Search Results

This chapter explores the history of the Bible Society movement in the United States and the role that Elias Boudinot played in trying to create a national Bible society. It begins with an examination of Boudinot and his vision for the American Bible Society (ABS). Boudinot was an American founder with a deep and abiding interest in biblical studies, particularly prophecy. He believed that the Bible must play an important role in resisting what he believed to be a secularizing culture in the early United States. This chapter concludes by examining how Boudinot brought several local and state Bible societies together in preparation for an 1816 meeting in New York City in the hopes of establishing the ABS.

This chapter covers two dimensions in the history of the American Bible Society (ABS). First, it examines the ABS approach to the Bible and argues that the ABS took a distinctly Protestant approach to the Bible Cause through its principle of “no note and comment.” By publishing Bibles without interpretive notes or commentary, the ABS was making an effort to be as ecumenical as possible. This played out particularly in a controversy over how to translate the Greek word immerso. Second, this chapter examines the way in which this Protestant approach to the Bible led to a staunch anti-Catholicism. The Catholic church in America warned its parishioners against receiving ABS Bibles and, on occasion, even burned these Bible publicly.

This chapter situates the American Bible Society in the larger history of benevolent societies in early nineteenth-century America. In the year prior to the Civil War, American evangelicals made concentrated efforts to bring the revival zeal of the Second Great Awakening to the pressing social issues of the day. After a brief discussion of this Awakening, and the role that the American Bible Society played in it, this chapter chronicles the relationship between the American Bible Society and several benevolent organizations, including the American Temperance Movement, the American Sunday School Movement, and the American Sabbath Association.

This chapter focuses on the 1960s and early 1970s and the American Bible Society’s campaign “God’s Word for a New Age.” It concentrates on the way the ABS adjusted and adapted to science, technology, and the 1960s counterculture. The ABS made deliberate attempts during this period to reach African American communities in urban areas and find new places where women could take a more prominent role in the Bible Cause. The chapter also covers the ABS response to Supreme Court decisions ending mandatory Bible reading in public schools. The chapter ends with the ABS response to the war in Vietnam.

This chapter traces the American Bible Society’s (ABS) first General Supply, an attempt to bring a copy of the Bible to every family in America between 1829 and 1832. This was an unprecedented effort to spread the gospel to the American frontier and strengthen the Christian character of the nation. The chapter offers a chronicle of the movement of Bible distribution throughout the American frontier, the difficulty of such a task, the process in which it was managed from the ABS’s New York headquarters, and why, in the end, the General Supply ultimately failed to reach its lofty goals.

This chapter explores the role that the American Bible Society (ABS) played in the American Civil War. It begins with the ABS position on slavery and its inability to distribute Bibles directly to slaves due to restrictions in its constitution. The ABS position on slavery drew the ire of several American benevolent societies, including the American Anti-Slavery Society. The chapter then examines the role of Bible distribution among Civil War soldiers during the war. It focuses on how many soldiers read the Bible and how the ABS worked with the U.S. Christian Commission to bring Bibles to the front lines of combat.

This chapter explores the role of the American Bible Society (ABS) in distributing the Bible to Italian, Polish, Swedish, and other immigrants coming to American shores at the turn of the twentieth century. The ABS believed that it was essential to bring the Bible to these immigrants in order to assimilate them to an American way of life and bring them into the Protestant faith. Similar tactics of assimilation were used by the ABS in the American West as Bible salesman and ABS agents encountered native American populations, Mormons, and those heading to California in search of gold.

This chapter explores the place of the Bible in the 1970s. It focuses on the way the American Bible Society (ABS) came up with innovative ways of distributing the Bible in this decade despite the economic recession. This included the continued use of new technology, an appeal to popular culture, Bible distribution at major events, the use of volunteers, and the development of Bible Courtesy Centers in neighborhoods across the country. The chapter also focuses on the more visible role of women in the work of Bible distribution and notes the story of Alice Ball, the first female executive secretary of the ABS.

This chapter examines the American Bible Society (ABS) presidency of Eugene Habecker and his attempt to do three things at the ABS: establish a new CEO organizational mode that completely changed the way the ABS operated and placed a single person at the head of the organization, move the ABS toward a mission of scriptural engagement which meant that teaching people how to “use” the Bible would replace distribution of the Bible as its highest priority, and move the board and the Society as a whole in a more evangelical direction by challenging the mainline and liberal Protestants who had dominated its membership for much of the twentieth century.

This chapter explores the role that the American Bible Society (ABS) played in post-Civil War Reconstruction. With the Civil War complete, the ABS needed to restore relationships with its southern auxiliary Bible societies. When this was accomplished, the ABS believed that its attempts at bringing a Christian nation back together in the wake of the war were complete. This chapter discusses the ABS work with freedmen in the South and the implications of its understanding of Reconstruction for race relations. By allowing southern auxiliaries to make local decisions about Bible distribution many of the freedmen were not supplied with the Bibles that they needed. It includes several anecdotes that reveal the local and religious dimensions of Reconstruction.

This chapter examines the American Bible Society (ABS) in the 1950s. It focuses on the various ways in which the ABS distributed Bibles in this period with a particular focus on how the Bible Cause thrived amid the post-war revival of religion in the United States. The chapter covers the way the ABS used print culture, new technology such as television, film, and the “finger fono” to spread the message of the Bible and strengthen the Christian culture of the nation. The chapter ends with the ABS role in the controversy surrounding the publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

The introduction lays out some of the key themes that will be covered in The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (ABS). Throughout its 200-year history the ABS has focused its attention on two themes: first, it has distributed the Bible as a means of heralding the “good news” of Jesus Christ. Second, it has used the Bible as a tool for building a Christian civilization. The ABS has accomplished these goals by working with all Christian denominations and churches, particularly those who have been in a position of religious and cultural power in the United States.

With the end of slavery and the failed attempt to integrate freedmen into southern white society, the American Bible Society (ABS) worked within the Jim Crow South through the establishment of the Agency Among the Colored People of the South or simply “The Colored Agency.” This chapter grounds the formation of the Colored Agency in the ABS move away from auxiliaries and toward a system of “agencies.” The Colored Agency was the first such agency to exist. The rest of the chapter chronicles the role of the Colored Agency in distributing Bibles to African American in the South and eventually the entire United States in the years between Reconstruction and World War II.

This chapter explores the translation and cultural history of Good News for Modern Man or Today’s English Version. It starts with the translation theory of dynamic equivalence behind the translation and introduces translator Eugene Nida, one of the most important Bible translators of the twentieth-century and the head of ABS translations, to the book’s narrative arc. This chapter examines the Good News for Modern Man as a cultural phenomenon, exploring its mass-market appeal, its place among American Catholics, and the story of its illustrator, Anne Valloton. Finally, this chapter examines the reviews of the Good News Bible and the letters the ABS received about its publication.