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Fifteen minutes after the bookstore opened at the Christians for Biblical Equality conference near Minneapolis, vendors sold out of the New International Version, Inclusive Language Edition Bible (NIVI), unavailable for retail sale in North America.

"We are finding ways and means of bringing in the NIV Inclusive," said Catherine Clark Kroeger, founder of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), which celebrated its tenth anniversary during a three-day meeting on the campus of Bethel College. "Now that they can't have it, everybody wants it." In addition to buying out the bookstore of about 50 copies, nearly 100 people signed a protest letter to Lars Dunberg, president of the International Bible Society (IBS). The letter asked the society to allow licensed publishers to keep in print the NIVI and the NIV, Readers Version, both of which use inclusive language. Second, the letter asked for the IBS to resume "aggressive efforts to update the North American edition of the NIV with gender-accurate language."

The letter says, "As a Bible-believing, evangelical Christian, I urge IBS to stand firm in the midst of pressures from subgroups within the Christian community who would attempt to impress their specific social and theological agendas on Bible translation."

In June, IBS, under growing pressure, announced that it was abandoning efforts to produce for the North American market an updated NIV (CT, July 14, 1997, p. 62). The version would have used inclusive language that translates gender-specific terms from the Greek and Hebrew into inclusive-language equivalents in English. For example, he or man may translated as you, we, or they in instances where the translators believe it is warranted. An inclusive language NIV has been available in the United Kingdom since last year.

Some on both sides of the NIV dispute see the issue as feminism versus traditionalism, but not Stan Gundry, editorial vice president for Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Zondervan is licensed exclusively to publish the existing NIV in America. "It is not an egalitarian versus complementarian issue," Gundry told CBE members. "It is simply this and nothing more: a translation issue. What is faithful translation?"

In response to the CBE letter, Steve Johnson, IBS director of communications, said negotiations between IBS and Hodder & Stoughton, the British publisher of the NIVI, continue in good faith. But, he said, "If they chose not to [cease publication], we have absolutely no authority to mandate that they do so."

Johnson commented, "If the issue ever resurfaced, it would have to be the church saying to IBS, 'Clearly we are ready for this text; we recognize the need for more accurate interpretation.' It would have to be very evident that the church was unified on the issue."

Johnson said the dispute over inclusive language use "needs to be dealt with among scholars and linguists who can intelligently debate [it] and not have it tried in the court of public opinion."

During a telephone interview, Timothy Bayly, executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), an organization supporting the complementarian view of gender roles, said his organization "pleads" for the NIVI to be taken off the market because of its improper changes in gender translation. Commenting on CBE's perspective on gender issues, Wayne Grudem, CBMW president, said that although opportunities for mutual dialogue were not frequent, individuals from both groups were in discussions concerning their differences. "We [both] oppose violence and homosexual conduct."

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September 1 1997, Vol. 41, No. 10