Pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi loves to quote the Bible. Well, sort of.
During a recent gathering of Christian college presidents in Washington, D.C., House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) quoted from the Bible:
“To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us,” she said in her opening statement.
The only problem? This isn’t from the Bible.
Pelosi addressed this issue by saying she “can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time.”
“I keep reading and reading the Bible — I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah. I heard a bishop say, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation … ,’” she added.
But as Slate reports, the “quote” is not “there someplace.” It’s not in the Bible at all.
Will Kynes, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Whitworth University, told Slate, “The Pelosi passage is not in the Bible,” and suggested Proverbs 14:31 was the closest example.
“Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him,” the passage states.
Greg MaGee, an associate professor of biblical studies at Taylor University, gave Slate the same verse as the potential origin for whatever Pelosi is quoting.
Slate reporter Ruth Graham goes on to document the history of Pelosi using this alleged Bible verse, beginning in 2002 at a speech honoring a Catholic priest in San Francisco, CA, who had died.
“Between 2002 and 2018, the quote appears 12 times in the Congressional Record, with Pelosi responsible for all but one of the entries. (The other time, Texas Republican Louie Gohmert was quoting Pelosi,)” Graham wrote. “She has deployed it in speeches to recognize genocide in Darfur (‘to ignore God’s creation, which are these children, is to dishonor the God who made them’), to strengthen the Endangered Species Act (‘to minister to the needs of God’s creation, and that includes our beautiful environment’), twice to honor Catholic schools (‘my Catholic education taught me that to minister to the needs of God’s creation’), and to express condolences after the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia (‘it is appropriate on many occasions, but I thought of it the minute I saw the tsunami’).”
Pelosi uses this alleged Bible verse to bring religion into policy discussions, and make it seem as though Christians should support whatever policy she’s promoting at the time because God would want them to. She conveniently didn’t use this quote to speak about abortion, most recently the law passed in New York allowing an abortion up to the minute of birth, or the proposed law in Virginia that would do the same, which led to Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) defending infanticide if a mother so desires.
Pelosi was recently asked about the extreme abortion bills (which offer broad definitions of “health” that wouldn’t limit the abortions to what conservatives generally favor as an exception) and dodged the question. A reporter asked Pelosi: “Considering the comments from Governor Northam yesterday, how does that make it harder for pro-life Democrats in the party and does that cause problems?”
Pelosi claimed she didn’t know “what [Northam] said” and quickly called on another reporter.