The World and Everything in It: September 30, 2024

PREROLL: Good morning, this is Jeff Palomino, correspondent for WORLD. There's a lot of discouraging news out there. But today I've got a story about a win for someone standing up for religious liberty in the classroom. That's on this week's Legal Docket. Time now for the program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

In just a few minutes we will meet Peter Vlaming—a former high school French teacher who stood up for free speech…

PETER VLAMING: I knew that if I don’t go along, it looks like I’m going to lose my job. So, what do I do? Is this a hill worth dying on?

NICK EICHER, HOST: Legal Docket is straight ahead.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. We’ll talk about the impact of elections on the economy. Economist David Bahnsen is standing by for that.

And did you know that September 30th is International Translation Day? Reporter Emma Perley has a special History Book to mark an occasion with significance for the church:

LEIDENFROST: I think it's very important for people to be able to have God's Word in their own tongue…

BROWN: It’s Monday September 30!

This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Helene aftermath N.C. » Hurricane Helene and its remnants carved an 800-mile path of destruction across five southeastern states, and the storm is now blamed for at least 63 deaths.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell:

CRISWELL:  We're hearing significant infrastructure damage to water systems, communication, roads, critical transportation routes, as well as homes that have been just destroyed by this. 

And no inland region was hit harder than western North Carolina where historic flooding has devastated some communities, including the city of Asheville.

CRISWELL: I don't know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides that they are experiencing right now.

Not only has flooding cut off roads, but the storm knocked out cellular service in Asheville, leaving many completely cut off from the outside world.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Sunday:

COOPER:  A lot of people who are concerned about relatives and friends that they cannot get in touch with and it's one of the reasons we are pushing so hard to get communications back up, because we know that a lot of these people are just simply out of communication and are okay.

He added that authorities are airlifting supplies into areas inaccessible by road.

South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee » Meantime, in South Carolina several million were still without power as of last night. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster asked for patience as crews deal with a lot of snapped power poles.

The storm is blamed for at least 23 deaths in the state, the most of any of the five states hard hit by Helene.

And in Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee said Sunday …

LEE:  There's a lot of damage out there and there are bridges out and we've seen those. There are roads that are impassable now, so that isolates people for certain.

And Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp talked about the destruction all the way from the Florida state line up through Atlanta where the previous rainfall record was 9 inches in 48 hours …

KEMP:  A combination of storms over the last few days dumped over 11 inches of rain. We're dealing with flash flooding and, believe it or not, mudslides and avalanches.

At least 17 people have been confirmed dead in Georgia from the storm.

Helene aftermath in Florida » And of course, Florida is still reeling after Helene slammed the state’s Big Bend region as a Category-4 hurricane.

One resident of the Gulf Coast island of Cedar Key surveyed the damage over the weekend.

RESIDENT:  Now just looking around and I feel so helpless. I really do. I feel helpless. I don't know what I don't know what's next for Cedar Key.

Cedar Key was inundated with massive storm surge as was Pasco County, just north of Tampa where Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters …

DESANTIS: You saw a storm surge in excess of 15 ft. And that is really, really destructive. So as you look around here, you know, you see some homes that are now just rubble.

With search and rescue operations largely complete in Florida, DeSantis said the state has been sending some personnel to help out in North Carolina.

Israel - Hezbollah leaders » The White House says it's still working to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East after recent Israeli airstrikes largely decimated the command structure of the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.

President Biden was asked Sunday if an all-out war along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon can be avoided …

BIDEN:  Has to be. We really have to avoid it. But, uh, we're not there yet, but we're working with the French and many others.

The U.S., France, and others are calling for a 21-day cease-fire in the conflict.

But Republican Sen. Tom Cotton told CBS’ Face the Nation that’s the wrong idea.

COTTON:  Finish it off once and for all. That means for the first time in decades, Iran would be exposed on its flanks with no terror proxy capable, capable of devastating Israel or our troops and our friends in the region. That's what we should do. Not demand that we have a ceasefire deescalate at a time when Israel is trying to win.

In just over a week, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed seven high-ranking Hezbollah commanders, including the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

VP debate this week » Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio will face off tomorrow for their first and only scheduled vice presidential debate.

Vance, the Republican VP nominee, says he’s looking forward to it.

VANCE:  It's an opportunity for me to get to tell the American people how I think we can make their lives better and how Donald Trump's policies can make them more prosperous.

Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, says he’ll make a strong case for Harris and against Trump.

WALZ: It's pretty obvious to us that Donald Trump and J. D. Vance do not share our values in any way. They do not share our values. Look, it's not even about policies. It's about sharing our values.

CBS News will host the debate at 9pm Eastern tomorrow.

SpaceX supply launch » The two astronauts stuck at the International Space Station since June are welcoming their new ride home.

AUDIO: 3-2-1, ignition [SIC] full power, and lift off of crew NINE. Go Spacex, go Falcon, go NASA …

A SpaceX capsule heard there blasting off from Cape Canaveral docked at the space station on Sunday.

The capsule arrived with two astronauts, half the normal number, and two empty seats for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — the two stranded astronauts. But it won't depart until February.

NASA scrapped their planned trip home for Wilmore and Williams after safety concerns about their Boeing Starliner craft.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a religious liberty victory for teachers who believe pronouns matter. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Monday the 30th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

SOUND: [ASHEVILLE FLOODWATERS]

These are the very floodwaters that coursed through our headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina, on Friday.

The Swannanoa River set off record-level flooding of the Biltmore Village area. That’s where the world headquarters of WORLD are located.

And all of that flooding a consequence of the gulf hurricane Helene.

Our business offices, our Asheville TV studio for WORLD Watch, our radio studio there, all of it was underwater.

As best we can tell, our people—thank the Lord—are okay, but we can’t reliably communicate with many of them right now. Power’s out, cell towers are out.

Thankfully, much of our journalistic operation is remote, and we learned a lot about running our business operations remotely during COVID. That knowledge allows us to carry out many functions, but even now we’re learning what the limitations are going to be.

Suffice it to say, recovery is going to be slow and it’s going to be costly.

Several regular supporters have gotten in touch about helping … and so we’ve established an online giving page at wng.org/SOS, and I know we’re going to need help getting through this stretch of time. So if you can pitch in, we’d be grateful. I’ll give the web address again, it’s wng.org/SOS.

We’ll work to keep you updated, just as soon as we’re able to get reliable communications into the area and we have new information.

BROWN: We are going to need your help and of course we’re going to need your prayers.

But we’ll be here for you. WORLD Watch will be able to operate in a limited capacity. Our website’s working and our publications are publishing. So let’s thank the Lord for that and carry on as best we can.

Because it’s time now for Legal Docket!

AUDIO: Please call the first case. Vlaming versus West Point School Board, et. al.

EICHER: Two years ago, a man named Peter Vlaming had a lawsuit that went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Virginia. But four years before that—he was a schoolteacher. He taught French at West Point High School, about 40 miles west of Richmond, Virginia.

At the start of the 2018 school year, a female student in Vlaming’s French Two class announced she was adopting a new identity as male. The student was also changing her name and “she” wanted to be referred to as “he.”

BROWN: As a Christian, Vlaming understands that sex is fixed, established by the Creator. Meaning he couldn’t in conscience refer to a young lady as a young man.

So, the French teacher decided to avoid the use of pronouns altogether for everyone in class. He would use the student’s preferred name instead. But, the school told him that wasn’t good enough. Vlaming had to use male pronouns or be fired. And when he refused, that’s exactly what the school board did.

EICHER: So he sued—asserting free-exercise, free-speech, and due-process claims under the Virginia Constitution. He also claimed breach of contract while seeking protection under the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Round one he lost. That was in the trial court.

BROWN: But on appeal to the Virginia Supreme court, he won. His case was reversed and remanded for trial with a unanimous bench in agreement. Not only that: a majority wrote what’s known as a virtuoso opinion on religious freedom and freedom of speech under Virginia law.

That means it’s an opinion that just might set precedent for future cases like this.

EICHER: Today, you’ll hear directly from Vlaming and his lawyer on why they think the case is so significant.

Here’s WORLD legal correspondent Jeff Palomino.

JEFF PALOMINO: I’d wondered if Vlaming was prepared for what happened to him back in the fall of twenty-eighteen.

PETER VLAMING: I was, I would say, relatively aware of cultural changes, just kind of across the board in the United States and in the West in general. But no, I can't say that I had a game plan going in.

But he needed a game plan, so he made one. Vlaming believes first names don’t necessarily designate someone’s sex. Pronouns are different.

VLAMING: I went as this was unfolding, like, okay, I can call my student by this new chosen name, but I'm not going to use male pronouns to refer to her, but I’ll avoid using female pronouns when she’s present.

Vlaming explained the plan to school administrators, but they weren’t having it. They told Vlaming he was required to use male pronouns, and not only in the classroom but also “in any and every context” at the school.

VLAMING: … and they insisted that, no, no, we need to hear you proactively using masculine pronouns, even when students aren't present. Even if it's just us in this office, you're going to be liable of being fired if you don't refer to the student as he…

Eventually, his superintendent stepped in.

VLAMING: Finally, an ultimatum was given me by the superintendent that insisted on this and also said that if we, in so many words, if we think that you're not, if we think that you're substituting the student's new name when you could be using a third person pronoun, that will also be grounds for your termination. And so, seeing, how can I put it? You know, the walls were closing in, you know, I wasn't going to get out of this.

Vlaming had a wife and four small children. Some people advised him to go along to get along. To Vlaming, the school’s hard line only made his decision clearer.

VLAMING: To put it bluntly, I was being asked to say and to promote something that was just fundamentally untrue. And it's one of those moments where the rubber really does meet the road. It’s, like, okay, do I really believe this? Am I really willing to follow Christ, even when it hurts? Because for me, either I was going to participate in a huge lie that was actually kind of coming over our culture, or am I going to be set apart? So, so, what do I do? Is this a hill worth dying on? And for me, it clearly was.

One of Vlaming’s lawyers is Tyson Langhofer with Alliance Defending Freedom.

TYSON LANGHOFER: We had a number of claims on behalf of Peter we filed, these were in Virginia state court, they were state claims … And essentially they all boiled down to this one claim that we believe that the Virginia Constitution prohibits the government from compelling its citizens to speak things that they disagree with, that violate their religious beliefs, and so that in doing so, they would violate the Free Exercise Clause, the freedom of religion clause, and would also violate the freedom of speech clause…

Even though the free exercise clause in the Virginia Constitution existed before the U.S. Constitution, this was one of the first times the Virginia Supreme Court had interpreted it. The school board argued the clause only protected religious beliefs…not religiously motivated activities.

But the court didn’t buy it. Here’s Langhofer quoting the majority opinion by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey.

LANGHOFER: It would be alarming indeed to think that in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a religious person needs a constitutional right merely to hold a silent belief or opinion that does not change a thing he does or does not do. And they go on to say that we “recognize that the right to exercise one's religion, if it means anything, includes the right to speak or not speak and to act or not act based upon one's religious, sincerely held opinions or beliefs.”

Going further, the majority opinion applied strict scrutiny analysis to what the school board wanted to do. That’s the highest standard of review. It means the government must show a compelling interest and use the least restrictive means to enforce that interest.

LANGHOFER: And clearly, in this case, that was not the case. In fact, Peter had said, “Look, I'm willing to accommodate. I will modify the way that I teach my class. I will modify my language. I just can't modify it in a way that violates my religious beliefs and says something that's untrue and that would be harmful to this student.” And the court clearly said, look, the government has other options, they didn’t have to force Peter to use those words, in fact as Peter said, they were trying to force him to use the pronouns outside of the student’s presence.

As to Vlaming’s free speech claim, the court ruled the state constitution prohibits the government from stopping a person from saying something, and also prohibits compelling a person to say something with which he disagrees. One wrinkle is that Vlaming was a government employee and a school can control what a teacher says to some degree. For example, a teacher has to teach the curriculum.

But that’s not why the school board fired Vlaming.

LANGHOFER: Peter was not speaking pursuant to his official duties. In fact, he wasn't even asking to speak, he was asking not to speak, and this wasn't going to affect his ability to teach the French language. It didn't interfere with that at all.

The Court’s opinion is binding on all Virginia School districts, but how consequential is it outside Virginia?

LANGHOFER: We think it’s very consequential. And it’s going to have an impact for sure. But it’s also having an impact nationwide. We have other cases pending in other states, right now in federal court under the federal constitution, and in fact, a judge just cited Peter's case in a decision out of Ohio, even though it's not binding, but it cited it for the analysis of, you know, these, these rights.

In the time since Vlaming was fired, the West Point school district has changed its policy. Langhofer describes the new policy as one “that protects the rights of teachers.”

LANGHOFER: When other schools see that schools can adopt this and they can protect the rights of teachers and also protect the rights of students, I know that a lot of other schools are going to do that.

Today, Vlaming lives in France with his family and works for a Christian publisher. In the face of pressure to conform, he stood up and prevailed in one of the first cases of compelled pronouns in this country.

So how does Vlaming want to be remembered?

VLAMING: [LAUGHING] It's funny because right away I'm thinking, I don't want I don't want to be remembered. I don't want fame. I want to be remembered by the Lord and have a recompense when I see him again, when we see him again…

Vlaming hopes what he did helps others to live not by lies, but by courage…to lovingly, but firmly, say “no.”

VLAMING: If anything, if people could think, hey, there was a teacher, I think he was in Virginia. He did not go along with this. You know, he stood up for freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and, and he came out the other side. You know, I hope that the courage that God gave me would beget courage in others.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jeff Palomino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He’s head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he’s here now.

David, good morning!

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning. Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Alright. So, we've been planning this conversation now for several weeks, but you have finished up your special dividend Cafe commentary on election 2024. Let's talk through some of the big themes in there, David. Let me start with my major takeaway. If I boil it all down, I'd say it is this: that markets are far more resilient than whoever wins the next election. How does that do as a summary?

BAHNSEN: Well, that is a very true statement. And what I tried to do, Nick, was use history to make the point that over a long period, you know, anybody could cherry pick a certain four year term, a certain president, a certain event, and say, See, look, this, you know, happened because of this here. What you get over 100 years, what you get since the Great Depression, since World War II, you know, long periods of time is almost undeniable evidence that things wash. That markets, for one thing, go up more than they go down, which is why people invest in things like the stock market. But also that the returns end up being more or less the same regardless of the political party that's been in office. And that's a very different statement than saying that the outcomes we get for as a country, or the policies we get, or the adherence to the Constitution or the types of judges, there's all sorts of categories in which I believe that a civic-minded Christian is going to have strong opinions and a stake in the outcome. But investors have historically done well with certain presidents of the blue party and done well with certain presidents of the red party in power, and had periods where they didn't do well. 

The thing that I want to point out, though, is gridlock, divided government. There's been a two year period here and a four year period there, but very rarely has it been uni party control. And the returns during a Reagan–O'Neill, Tip O'Neill, the famous Democrat Speaker of the House in the 1980s, during the Bill Clinton–Newt Gingrich period in the 90s, and even more recently, Barack Obama with Speaker John Boehner, and Donald Trump with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There's been divided government that has produced very strong returns. We've seen it throughout the Biden Administration. The 2023 and 24 you've had a Republican majority of the House, a Democrat in the White House, and massive gains in stock market. Now, is any of this related to divided government? Is it directly correlated? Well, that's sort of the other point is we overthink even the causation of all of this. Policy matters, but profits really drive stocks, and companies have an incredibly impressive way of maintaining their path to profitability, even when they have to overcome political obstacles.

EICHER: So, there are also political realities, realities of our system of government that mean, even though you may hear a policy position from the lips of a candidate, that doesn't translate automatically into that position becoming actual policy. But all that said you would never, David, want to be interpreted to be saying that policy debates don't matter, or who wins elections doesn't matter.

BAHNSEN: That's right. And let's start with policy. I believe policy does matter, and the policy that matters is the policy that becomes policy. And that is, as you just pointed out, very different than campaign promises. I'm doing some alliteration right now, totally on accident, because it just seems to work. But promises are not policy. And by my little informal study, which I'd be willing to take to the bank, 94% of things that presidential candidates say on the campaign trail never become policy. So you're talking about something in the range of five or 6% that ends up happening. The biggest reason for that is not because it gets voted down, but because it never even gets off the launching pad at all. It's just bluster. It's just kind of rhetoric. And then there is a significant part that doesn't because of the reality of how our system of government works. Thank you, founding fathers that the separation of powers and the process that back in the good old days, we learned in high school civics of how a bill becomes a law. That keeps a lot of things from becoming law 

Policy matters, but I would argue that when it comes to the president and the economic well being of the country, that it is pretty limited. Tax policy, energy regulation are the three major categories. And then what I ultimately conclude with in my article is that if someone was looking for low hanging fruit as to where you're going to see markets and the economy impacted by this election, it's personnel. Personnel is policy, because whether it is current Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, there are a lot of things both of them said on this campaign trail that are just absolutely never going to happen. We are not going to tax unrealized gains, the idea that there's not going to be any tax on overtime or tips or Social Security, those things aren't going to happen. However, the President does appoint the Treasury Secretary, and the Treasury Secretary does appoint hundreds of economists and officials: the National Economic Council, the chair of Economic Advisors, the head of the FDA, the head of the FTC. You know, one of the most impactful people in the Biden administration, I would argue, negatively, but it was a Biden appointment at the Federal Trade Commission trying to break up so many big businesses and block mergers and all sorts of other things, sometimes with a prima facie reason, sometimes really quite an egregious overreach of state power. And so personnel is policy, and that's where I would argue it matters the most.

EICHER: And so, before we go David, I'd like to circle one big topic area that you covered in that Dividend Cafe, that's debt and deficits, where neither side, neither candidate, is proposing a real solution. You argue that the debt is the most significant long term economic issue facing the U.S., but the least discussed by political leaders. And yet, here we are on this unsustainable path. It's going to require serious attention at some point, and you're sounding an alarm now.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I think that the idea of me sounding the alarm should be differentiated from the way others that have sounded the alarm in this issue have done so, because I think others have had a real agenda in sounding the alarm for pending apocalypse or a pending catastrophic moment, a bang. I am completely open to the idea that there could be some catastrophic moment, but I find it less and less probable. I think it's worse what I'm saying, is that there isn't a catastrophic moment. There's a whimper over time, years and years and decades, that the escalating debt, the escalating size of government as a percentage of the economy, the escalating level of government spending, which misallocates resources, all put downward pressure on economic growth, and that, much like the 30 year story that played out in Japan. That United States may not have this moment at which all of a sudden we're “Oh, wow! POP! We're in a Great Depression. Oh, wow, our whole country's on fire.” I think that that's what a lot of people that are playing the Jeremiah of the day around this issue, have written books and tried to get famous talking about and they've mostly been false prophets from decades. 

What I'm suggesting is that this is right now taking a toll on economic growth. I'm not predicting it merely in the future. It's happening. And yet, people still feel like they're living their lives. Things are still pretty good. Our economy isn't shrinking, it just isn't growing at the way it used to. But see, I find that unacceptable. I believe us telling our kids, a bunch of 50 and 60 and 70 year olds that have lived in the prosperity of this country, that our post war economic boom generated now being content to leave our kids and grandkids a 1% growing economy is totally unacceptable. That's the issue that has to be dealt with that will, of course, require political dealing, and it is not going to happen in this election.

EICHER: Alright. David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. Of course, we mentioned Dividend Cafe last week, and this, if you'd like to see David's double issue election special Dividend Cafe, we'll link to it in the program transcript. Or you can visit dividend cafe.com. David, I hope you have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, the WORLD History Book. On this National Translation Day, WORLD’s Emma Perley has the story of three God-fearing men who set out to translate the Bible, even at the risk of their lives.

But first, a missionary shares his story of translating the Bible for the African Bakwe people.

LEIDENFROST: I think it's very important for people to be able to have God's Word in their own tongue, which they can't hide from. They can't hide from the words because they're penetrating.

EMMA PERLEY: When Csaba Leidenfrost first began translating the Bible, the Bakwe language didn’t even have an alphabet.

It does now. It took 35 years, but Leidenfrost has translated and published the New Testament into Bakwe. And he’s seen firsthand how the power of language can transform people. One day, a woman showed Leidenfrost that she had learned to read.

LEIDENFROST: She reached into her purse and pulled out the Gospel of John that we had translated and printed in a booklet form. And I saw it. The pages were all dirty. The edges were dog eared, you know, it was like really well used. And she opens that up to John I, and she starts to read, and I just start crying. And she read for a while, and I was, I was very thankful, and just blessing, blessing and blessing God. And then she said, “Thank you so much for coming and translating the Bible for us, the New Testament.”

It wasn’t that long ago really, that most of the world couldn’t read a Bible, let alone own one. But translators like Leidenfrost have worked to change that throughout the generations.

In the early 700s A.D., the Bishop Eadfrith spent hours every day carefully inscribing, drawing, and painting. He was working on an illuminated manuscript called the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Eadfrith lived on Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of England. He spent many years planning and transcribing the Gospels in the remote monastery there.

Each page held detailed, colorful images of birds and beasts, as well as inked Latin text. Audio here from a documentary by Illuminations studio.

AUDIO: To design his complex layout, he invented the lead pencil. And a technique of drawing on the backs of the pages and painting on the front, using the equivalent of the modern light box.

The Gospels were bound with ornate gold and gems. It was displayed in Lindisfarne for more than a hundred years until a Viking raid, when monks safely smuggled it out to the town of Durham.

In the 900s A.D., the priest Aldred inserted Old English translations between the lines of Latin text. It’s the first time that portions of the Gospels had been translated into any form of English.

Next, nearly five hundred years later. John Wycliffe goes head to head with corrupt church practices and produces the first ever English Bible translation. Audio here from a Vision Video documentary.

AUDIO: For John Wycliffe, the Bible stands above every authority. And if it’s not in the Bible, then the church needs to radically reshape its life in the light of holy Scripture.

Wycliffe has spent most of his life challenging the Roman Catholic church from its powerful and wealthy clergy to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

At this time, the Bible is only available in Latin, and most only hear Scripture as it’s read aloud at church. Wycliffe believes everyone should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Here’s a passage from his book, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture …

AUDIO: The Bible is superior to all human thought. It is from God; it is true; it is the foundation for all society, and most especially all Christians have a right and duty to read it.

Wycliffe translates the Bible from Latin to Middle English with help from friends before his death in 1384, but he can’t rest in peace. Nearly 60 years later, Pope Martin V digs up Wycliffe’s remains to have them burned for heresy. But it can’t stop what Wycliffe started.

After the invention of the printing press, William Tyndale begins his translation of the Bible into English during the Protestant Reformation.

AUDIO: He realized that now that we had the printed Greek New Testament, he could translate from the original Greek, from the original language in which the New Testament was written, into English. Even though, at that time, even to translate a sentence into English was against the law and to be severely punished.

Tyndale is a skilled Oxford trained linguist. He starts by asking the church to start working on a translation, but authorities deny the request.

AUDIO: One of the reasons for keeping it in Latin, keeping the Scriptures in Latin, was control. So that if the people didn’t know what the Scriptures said, they couldn’t realize what the church was doing which was not in Scripture.

So Tyndale packs up and moves to Germany, where he completes an English translation of the New Testament from Greek in 1526. It’s the first known version of its kind.

AUDIO: But Latin, the church said at that time, was the language of the Bible. This is absolutely untrue. The language of the New Testament is Greek, the language of the Old Testament is Hebrew …

Copies are smuggled into England for printing during the next few years. And Tyndale sets to work on translating the Old Testament. He evades arrest several times, eventually arriving in Belgium. But a friend betrays Tyndale to the church authorities, and he’s thrown in prison. He’s strangled and burned at the stake for heresy before he can complete the English Old Testament.

But Tyndale’s work becomes the basis for later Bible translations. It’s estimated that Tyndale’s words make up about 83% of the New Testament—and 76% of the Old—in the King James Version published in 1611.

AUDIO: Tyndale, we know, gave his life for translating the Bible. And we must always remember when we hold a modern English Bible in our hands that the English Bible was made in blood. It’s very important to remember that. At the same time we rejoice that what Tyndale opened has never been shut up since.

Missionaries like Leidenfrost continue this immense work of translation. His time on the Ivory Coast has given him a greater appreciation not just for the importance of language, but simply the act of reading the Bible itself.

LEIDENFROST: I think that's how people can really be thankful today for our English translations. It's to basically become a Bible reader, a regular Bible reader, and and get to know God better that way. Each time you go through it, you learn more things. And though the goal is not just to get through but it's to be more and more obedient and learn more about God who loves us so much.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The war in Ukraine. President Volodmyr Zelenskyy was in the U.S. last week, making the argument that his war with Russia is winnable. Was he persuasive to U.S. officials? We’ll have a report.

And, Plains, Georgia is home to Jimmy Carter. Tourists used to flock to the town in droves. But with the former president turning 100 tomorrow, will all that change when he’s gone?

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Luke writes this of the stoning of Stephen— the church’s first martyr:

“When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God… Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not charge them with this sin.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep.” —Acts 7:54, 55, 60

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Go now in grace and peace.

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