House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s go-to quote from the Bible isn’t exactly the one found in the holy book.
“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,” the California Democrat likes to say, most recently to a gathering of presidents from Christian colleges in Washington.
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Pelosi has acknowledged that she hasn’t been able to track down the quote in the Bible. “I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time,” she said, according to Slate. “I keep reading and reading the Bible — I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah.”
Will Kynes, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Whitworth University, told Slate the passage “is not in the Bible.”
But he said he found a line that she might be misquoting. The closest passage he could find was Proverbs 14:31, which says, “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him.”
Greg MaGee, an associate professor of biblical studies at Taylor University, pointed to the same passage.
Pelosi has used the quote at least 11 times between 2002 and 2018.
