# Why This Bethel Alumni is Calling Out the Passion Translation — Dusty May Taylor; hosted by Pastor Hansel and Natalie ## 🗂️ Triage — annotated highlights surfaced > [!note]- Cross Reference > - **Bethel never retracted Bill Johnson's TPT endorsement** — direct claim/counter-claim pairing with [[Is the Passion Translation Heresy - Bill Johnson Rediscover Bethel Series]]. #xref > - **TPT allegedly reverses glory attribution from God to people** — core textual example anchoring the "self-centering" critique. #xref ## 🧭 Bib capsule Dusty May Taylor (guest), hosted by Pastor Hansel and Natalie, "Why This Bethel Alumni is Calling Out the Passion Translation," Pastor and Wife (YouTube), 2026 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4mxmGrHvo ## 🧠 Author's thesis (Adler Q1+Q2) A 2012–2015 BSSM alumna and two hosts argue that The Passion Translation is marketed and shelved as a translation while functioning more like Brian Simmons' editorialized paraphrase — citing Logos-based Greek comparisons and the Minor Prophets investigation for claimed insertions, reversed meanings, and self-attributed poetry. In detail, they anchor the critique on a repeated glory-attribution reversal (people giving Jesus glory rewritten so Jesus gives glory to people), tie it to Bethel's broader "identity" teaching, and document institutional behavior (uncontested Bill Johnson endorsement, a bookstore removal-then-reinstatement, alumni-group moderation of the topic). Their frame is internal accountability, not attack: keep continuationist theology, drop TPT for standard scholarly translations. ## 🧩 Key arguments - TPT's problem isn't that it's poetic — it's that a paraphrase/commentary is mislabeled as a translation, which carries different truth-conditions. - A repeated glory-reversal pattern subtly re-centers scripture on human agency, which they connect to Bethel's New-Age-adjacent "already like God" identity teaching. - Institutional silence (no retraction, quiet bookstore reinstatement, moderated alumni posts) reads as unresolved internal disagreement — though the speakers flag this and the financial-motive claim as speculation, not proof. ## 🗒️ Notes — Literature atoms ### Bethel never retracted Bill Johnson's TPT endorsement > [!quote] > "I remember Bill Johnson he said that the Passion Translation is the best thing to happen to Bible translations." - **Where**: [19:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4mxmGrHvo&t=1170) - **Why**: The uncontested endorsement the whole accountability case orbits; pairs directly with Johnson's own defense video. ### TPT allegedly reverses glory attribution from God to people > [!quote] > "everyone was giving Jesus glory, and then Brian Simmons was like, No, it really said uh like, he gave glory to everyone." - **Where**: [08:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4mxmGrHvo&t=510) - **Why**: The core textual example — framed as a repeated pattern that removes human smallness before God. ### Candace Simmons describes an editorial, not translation, process > [!quote] > "There are many times where I was reading it and then I said, 'No, say it this way, it's better. You'll see it's better.'" - **Where**: [53:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4mxmGrHvo&t=3181) — relayed via Minor Prophets - **Why**: Used to argue TPT's process is literary editing, not scholarly translation — contradicting its "translation" label. ## 🔖 Permanent candidates - A resource's genre label sets its truth-conditions — Labeling a text a "translation" rather than a "paraphrase" or "commentary" invites textual-fidelity scrutiny the other genres don't, so genre mislabeling is itself a legitimate ground for critique independent of content quality. ## Links - [[NAR and Charismatic Authority Critique MOC]] — a former-insider accountability case documenting Bethel's institutional silence and moderation patterns around TPT. - [[Is the Passion Translation Heresy - Bill Johnson Rediscover Bethel Series]] — the defense side of the same controversy; read together for the fullest claim vs. counter-claim picture. - [[Charismatic Damage Control Runs on DARVO That Recasts Victims as Biased Outsiders]] — the attack-the-critic responses Dusty reports ("religious spirit," "you're so ignorant") match the DARVO pattern documented there. - [[A Genre Label Sets a Text's Truth-Conditions]] — the Permanent promoted from this note's translation-vs-paraphrase argument; the general rule behind the genre-label critique. ## ✅ Processing checklist - [x] Claim atoms carried from deep-read analysis - [ ] Permanent candidates reviewed for promotion - [ ] Version History Diff check