**Summary.** *The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation* (Priests for Equality, 2007) is a complete Christian Bible translation that systematically removes exclusively masculine language for both God and humanity, restores the Hebrew divine name YHWH, and uses gender-expansive imagery throughout. It is one of the most thoroughgoing inclusive-language translations in print and is used by St. John's UCC Chambersburg in responsive readings alongside the *New Century Hymnal*. --- ## Publication and Origins *The Inclusive Bible* was published in 2007 by Sheed & Ward / Rowman & Littlefield, completed by **Priests for Equality** — a lay movement within Roman Catholicism founded in 1990 that advocates for women's ordination, inclusive language, and full equality in church life. The project began with an *Inclusive New Testament* (1994) and took over a decade to expand to the full Bible. The translation is not a paraphrase. It is a fresh translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, undertaken by a team of scholars who held inclusive language as a primary rather than secondary commitment. The result is a translation that reads differently from both traditional translations (NRSV, NASB, ESV) and standard gender-neutral revisions (NRSVue, NIV 2011). --- ## Key Translation Principles ### 1. Inclusive language for humanity Generic "man" and "mankind" consistently become "people," "humanity," "humankind," or "mortals." "Brothers" as address to mixed assemblies becomes "brothers and sisters" or "friends." Individual masculine pronouns in contexts that apply universally are recast with plural or gender-neutral forms. ### 2. Gender-expansive language for God This is the most theologically significant distinctive. The translation refuses to render God exclusively in masculine terms. Divine imagery draws on the full range of biblical metaphor — including feminine images already present in the Hebrew (God as nursing mother in Isaiah 49, God as midwife in Psalm 22, God as woman searching for a lost coin in Luke 15). Where the text offers a choice, translators chose expansive language. ### 3. YHWH restored Many English translations substitute "LORD" (small caps) for the Hebrew divine name YHWH, following a Jewish tradition of not pronouncing the name. *The Inclusive Bible* instead renders YHWH directly — a choice that restores the specificity and intimacy of the Hebrew name. This is notable in responsive readings: hearing "YHWH, I will extol you" (Psalm 30, used at St. John's UCC on 2026-04-19) sounds and feels different from "O LORD, I will exalt you." > [!note] Liturgical effect > The YHWH restoration is itself a theological act. It recovers the personal, covenantal register of the Psalms and resists the flattening that "LORD" introduces. For a congregation moving away from authoritarian-lord theology (as in the NAR critique), hearing YHWH rather than LORD carries a different emotional and theological weight. ### 4. Christological language Titles for Jesus are handled carefully. "Son of Man" becomes "the Human One" — a choice that recovers the Aramaic *bar enasha* without the masculine-singular emphasis and with stronger connection to the Danielic "one like a human being" (Daniel 7:13). "Son of God" is retained. "Lord" (Greek *kyrios*) for Jesus is also retained in narrative contexts. --- ## Use at St. John's UCC Chambersburg St. John's UCC pairs *The Inclusive Bible* with the *New Century Hymnal* (1995) as the two primary inclusive-language reference texts in the congregation's worship life. Documented uses in the wiki: | Date | Text | Context | |------|------|---------| | 2026-04-19 | Psalm 30 (responsive reading) | NL441: Paul's Conversion; YHWH restored; gender-expansive divine address | | 2026-04-26 | Psalm 34:1–10 | NL442: Paul and Silas; Acts 16 service | The use of *The Inclusive Bible* in responsive readings — rather than the NRSV that most mainline churches default to — is a deliberate congregational formation choice. It places congregation members in the habit of hearing Scripture with expansive divine imagery every week. (Source: [[2026-04-19 St Johns UCC Pauls Conversion]]; [[2026-04-26 St Johns UCC Paul and Silas]]) --- ## Theological Significance ### Within progressive Christianity *The Inclusive Bible* enacts the progressive hermeneutical principle that **translation is interpretation** — there is no neutral rendering. Every translation choice encodes a theology of who God is, who humanity is, and who the text addresses. Choosing *The Inclusive Bible* is a statement that the congregation takes feminist and liberation hermeneutics seriously enough to let them shape the weekly hearing of Scripture. This sits within the tradition documented in [[Inclusive Language Hymnody]]: the same impulse that rewrote hymnody in the 1980s–90s (New Century Hymnal, Miriam Therese Winter's collections) also produced new translations of the biblical text. (Source: [[2026-04-21 CFT — Inclusive Language Music and Hymns]]) ### Critique from traditional evangelicalism From evangelical and Reformed perspectives, gender-expansive translation of divine names is a category error — God revealed the divine self in masculine terms (Father, Son, King, Lord), and translation should preserve rather than revise that revelation. The critique is that *The Inclusive Bible* imposes a contemporary ideological preference on the text. The wiki does not adjudicate this; it names the hermeneutical disagreement. The evangelical position interprets "masculine language for God" as revelatory and authoritative. The inclusive-language position interprets it as culturally conditioned and contextual — the imagery was chosen to communicate to ancient audiences, not to bind the tradition to those specific images permanently. > [!contradiction] > **Evangelical/Reformed view:** Divine names and pronouns are revealed, not culturally conditioned. "Father" is not metaphor but address. Translating away from these terms alters revelation itself. > **Progressive/feminist view:** All translation is interpretation. Biblical Hebrew already contains feminine divine imagery (Isaiah 49:14–15; 66:13; Psalm 22:9–10); translations that suppress this are doing theology by subtraction. *The Inclusive Bible* restores what standard translations omit. --- ## Priests for Equality Priests for Equality (PFE) is a lay-led organization within Roman Catholicism, founded 1990 in the US. Despite the name, it is not a priests-only group. Its core commitments are women's ordination, inclusive language, and LGBTQ+ welcome. The *Inclusive Bible* is its primary contribution to the broader Christian tradition. The use of a Roman Catholic-originating translation by a UCC congregation illustrates the cross-traditional flow of feminist biblical scholarship — the concern for inclusive language cuts across denominational lines even when the institutional positions differ sharply. --- ## DEIB Lens The translation project was driven in part by the documented experience of women, non-binary people, and others for whom exclusively masculine language for God and humanity creates a weekly experience of exclusion. For congregations with LGBTQ+ affirmation (including UCC Open and Affirming congregations), the choice of *The Inclusive Bible* signals that the welcome extends to the language of Scripture itself, not only to polity statements. --- ## Open Questions > [!question] > Does St. John's use *The Inclusive Bible* for all responsive readings, or selectively? The wiki has documented Psalm 30 and Psalm 34, but the pattern is not yet fully confirmed. A note in the bulletin format would clarify this. > [!question] > The *New Century Hymnal* (1995) contains hymn texts that were revised for inclusive language — sometimes generating controversy about specific textual choices. Is there a parallel body of critique for *The Inclusive Bible*'s specific translation choices that is worth tracking? This would be relevant to any worship-planning conversation that references both texts. --- ## Related Pages - [[Inclusive Language Hymnody]] — parallel project in congregational song - [[Progressive Christianity]] — hermeneutical tradition - [[St. John's UCC Chambersburg]] — primary user in this wiki's context - [[Caroline Saxton]] — selects *The Inclusive Bible* for responsive readings - [[2026-04-19 St Johns UCC Pauls Conversion]] — Psalm 30 use documented - [[2026-04-26 St Johns UCC Paul and Silas]] — Psalm 34 use documented - [[2026-04-21 CFT — Inclusive Language Music and Hymns]] — parallel inclusive-language tradition in hymnody