buy a NIV Bible and support pornography

It's a laugh a minute in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. Not intentional humor, mind you. In recent times, for example, the LCMS has moved to dump the awful New International Version as its Bible of choice and adopt the even more horrible English Standard Version (ESV). Of course, church apparatchiks are not content to simply make a dignified change - they've got to justify it, especially as the NIV is much loved among conservative Christians.

Enter LCMS publishing guru-in-a-dog-collar Paul McCain, armed with a bucket of natural fertiliser and a large, bristly pasting brush.

I have said this often, but it always catches people by surprise when they find out that Zondervan is owned by Harper-Collins, which in turn, is part of the Ruppert (sic) Murdoch media empire. It is important for Christians to realize that supporting the NIV contributes to the support of Murdoch’s corporation, which is one of the world’s largest providers of pornography. Something to think about.

Yup, you read that right. Buy a NIV Bible and your dollars are funding the icon of Australian ick, Rupert Murdoch, and putting righteous Christian bucks at the disposal of pornographers! Oh wow, who'd have thunked it?

Murdoch may or may not be a sleezeball, but consider for a moment that the so-called Christians who owned Zondervan willingly sold out for a truck-load of mammon. Under its current owners Zondervan continues to operate as a conservative Christian imprint. Okay, I'm proud to say that you could count Zondervan titles on my bookshelves with the fingers on one hand, but that's because they're usually complete rubbish. Murdoch, as McCain also helpfully points out, also owns HarperCollins, which is one of the great imprints with a significant list of popular titles by some tremendous writers in the field of biblical studies and theology.

If I was Paul I'd be more concerned with the quality of product that carries his Concordia imprint. Concordia doubtless has lily white hands when it comes to porn, but spiritual porn and crappy pseudo-science is another matter. Take Erich von Fange's In Search of the Genesis World for example, which I reviewed in four parts here.

A case of beams and splinters.