Open-access translation
A trauma-informed, liberationist translation designed to be readable, teachable, and auditable.
An initiative rooted in the LIT Bible
Liberating Scripture Collective
Liberating Scripture Collective (LSC) is the organization founded by Brandon Vélez Johnson to support the Liberation and Inclusion Translation (LIT) and build the wider ecosystem around it.
The Collective creates open-access, trauma-informed translation, learning resources, and pathways of spiritual support that serve liberation, healing, and belonging.
“Get involved” can mean offering feedback, collaborating on resources, or helping build sustainable support for the work.
What LSC is
The Collective is the umbrella organization that holds the Liberation and Inclusion Translation and extends it into teaching, public conversation, and practical support. Think of LIT as the translation work, and the Collective as the organization building the ecosystem around it.
The Collective exists because translation is never “just text.” It becomes teaching, practice, community, accountability, and care. The Collective is designed to make scripture more transparent, more honest about power, and less likely to be used as a tool of harm.
Why it exists
Many people were taught to treat the Bible as a weapon, a test, or a loyalty pledge. The Collective exists to make a different kind of engagement possible, one grounded in consent, context, and the dignity of real human lives.
The aim is not to create a “safe” Bible by sanding down hard texts. The aim is honesty, transparency, and a liberating ethic, so readers can actually see what the text is doing, how it has been interpreted, and what kinds of communities it tends to produce.
What we make
Open-access translation
The LIT Bible is a trauma-informed, liberationist translation approach that prioritizes clarity, transparency, and accountability to the source text.
It is built to be readable, teachable, and auditable, so readers can understand not only what the text says, but why translation decisions were made.
Courses and learning resources
Short courses, study guides, reading companions, and practical tools to help people engage scripture with context, care, and critical honesty.
The goal is accessible formation, not gatekeeping, giving people handles for reading well without needing a seminary degree.
Podcasts and public teaching
Conversations about translation, theology, liberation, and spiritual practice, with guests and collaborators who bring rigor and lived experience.
This is where the “why” becomes audible, and where the community of interpreters becomes visible.
Conduits to spiritual support
Curated pathways to aligned spiritual companionship and care, aimed at helping people find consent-based, trauma-aware support.
This is not about funneling people into institutions. It is about helping people find safe, fitting forms of support for their actual lives.
A collaborative community
The Collective invites people into the work through feedback, conversation, and partnership, because liberating scripture is not a solo project.
Collaboration can include readers, scholars, practitioners, artists, and people with lived experience whose insight has been ignored by “official” interpreters.
Non-commercial access
The core resources remain freely accessible online. Sustainability is pursued without locking the work behind paywalls.
Financial support, when needed, is aimed at infrastructure and longevity, not extraction.
What LSC is not
- Not a church: The Collective does not exist to control belief, membership, or religious identity.
- Not a paywall: The core work is not locked behind subscriptions or donor tiers.
- Not a single-person brand forever: Brandon founded LSC, but the long-term aim is a shared community of accountability, collaboration, and stewardship.
How to connect
If you want to collaborate, support the work, or track what’s launching next, start here:
LSC is in active development. This page will evolve as projects launch and collaboration pathways become clearer.