Nancy Pelosi taped quoting from nonexistent ‘Bible’ passage: ‘I know it’s there someplace’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose party recently proposed striking “so help me God” from witness testimony, was caught on tape quoting a Bible passage last week in an attempt to shame Republicans.

There’s just one problem: the particular verse the House majority leader cited doesn’t actually exist.

Oops!

Pelosi’s false attribution occurred on Wednesday in a speech before the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities conference. She strongly implied that conservative Christians dishonor God by refusing to embrace progressive welfare and immigration policies.

“And I can’t find it in the Bible, but I quote it all the time and I keep reading and reading the Bible,” Pelosi said. “I know it’s there someplace. It’s supposed to be in Isaiah. But I heard a bishop say, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God made us.’ It’s there somewhere in some words or another, but certainly the spirit of it is there.”

In fact, Pelosi’s understanding of the Bible is at odds with theology professors. “The Pelosi passage is not in the Bible,” Will Kynes, an associate professor of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Whitworth University, told Slate.

The closest approximation to Pelosi’s quote that Kynes could find appears in Proverbs 14:31, a passage which applies specifically to the poor. “Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him,” the verse reads.

A  tired quote

“Pelosi got one thing right: She does in fact ‘quote it all the time,’” explained Slate reporter Ruth Graham, who found nearly a dozen times that Pelosi has used the false passage since 2002.

The California progressive first invoked the phrase on the House floor 17 years ago to honor a recently deceased San Francisco priest. “The Bible tells us that to minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship,” she said. “To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.”

Pelosi deployed the nonexistent Bible quote again to recognize genocide in Darfur, as justification to strengthen the Endangered Species Act, and to honor the victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Only after she repeated the citation again in 2008 did Pelosi hear rumblings of dissent from a few conservative websites, but they weren’t loud enough to keep her from uttering the phrase again a handful of times.

God has been on the House Speaker’s mind quite a bit lately, as she regularly references the creator to support her progressive pet projects. “God is with us,” Pelosi said in December 2017 in regards to her party’s support for extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals legislation.

In December 2018, Pelosi called on God again, this time declaring that everyone has “a moral responsibility to ensure all children of God are treated with compassion and decency” following the death of two children in border patrol custody.

“God Problem”

If only the House majority leader expressed the same religious zeal when it comes to the unborn. Pelosi defended Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in 2015 after undercover videos revealed that the group’s officials were engaged in the sale of aborted baby body parts for profit.

To Pelosi, the only thing unChristian about such a heartless and barbaric practice was that it was exposed via an undercover operation. She later called the scandal “a controversy that doesn’t exist.”

The Democratic Party has never been more at odds with America’s Christian community, and Pelosi has a “God Problem,” according to the Family Research Council. Unfortunately, that problem isn’t going away any time soon.