Peter J. Thuesen is Associate Professor of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

Awarded the Frank S. and Elizabeth Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History

"A first-rate intellectual history of Protestants' elusive quest for the perfect English translation of the Bible."--Publishers Weekly

"Scrupulous scholarship provides a much-needed historical context for the fiery polemics of clerics who turned the new translations of the Bible into a battlefield....With subtle insight, Thuesen examines American Protestants' demands that the holy text be examined against the empirical record of events, explaining in the process why the divisive implications of this historical consciousness remained submerged so long....he shrewdly dissects the expedients Protestants have had to adopt to resolve the crisis in interpretive authority....no one who wants to understand the place of the Bible in American culture can ignore this book."--Booklist

"[Thuesen] clearly and conclusively demonstrates in this tightly written monograph that broader cultural and intellectual issues permeated the debate and that the 'RSV moment' in American Christianity significantly altered the religious landscape in ironic and unexpected ways...excellent and accessible...provides important insights into a topic too often ignored by scholars."--American Historical Review

"The achievement of this book is that it demonstrates that the historical and literary discoveries of the 19th century became the theological controversies of the 20th century....[The] information offered here about how the Bible has been translated to suit theological tastes and publishers' expectations of profits is shocking indeed."--Library Journal

"[Thuesen's] study yields a veritable cornucopia of insights into Protestant Bible translation...a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history of English Bible translation in the United States."--Christianity Today