An agenda-driven Bible storybook targeted at kids as young as four years old embarked on a “justice-oriented” mission to skew God’s word as an “antidote to Christian white supremacy.”
Relying on the antithetical lens of Marxism, a pair of activist preachers are bringing woke to the Old and New Testaments through their “The Just Love Story Bible.” Within it, 52 tales aim to present a “countercultural message” that treats some of the original text as “made-up stories” while aiming to ensure there aren’t any messages children may one day “have to unlearn.”
Released in September by Beaming Books, the Rev. Jacqui Lewis and Rev. Shannon Daley-Harris co-authored project was boiled down to Religion News Service with the former explaining, “Our agenda is to teach young people a theology of love and justice that we don’t have to unlearn.”
“When Shannon and I say we don’t want children to learn something they have to unlearn, we don’t want them to learn patriarchy from this story Bible,” she went on while also suggesting, “Jesus was a feminist.”
Beaming Books Senior Acquisitions’ Editor Naomi Krueger told Publishers Weekly, “We noticed a gap in the marketplace for people who are looking for a more open-minded Bible for progressive Christians, one that is focused on love and justice.”
“Its countercultural message is really appropriate for this time,” she added, describing the endeavor as “an antidote to Christian white supremacy.”
The Just Love Story Bible, is a colorful new #Bible focused on justice, love, and the great questions of life.
Read the author interview from Religion News Service: https://t.co/MLzXTjZtCp pic.twitter.com/libeLPbkxc
— Beaming Books (@BeamingBooksMN) October 17, 2025
Describing the illustration, Lewis told RNS, “The biblical characters mostly look black and brown and caramel … now white children, I imagine, looking in this Bible and seeing brown people and thinking to themselves, ‘Oh, brown people belong to God, too.'”
At the same time, she challenged the fundamental belief of Christianity in Jesus Christ’s resurrection, allowing for a philosophical examination and positing, “Did that happen? For me, it matters more that children know that love never dies, so that’s where I landed.”
Similarly questioning the validity of the sacred texts they were attempting to promote to progressives and beyond, Daley-Harris specifically referenced the story of Jonah when she said, “It’s OK to actually tell kids from the get-go: Some of these stories are about true people and things that really happened, and some of them are made-up stories, but they’re in there because they can still teach us true things about God.”
“There will be a group of sort of literalist or fundamentalist folks for whom this isn’t a welcome resource. But it’s been really interesting to see the reception from not just folks who are raised progressive, but those who are raised in a tradition that no longer fit them, who did grow out of a theology and are looking for one that they can grow into and grow with alongside their children,” she went on as the authors approach in boiling down the tales involved “imagining what wasn’t said, what might have come before or come after.”
“The Just Love Bible Story” wasn’t alone in preaching a progressive gospel as Publishers Weekly highlighted other books in a similar vein including, “Come and See: An Invitation to a Radical Encounter with Jesus” by Shannon T.L. Kearns, who describes herself as the “first openly transgender man ordained to the Old Catholic priesthood,” an organization which is not in communion with the Catholic Church.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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