1946 The Mistranslation That Shifted a Culture

1946 is a feature documentary film that will tell the story of two intrepid researchers, Kathy Baldock, a straight Christian LGBTQIA+ activist and author, and Ed Oxford, a gay Christian graduate of Talbot Seminary, who trace the origins of the anti-gay movement within the American conservative Christian church to an erroneous mistranslation of the Bible in 1946, and how the Bible has subsequently been weaponized against LGBTQIA+ people. While other documentaries have been successful in their attempt to treat the symptom of homophobia in the church, 1946 is working to diagnose and treat the disease - Biblical Literalism.

The film will chronicle Kathy and Ed’s research, as they traveled to Yale University in 2017 where they combed through the archives of the committee charged with creating a new translation of the Holy Bible in 1929. That new version of the Bible, called the Revised Standard Version (RSV), would become the first version of the Bible in any language to include the word “homosexual.”

The film captures the moment that Kathy and Ed found a letter from a then 21 year-old seminary student, “David S.,” who strongly challenged the team for their “serious weakness in translation.”

This letter and other correspondence between David S. and Dr. Weigle, the head of the translation team, profoundly moved the committee, and they ultimately agreed that the word “homosexual” had been a mistake.

Unfortunately the change would not take effect in the RSV-revised edition until 1971. In late 1959, Dr. Weigle signed a contract stating that he would not make any changes in the RSV for 10 years. During those 10 years, translation teams were working on the first New American Standard Bible, The Living Bible and the New International Version Bible. Each team used the 1946 RSV containing the mistranslated word "homosexual" as a main source text. Ultimately the RSV was responsible for the spread of the word, not only in the I Corinthians passage but in nine additional passages.