So… who am I?

About the Liberation and Inclusion Translation

This project didn’t begin as a public translation. It grew out of years of study, pastoral formation, living in Christian community, counseling work, and the realization that how we translate Scripture shapes how people experience God, themselves, and one another.

As I kept returning to the Greek text, I noticed something that had bothered me for a long time: much of what makes the good news good—the liberating movements, restorative teachings, radical inclusion, healing, empowerment, embodiment, and insistence on loving justice in the New Testament—wasn’t coming through clearly enough in English. Sometimes that was because of theological tradition. Sometimes it was because of habit. Often it was because familiar religious language had trained us to be numb to what the text was actually doing.

“Word-by-word” doesn’t mean neutral

The LIT is translated word-by-word directly from the Greek texts, working closely with grammar, syntax, and historical context. In that sense, it is word-based. But Greek is not a code with fixed English equivalents, and translation is never a mechanical process.

A single Greek word often carries a range of meanings:

• Charis can mean grace, favor, generosity, gift, or gratitude.
• Sarx can mean flesh, body, family, embodied humanity, or self-preservation instincts.
• Pistis can mean faith, faithfulness, commitment, trust, allegiance, or confidence.

Every translation has to decide which sense is doing the work in a given passage, whether to preserve ambiguity or clarify it, and whether to echo inherited theological language or let the context speak more directly.

The LIT doesn’t pretend to avoid those decisions. Instead, it makes them deliberately, choosing English that reflects what the Greek is actually communicating in context, often letting go of familiar phrasing to do that more clearly.

Why the language often sounds unfamiliar

Many English translations rely on traditional church vocabulary that has accumulated centuries of doctrinal meaning. Sometimes that language is helpful. More often, it narrows, distorts, or mutes what the text originally conveyed.

In the LIT, you’ll see terms rendered in ways that may feel unfamiliar at first:

• ekklesia as “called community” (traditionally, “church”)
• pneuma as “life-breath” (traditionally, “spirit”)
• euangelion as “triumphant message” (traditionally, “gospel”)
• soterion as “liberation” (traditionally, “salvation”)

These choices aren’t meant to be provocative. They are attempts to surface the social, relational, and political dimensions of the text that can disappear behind religious shorthand. Where a choice might raise questions, the translation is annotated with footnotes so readers can see the Greek term, its range of meanings, and the reasoning behind the rendering.

Not a paraphrase, not a frozen literalism

Although the LIT often reads fluidly and with unfamiliar phrasing, it is not a paraphrase. Every line is translated from the Greek, and every rendering stays within the recognized semantic range of the source language.

At the same time, it resists a kind of literalism that treats English words as interchangeable containers for Greek ones. The goal is not to reproduce Greek grammar in English, but to communicate meaning faithfully and responsibly to modern readers who don’t live in the world of the first century. ested.

You could think of the LIT as an annotated translation where interpretive work is made visible rather than hidden behind the appearance of neutrality.

In dialogue with the text, not with tradition

Many translations are shaped primarily by doctrinal clarity, liturgical use, or reverence as defined by later theological frameworks.

This translation takes a different starting point. It prioritizes:

• historical and linguistic integrity,
• attention to power, community, and marginalization in the text,
• and reader comprehension over inherited piety.

That means it does not claim neutrality. Translation is always interpretation, and interpretation always reflects values. Rather than disguising those values, the LIT names them so readers can engage the text with awareness.

Core commitments

• Faithfulness to the text
  Translation choices are grounded in grammar, syntax, and historical context, not doctrinal shortcuts.
• Clarity over religious technical language
  Traditional theological terms are reconsidered when they obscure meaning, import later doctrine, or soften the text’s original force.
• Attention to harm and trauma
  Where Scripture has been used to shame, exclude, or justify harm, the translation asks whether that harm arises from the text itself or from how it has been rendered and taught.
• God looks like Jesus
  The character of God is interpreted consistently with Jesus’ life, teaching, and self-giving love, rather than through abstract or punitive frameworks.
• Belonging and restoration
  The translation highlights the Bible’s recurring concern with communal repair, shared dignity, and life together rather than fear-based exclusion.

What this translation is—and isn’t

The LIT is a theological, interpretive translation rooted in historical-critical scholarship and shaped by concern for lived experience. It is offered as one faithful contribution among many.

It is not a claim to be the most literal or most neutral Bible, not a replacement for other translations, and not a final word on the meaning of Scripture.

Readers are encouraged to read it alongside other translations, commentaries, and voices, engaging it as part of an ongoing communal conversation.

An invitation

This project exists because translation shapes theology, and theology shapes lives.

For many people—especially those who have been harmed or excluded by how Scripture has been translated and taught—those choices have mattered deeply.

The Liberation and Inclusion Translation invites readers to slow down, notice where translation choices matter, question inherited language, and encounter the text as a living witness to justice, healing, and shared belonging.

It doesn’t ask for agreement.
It asks for engagement.

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