Refreshing reversal

Zondervan takes a step in what may be a very good direction | Joel Belz

Paul L. Newby II/The Grand Rapids Press/AP

There's wonderful irony in the news that it took a woman to produce a breakthrough in the battle over gender-inclusive Bibles.

Moe Girkins, who early in 2008 became president and CEO of Zondervan Publishing Co., quickly developed a concern about the collapse over the last decade of Zondervan's worldwide dominance in Bible sales. Since the introduction of the New International Version of the Bible in 1978, Zondervan had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on both NIV Bibles and NIV-licensed products. Toward the end of the 1990s, Zondervan could claim that nearly 300 million NIV Bibles were in print around the world—a staggering number that eclipsed all other modern translations and justified the claim that the NIV had become the contemporary replacement for the venerable King James Version of the Bible.