The work was hard, but with great work by Focus on the Family leaders, Southern Baptist seminary presidents, key theologians from other denominations, and an aroused Christian public, the battle for the Bible ended in a Memorial Day victory. When those in charge of the NIV promised to maintain the existing version, cease efforts to neuter it, and revise an already published easy-reading edition that had strayed into unisex territory, we thought the struggle was over. Now, though, we find ourselves forced to play two. Just before Independence Day a battle for biblical journalism began, as some of those who lost the first battle decided not to make peace, and therefore brought to the fore basic questions of Christian journalistic practice and ethics. Let me try to make sense out of a confusing situation.
World operates under three principles for biblically directed reporting.
The three principles are biblical objectivity, biblical sensationalism, and biblical confession of error. Biblical objectivity means that the Bible is the only book that presents an accurate, objective view of the world, and that the goal of Christian journalists should be to follow the Bible and present the God's-eye view of the world as best we can. This means that we do not treat as morally equal the positions of those who uphold the Bible as it is written and those who purposely change God's Word to conform to current political and social trends. Biblical confession means that we admit wrong when we make mistakes. Readers familiar with our Mailbag page have seen our occasional corrections, and our frequent printing of letters that take us to task, rightly or wrongly.