“Give me this power”. 

So spoke a certain Simon Magus, as he watched the apostles wielding the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8). His request rewarded him with a rebuke from Peter, and the enduring shame of having an ecclesiastical crime (Simony) named after him. 

While, strictly, Simony is about the selling or buying of clerical office, its namesake’s original instinct was even baser – the desire to use spiritual power for his own advantage. In my own research over the last ten years I have seen this instinct at work in what I term the “weaponisation of Scripture”. 

The Bible has two types of power. As a Christian, I believe that God speaks through it and uses it to change lives. I term this “vertical power” – it is transcendent. The other power, operating “horizontally”, is not derived from God, but depends upon the trust and confidence which believers place upon the text. And this can result in the weaponisation of Scripture, where someone (usually with a measure of spiritual authority) preys upon a believer’s desire to be obedient to God’s word, and manipulates its presentation to them in order to manipulate them. 

The 500th anniversary of the publication of a banned Bible might remind us that a very powerful way to control people with Scripture is to prevent or restrict their access to it. That facilitates the control of the narrative. Plantation owners, for example, handed their slaves Bibles with the exodus account completely excised, lest they learn of God’s active intervention on behalf of another slave people. Or, to use another example, the Magnificat has been banned many times on account of its revolutionary claim that God will humble the arrogant and bring down the rich. 

I’m off to re-read Mary’s song now.