A few days ago I received the latest number of "The Riplinger Report," the occasional email newsletter of KJV-only spinmeister (meisteren?) G. A. Riplinger. The lead article was an announcement of "[o]ur new KJB evangelist, Stephen Shutt":
Our outreach is expanding with our radio show, hosted by KJB evangelist and missionary Stephen Shutt (who is married to our daughter Bryn Riplinger Shutt). . . .
Stephen worked in Christian radio for over three years and was functioning as the station's chief operator, when he left to serve the Lord as a KJB evangelist for us and a missionary for Bearing Precious Seed and Local Church Bible publishers of Lansing Michigan.
The last I heard, the evangel was still repentance and faith in the living Christ, who died and rose from the dead to redeem sinners. I've met plenty of KJV-onlyists over the years for whom the "perfectly preserved Word of God for the English-speaking peoples" was their first article of faith. But I think this the first time I've met someone who openly proclaimed himself an "evangelist" and a "missionary" for the cause. Riplinger has been grinding away at the same street organ for ages, and she's gone further and further off the rails with each book.
In any case, the "good news" of the King James Bible is not the Gospel of Christianity. It's a new religion. We could call it KJVanity. Chop off the first two letters, and it's not far off the mark.
Meanwhile, in the same newsletter, Riplinger promotes a petition "to alert publishers that we do not appreciate their tampering with the spelling and orthography of the KJB." Apparently, some publishers have taken it upon themselves to revise the text to Americanize or modernize the spelling. Horrors!
It's amusing. KJV-onlyists continually harp on the "copyright" bandwagon, asserting that God's Word should not be copyrighted, and the KJV (unlike the modern versions) carries no copyright, so it can be printed and distributed freely. Yet when a publisher actually treats the KJV like a public-domain document, suddenly Riplinger and her trained monkeys act like it should be copyrighted and they are the de facto copyright holders, dictating to editors what they may do with the text. You gotta laugh.
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As I understand it, the KJV copyright is owned by the British crown. It's just never been honored by American publishers.
ReplyDeleteThat's quite true. However, it's long been a plank of the KJV-only mythology that the KJV was not under copyright.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's only true outside of the UK. I've observed that many KJV-onlyists become quite Anglophilic when it comes to the spelling and orthography of their Bibles, but then turn around and become quite Amerocentric when it comes to the legal status of them. Ironic, actually.
Right. I've been told, in light of the "fact" that 7 is the number of perfection, that "Saviour" is actually the inspired spelling. "You can have your 6-letter Savior," they say.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I should correct my earlier comment. The Crown's copyright has never been honoured by American publishers.