yeah they came out with a new version when all the free love and hippies came out of the woodwork. I think it was a ploy by the the churches or their ilk to refocus the young. To make the bible more palatable and for it to seem as a more loving God and all that was the biblical message.
I believe/think that with all the Vietnam and anti government stuff going on, all the young people leaving the fold of Christianity, it was their attempt of getting them (the youth of the time) back into the fold.
Did you ever see a movie called reefer madness? I guess if they could scare you away from things or modify things to get you back into the flock it was an acceptable risk for them to take. Remember this was a time when the young were taking a lot of LSD and buying to the Timothy Leary who-ha. LSD, mescaline, PCP, angel dust, and others were hallucinogenics that were suppose to open up your mind, allegedly get you in touch with the spiritual world. Kids were being encouraged to take acid and see "god", to meet him in/on a different plane of existence.
There was quite a bit of the youth that were so disillusioned by our parents ways that they were joining communes, cults, and many bizarre other things. It was a time when people would go to huge rock festival, do drugs, get naked and party in front of thousands of people. It was a social revolt and they (the parents and conservatives) were really at a loss on what to do ... a quick fix to them was to modify things, make them more palatable to the youth. When kids were killed on college campus by police for demonstration, they were desparate for a quick fix. Most boomers gloss over their days of "turning on and tuning out".
There was a booming business in cult retrieval. Parents would hire people to kidnap their kids away from cults and take them to cult detox .... it didn't matter if they were over 18 and they were legal to do what they wanted without parental approval. It's then that the civil liberty attorneys really started up. This was a little after J. Edgar Hoover was out of the FBI but they still had his hench men around that had the "Hoover" way of doing things. People think wire tapping is so horrible now ... they have only to look at how Hoover did things to see where Big Brother really was. Hoover had the hotel rooms that Martin Luther King was sleeping in bugged, recorded his extramarital affairs ... anything to get dirt and the ensuing potential blackmail material on him for leverage. We complain of a corrupt government now .... when you read/know about the abuses back then ... today seems a lot more tame.
I remember getting a copy of it (the enlightened version of the new testament) right after my parents found a book on Satanic cult beliefs in my bedroom ... they also found books on Buddhism, Taoist, New Age religion and a plethora of others ... they didn't see it as me exploring comparative religions ... they saw it as me reading a book about satanic cults .. I've always loved reading about comparative religions and the thought process that goes into them .... they only saw the word "Satan" and freaked out.
The Boomer generation saw such an influx of new information and even more technology. They were disillusioned with their parents and the draft was especially a bone of contention with that generation. The boomers were reading so much on Peace and Love, anti-establishment, new music that wasn't about "wake-up little Susie" or "Let's do the Twist" It was Ozzie Osbourne, Steppenwolf and many others that would send messages to the youth that parents just didn't "get" .... plus it didn't hurt that there was a whole lot of smoking pot going on that made the young people "mellow" ... in actuality it made them apathetic more so than anything.
The guys coming home from Vietnam faced people that hated them for serving .... even if they were made to go b/c of the draft they were scorned and called baby killers ... you've read the history books, I don't need to give you a lesson ... sorry about that ... the late 60's and 70's were years that I believe changed the history of the United States just as much as World War II did.
So yes, there was/is such a book/bible ... they bought it and I was made to read it ..... it had no more religion than before ... the book just changed it from old world wording and text to "easier reading" ..... but I can't remember the name ..... Something like the "New, New testament" or some other name the spin doctors came up with to speak to us on "our" level and evidently our our drugged out minds .... I can remember how much people were into Native American religion at the time .... the wanted to get Peyote buttons (mushrooms) and meet their spiritual guide(s) ... I think that there are still some native American religions that get away with the usage of hallucinogenic herbs for religious ceremonies ...
Long story for I remember the book but not the name of it .... sorry about that.
