The Extreme Weirdness of Trying to Buy a Bible for My Kids

where are all the progressive children's Bibles?

Photo by Andrew Ebrahim on Unsplash

Despite my tumultuous religious upbringing, one thing I’ve always felt great about was the sleepaway camp I attended as a kid, which was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA. Sure, it featured Bible stories and songs, but its main emphasis was SWIMMING, which suited me fine.

My husband’s experience was more mixed: the camp he attended was fun activities followed by a lot of Hell talk. When it came time to send our own kids to sleepaway camp, we considered the secular ones (YMCA, Campfire, etc) and discovered they were 2-3x more expensive than Christian ones!

Of course, this is no accident. Many donors support these camps on the premise that they will “bring kids to Christ.” Some camps report weekly conversion numbers to these donors like some kind of warped attempt at salvation SMART goals. It’s another way that American Christianity feels more like a sales job than a family.

Being loving parents, the question became “What ratio of brain washing to added expense do we feel comfortable with?” After some research and debate, we settled on a camp affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the nation’s largest and most progressive Lutheran denomination.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see “Bible” on the kids’ packing lists, but I was. Both boys received picture Bibles when they were baptized as infants, but neither owned a “real” Bible. Backslidden as I was, I didn’t even know where to buy a Bible for them. Our neighborhood’s adorable indie bookstore, while heavy on anti-racist baby lit, seemed unlikely to have much Bible selection, so one Saturday my kids and I set off for suburbia to find a Barnes & Noble. After poking around for a few minutes, unable to find anything, I reluctantly approached the help desk. The young employee behind it would’ve tripped my gaydar even if she hadn’t been wearing a lanyard festooned with rainbow pins. Almost apologetically I asked for the Bibles.

“If it were up to me, they’d be shelved in the horror section,” she joked as she led us there. I felt the urge to explain the whole situation, announce my queerness, apologize on behalf of a church I wasn’t really part of anymore, but figuring she probably didn’t need to hear my life story, I simply thanked her for her help.

B&N had shelves upon shelves of children’s Bibles, with fancy leather covers and color features. Many were marketed along gender lines. It reminded me of the issue of Revolve my friends and I used to laugh at in college. There were pink “princess” Bibles and graphic novel “action” Bibles. Standing at the shelves with my kids, I felt torn between wanting them to find something appealing and feeling grossed out by the whole scene. Sometimes it feels like the bulk of American Christianity is moneychangers in the temple.

Christian publishing has, historically, skewed very conservative. Partly that’s just the economics of publishing—publishers publish to the market. (In fact, the biggest audience for children’s bibles are grandparents.) But there’s also the more intentional skew of organizations like the ultra-conservative Moody Bible Institute and Lifeway (publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention) pulling the industry rightward. Lifeway, formerly the nation’s largest chain of Christian bookstores, famously banned Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood because it contained the word “vagina.” Clearly there’s a giant hole in the market for folks like me who would like progressive, inclusive Christian books for their kids.

be sure to check your kid’s Bibles for expired slang

While researching this article, I came across more progressive children’s Bibles and Christian books, but that day in B&N I had to make due with what we had. I let my kids each pick a Bible, and on the car ride back we spent some time talking about what they would find in those pages. They’re big fans of mythology podcast Greeking Out, which provided a useful reference point for discussing oral vs. written stories, how stories evolve over time, and why certain ones stick around. I also made sure to tell them that the colorful sidebars in their Bible were added by a publisher who has their own agenda, so to take that information with a grain of salt. To paraphrase the wonderful Dr. Becky, we don’t need to censor the messages our children get, but we can let them know when we disagree with what someone else is teaching them. Hopefully our disagreement gives them permission to make up their own minds.

The kids ended up having a great time at camp and can’t wait to go back. And we’ve started incorporating some Bible reading into our weekly religion/ethics night. I envy how fresh they are to these stories. I find myself trying to shake off years of bad theology to see the text for what it actually is: an invitation to wonder, a series of questions rather than pat answers. Plenty of faithful people have assured me that God and the Bible aren’t bad guys out to get me, the fault lies with the interpretation, not what was being interpreted.

I’m still not 100% convinced, but I’m trying to stay open to new revelation. In teaching my kids about the faith of their ancestors, I hope to borrow their openness and learn new ways of belief as we look through these weird Bibles together.

Do you still read the Bible? Would you read it to a kid? If yes, do you read it differently now than when you were younger? Feel free to share your tips, tricks, and resources in the comments so we can all learn from each other!