Is Bible Translation “Imperialist”? Challenging Another Anti-Christian Bias in the Academy

Abstract

A strong anti-Christian bias exists in the modern American university. It has been documented by George Marsden in his 1994 book, The Soul of the American University, and by a growing number of other scholars. The modern university response to the history of Bible translation movements provides another example of the anti-Christian bias in the academy. There is a generally held assumption that Christian missions and Bible translation activity have served as destroyers of primitive and other cultures. Bible translators have been viewed as pawns if not active participants in U.S. colonialism and imperialism, and this is unforgivable in higher education circles. Recently, however, Lamin Sanneh, a scholar at Yale University, has disputed these assumptions. This paper supports Sanneh's viewpoint and suggests that Bible translation has served to preserve and support indigenous cultures. It includes a description of one of the earliest Bible translation efforts, that of the ninth century in what is now the country of Slovakia.

Presented July 23, 2005, at the Christian Scholar's Conference, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California.