"This way of living is different from communism because...": The Ideological Control of
Scriptural Interpretations of Acts 4 in the Editorial Rhetorics of Popular Study Bibles
Dr. David Dault
Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies
Christian Brothers University
Memphis, TN
SECSOR 2012
It can be argued that, since the era of the 1950’s, marked as it was by the rise of Billy
Graham and the increasingly close alliance of Evangelical Christianity with figures of political
power, the face of American popular religion has had a distinct ideological bent. In Graham’s
sermons as well as in Presidential speeches, Communism was presented as the enemy and
antithesis of Christianity, and the Cold War was styled in peculiarly religious terms.
The contemporary phenomenon of the “Study Bible” has been deeply shaped, not only by
the Evangelical sentiments of the 1950s, but by the ideology of the Cold War. A careful reader
will find numerous examples of this ideology suffused throughout the notes and marginalia put
in place by editors and design committees.
The current world, however, has moved beyond the us-against-them polarities of the
Cold War, and into the increasingly complex political questions raised by globalization,
international recession, bank bailouts, and austerity measures imposed upon the middle and
working classes. A renewed conversation about the just and proper distribution of goods and
economic resources within “late capitalism” is taking place in both the halls of politics and in
many American churches. Americans have become increasingly polarized on the question of the
social goods that can be achieved by the “free market” system, and as a result some
(especially “Emergent”) Christians have begun to explore and even experiment with long-
suppressed options such as monastic communalism, charitable collectivism, voluntary poverty,
and Christian socialism.
As American clergy and laity return to wrestling with these questions, the vision of the
Apostolic church set forth in Acts 4:34-35 has become increasingly central. Especially in online
forums, from blogs to comments sections to facebook, the proper meaning and interpretation of
Acts 4, and the demands it places upon contemporary believers, has become a central issue for
how Christians are to proceed in the current economic tumult.
This paper will look at two of the most popular and influential study Bibles in America
currently, The Life Application Study Bible and the Stewardship Study Bible, and analyze the
editorial rhetorics used to shape readers’ interpretation of the demands and possibilities offered
by Acts 4. It will be argued that, far from presenting a neutral clarification of the Scripture,
which authorizes readers to “judge for themselves,” these editorial emendations instead are
designed to exert a powerful though subtle ideological pressure, shaping and limiting the
theological imaginations of the audience. Arising from these observations, it will be suggested
that these sorts of ideological emendations are by no means accidental, but rather serve a specific
function within a wider political and economic arena, where Bible publishing occurs in a space
that is increasingly beholden to the interests of global capital, and less and less to “the Gospel,”
as that term has been traditionally understood.
