WHO REALLY WAS KING JAMES?

I grew up around Christianity the way millions of Black people in America did. The Bible wasn’t simply a book sitting on a shelf. It was the book. The King James Version was treated with a level of authority that made questioning it feel almost disrespectful. We heard Scripture from the pulpit, in our homes, at funerals, at weddings, during Sunday school and whenever somebody needed an answer to one of life’s problems. We were taught to believe, but many of us weren’t taught to investigate. We were taught what the Bible said, but not always who translated it, who authorized it, what political world surrounded it, or how centuries of interpretation shaped what we eventually came to believe.

That’s where I believe the conversation has to begin. Questioning the history surrounding Christianity doesn’t automatically mean rejecting God, Jesus, spirituality or morality. It means refusing to confuse faith with institutional tradition. There’s a difference between what a sacred text actually says, what later religious institutions taught it means, and what somebody standing behind a pulpit says it means when money is involved. If I’m going to build my life around something, I want to know where it came from. I want to know who handled it. I want to know what was changed, what was preserved, what was interpreted and what was simply handed down because somebody told me, “That’s the way it is.”

And that brings me to King James. Many people were raised with the impression that the King James Bible was practically the personal Bible of King James himself, as though this righteous king sat down and wrote the Scriptures for the English-speaking world. That’s simply not what happened. King James authorized a new translation, and a large group of scholars produced it. Scholars were divided into multiple companies to translate and revise different sections before the finished work was published in 1611. King James didn’t write the Bible.

But here’s where the story gets much more interesting. The same King James who became permanently attached to one of the most famous English Bibles also wrote a book called Daemonologie in 1597. It wasn’t a modern Satanic handbook. It was a serious work on witchcraft, demons, necromancy and supernatural practices as James understood them. He believed these forces were real and argued that witchcraft deserved severe punishment. The Library of Congress preserves the work, and the original 1597 edition is documented historically.

So I’m not interested in replacing one form of religious programming with another form of internet programming. I’m not going to tell you that every Christian tradition is secretly Satanic. I’m not going to tell you that every pastor is a fraud. I’m not going to tell you that every Christmas tree is proof that somebody is worshiping a Babylonian god. Those claims require evidence. What I am going to do is something much more uncomfortable: separate documented history from religious tradition, separate biblical language from later interpretation, and separate legitimate criticism of Christianity from sensational stories that sound good but cannot be proven.

KING JAMES WAS A KING, NOT A BIBLE AUTHOR

The first thing we have to get straight is the identity of King James. James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603. He was born in 1566, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. His childhood was politically explosive. He lost direct contact with his mother when he was less than a year old, and she was forced to abdicate when he was an infant. She was eventually executed in 1587. James later had her body moved and reburied in Westminster Abbey.

So when somebody says King James simply “hated his mother,” that needs to be challenged. His relationship with his mother was shaped by separation, politics, competing factions and the people who controlled his education. His tutor George Buchanan was openly hostile toward Mary and attempted to teach the young king to hate her. That’s very different from saying we have some simple historical record proving that James personally spent his life hating his mother.

The Bible connected to his name came later. In 1604, James became involved in a project to create a new English translation. Scholars were organized into six companies working at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge. They translated and revised different sections before the final work was published in 1611.

That distinction matters because language has power. When we call something the “King James Bible,” people can unconsciously turn the title into an idea of authorship. But “King James Bible” means a Bible produced under royal authorization and associated with his reign. It doesn’t mean James personally translated Genesis, Isaiah, Matthew, Revelation and everything else with his own pen. That’s an important historical correction.

THE KING WHO WROTE ABOUT DEMONOLOGY

Now we reach one of the claims that actually has solid documentation behind it. King James wrote Daemonologie in 1597. This isn’t an internet rumor. The book exists. The historical record exists. The Library of Congress catalogs it under James I and the subjects of demonology and witchcraft, and the 1597 edition is documented as Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, divided into three bookes.

James wrote about magic, necromancy, witchcraft and demons because he genuinely believed these things were real. He wasn’t writing from the modern position of somebody studying mythology from a distance. He was participating in the religious and intellectual world of his time. And that should teach us something important: a person can be deeply religious and still hold beliefs that later generations reject as superstition.

That doesn’t automatically prove the person’s entire religion was false. It proves that religious people are human beings living inside particular historical cultures. Because if we discover that a religious leader believed something that we now consider scientifically or historically unsupported, we shouldn’t automatically conclude that every spiritual idea associated with that person is false. But we also shouldn’t pretend that religious authority makes every belief scientifically or historically correct.

WAS KING JAMES A HOMOSEXUAL?

This is another area where the internet loves certainty more than history. There’s substantial evidence that James had extraordinarily close relationships with several male favorites, particularly George Villiers, who eventually became Duke of Buckingham. Contemporary observers noticed the closeness. James wrote intensely affectionate letters and expressed extraordinary emotional attachment. Historical sources also describe occasions when James and Villiers shared sleeping quarters.

But there’s a problem with simply putting a modern label on a seventeenth-century king. The words and categories we use today to describe sexuality didn’t function in exactly the same way in James’s world. Historians continue to debate whether his relationships with male favorites were sexual, romantic, emotional, political or some combination of these things. There’s strong evidence of affection and intimacy, but there’s no surviving piece of evidence that allows historians to state with absolute certainty, “James was homosexual” in the modern identity-based sense.

So the honest conclusion is more interesting than the sensational one. James clearly had extraordinarily intimate relationships with men. Some historians interpret the evidence as sexual. Others are more cautious. The historical evidence supports the controversy. It doesn’t justify pretending the controversy doesn’t exist, and it also doesn’t justify pretending the matter is completely settled. That’s what honest history looks like.

THE MORNING STAR QUESTION IS REAL — BUT THE POPULAR EXPLANATION IS WRONG

Now let’s deal with one of the most fascinating questions. How can Satan be associated with the morning star while Jesus is also called the morning star? The answer begins with Isaiah. The King James Version of Isaiah 14:12 says, “O Lucifer, son of the morning.” Other translations render the same expression as “morning star,” “day star” or “star of the morning.”

The word “Lucifer” is especially important because it comes through the Latin tradition. Lucifer means “light-bringer” or refers to the morning star, Venus, which appears brilliantly before sunrise. But here’s the part that often gets lost in church teaching: Isaiah 14 is speaking in the context of a taunt against the king of Babylon. The immediate passage is not simply a biography of Satan falling from heaven. The later Christian tradition connected this imagery to Satan, but the original biblical context concerns the downfall of a proud ruler.

Then we get to the New Testament. Jesus is explicitly called the “bright and morning star” in Revelation 22:16. The King James Version itself says Jesus is “the bright and morning star.” Second Peter also uses morning-star imagery in connection with the coming dawn.

So yes, the same basic image can appear in both contexts. That’s not necessarily a contradiction. “Morning star” is an image. It isn’t automatically another name for Satan. The problem happened when later Christian interpretation increasingly connected Isaiah’s “Lucifer” with Satan as a personal proper name. The Latin word itself didn’t originally mean “Satan.” It meant “light-bringer” or “morning star.”

So when somebody says, “The Bible proves Satan and Jesus are both called the Morning Star, therefore Christianity has exposed itself,” that argument doesn’t hold up as stated. The better question is why the same image can be applied to different figures. The answer is that symbols depend upon context.

CHRISTIANITY DIDN’T BEGIN WITH KING JAMES

Another major misunderstanding is believing Christianity somehow began with the European church system that many of us encountered in America. It didn’t. Christianity emerged in the first century within the Jewish world of the eastern Mediterranean. It spread throughout different regions, cultures and languages long before the English Bible existed.

By the fourth century, Christianity had become deeply connected to Roman imperial power. Constantine became the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, and Christianity eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire later in that century.

That political development matters. A faith can begin as a movement among ordinary people and later become connected to government, wealth, institutions and political power. That happened with Christianity. And once religion becomes connected to political power, we have to distinguish the spiritual message from the institution that carries it. That distinction matters today.

WHAT HAPPENED TO BLACK PEOPLE AND CHRISTIANITY?

This is where the conversation becomes personal for Black Americans. Christianity wasn’t simply handed to Black people in America as one clean, untouched package of spiritual truth. Christianity was introduced, controlled, interpreted and used within a society built around slavery and racial hierarchy. White slaveholders and pro-slavery religious writers used the Bible to defend slavery. There are nineteenth-century publications preserved by the Library of Congress whose titles openly defended slavery using biblical arguments.

But there’s another side of the story that’s just as important. Black people didn’t simply absorb Christianity exactly as slaveholders presented it. Black communities transformed Christianity into a source of community, survival, resistance, hope and freedom. Historical records show how African Americans made Christianity central to community life while also confronting the contradiction between Christian ideals and slavery.

And Black Christians also fought slavery. Christian arguments were used against slavery as well as in its defense. Abolitionists appealed to biblical principles to challenge bondage, and Black religious leaders turned Christianity into an instrument of liberation rather than submission.

So the honest history isn’t “Christianity was completely good” or “Christianity was completely evil.” The honest history is that Christianity became a powerful institution that could be used by different people for radically different purposes. That’s much more complicated, and much more important.

SO, IS CHRISTIANITY FALSE?

Here’s where I believe we have to slow down. History can prove that Christianity developed institutions. History can prove that church leaders disagreed. History can prove that doctrines developed over centuries. History can prove that governments used Christianity for political purposes. History can prove that Christians participated in slavery and that other Christians fought slavery.

But history cannot scientifically prove or disprove every supernatural claim contained within Christianity. That’s because historical evidence and spiritual belief aren’t exactly the same category. If somebody says Jesus existed, that’s a historical question. If somebody says Jesus is divine, that’s partly a theological question. If somebody says God answered a particular prayer, that’s a personal claim. If somebody says a pastor has supernatural authority over your money, that requires another kind of examination entirely.

And that’s where I have a serious problem with religious manipulation. There’s a difference between giving to a religious community because you genuinely want to support its work and being psychologically pressured into giving because somebody tells you God will punish you if you don’t. There’s a difference between generosity and spiritual extortion. There’s a difference between respecting a pastor and treating a pastor like a supernatural bank teller standing between you and God.

And there’s a difference between saying, “I gave and something good happened,” and saying, “My pastor blessed me because I gave him money.” That last statement should make us stop and think. If God is truly God, why would divine favor require a financial transaction with a human intermediary? That question doesn’t attack generosity. It attacks manipulation.

CHRISTMAS, PAGANISM AND THE NIMROD CLAIM

Now let’s get into Christmas because this subject gets abused from both sides. The Bible doesn’t give us Jesus’ exact birth date. December 25 wasn’t established as the Christian celebration of Jesus’ birth during the earliest centuries of Christianity. The first known official Roman calendar reference to December 25 as a celebration of Christ’s birth dates to AD 336.

There were also existing Roman celebrations around this time of year, including traditions associated with the winter season and solar symbolism. So it’s reasonable to ask whether Christianity absorbed or adapted existing cultural customs. But here’s where I’m going to cut through the cheese. The claim that December 25 is definitively “Nimrod’s birthday” isn’t established historical fact. Nimrod appears in Genesis, but there’s no reliable historical evidence establishing December 25 as his birthday. That claim has become popular in certain religious and anti-Christmas teachings, but popularity isn’t proof.

And if I’m telling people to investigate Christianity instead of blindly accepting what they’re taught, I have to apply the same standard to the people criticizing Christianity. Otherwise I’m just replacing one pulpit with another.

THE REAL PROBLEM ISN’T JUST CHRISTMAS

The bigger question isn’t whether somebody has a Christmas tree. The bigger question is whether people know what they believe and why they believe it. If someone celebrates Christmas as a cultural family tradition, that’s one thing. If somebody believes December 25 is the exact historical birthday of Jesus, the evidence doesn’t support that certainty. If somebody believes every Christmas custom is secretly Satanic, that also requires evidence. If somebody chooses not to celebrate Christmas because they believe its traditions conflict with their understanding of Scripture, that’s a personal religious decision. What matters is intellectual honesty. Don’t lie about the evidence to win an argument.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE WERE NEVER TAUGHT

I believe many of us were taught Christianity as though the version that arrived through our churches was the beginning and end of the story. But Christianity has a history. The Bible has a history. Translation has a history. Church institutions have a history. Political power has a history. Colonialism has a history. Slavery has a history. Black Christianity has a history. And all of those histories intersect.

The King James Bible is an extraordinary literary achievement. Its influence on the English language is enormous. But respecting its literary and historical importance doesn’t require pretending King James was a saint. He wasn’t. He was a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century monarch shaped by the politics, fears, beliefs and power structures of his time. He authorized a famous Bible translation. He also wrote a book about demonology. He had intensely intimate relationships with male favorites. He lived in a political world where religion and government were deeply intertwined. Those things can all be true at the same time.

THE LESSON I TAKE FROM ALL OF THIS

For me, the lesson isn’t “throw the Bible away.” The lesson is “stop being afraid to read.” Read the Bible. Read the history. Read the arguments against it. Read the arguments defending it. Read the history of the church. Read the history of Africa. Read the history of Christianity in Africa. Read the history of Christianity in America. Read the history of slavery. Read the writings of people who used Christianity to defend slavery. Read the writings of people who used Christianity to fight slavery. Then make up your own mind.

Because if your faith can only survive when you’re forbidden from asking questions, that’s not faith. That’s control.

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS…

I don’t believe that truth needs protection from honest questions. If something is true, investigation shouldn’t destroy it. If a doctrine collapses the moment somebody asks where it came from, maybe the problem isn’t the question. Maybe the problem is the doctrine. I’m not interested in insulting people who believe differently from me. I’m interested in understanding why we believe what we believe, especially when those beliefs have been handed down through generations without examination.

I also don’t believe that exposing religious hypocrisy means I have to become cynical about spirituality. There’s a tremendous difference between God and an institution claiming exclusive access to God. There’s a difference between spiritual conviction and religious business. There’s a difference between generosity and manipulation. And there’s a difference between a sincere teacher and someone who discovers that fear, guilt and promises of prosperity can keep people reaching for their wallets.

For Black people in America, this examination becomes even more important because religion didn’t exist outside our history. Christianity was used against us, but it was also transformed by us. It became a place where enslaved people could imagine freedom, where families could build community and where generations could find strength. That contradiction deserves to be studied rather than erased. Our ancestors weren’t stupid. They were navigating a brutal world and finding whatever tools they could use to survive and resist.

So when I hear somebody tell me that King James was some perfect Christian saint, I’m going to investigate. When somebody tells me Jesus’ birthday was definitely December 25, I’m going to investigate. When somebody tells me Nimrod’s birthday was December 25, I’m going to investigate. When somebody tells me Lucifer is simply another name for Satan and then tells me Jesus is the Morning Star, I’m going to open the text and examine the context. And when somebody tells me I have to give them money before God will bless me, I’m going to ask one very simple question: where exactly does that authority come from?

That’s what I mean by cutting through the cheese. I’m not asking anyone to believe me. I’m asking people to investigate for themselves. Because blind faith can make a person vulnerable to anybody who knows how to manipulate fear, guilt and hope. Knowledge gives you another option. You can still believe. You can still question. You can still pray. You can still walk away from traditions that no longer make sense to you. But whatever you decide, make sure it’s actually your decision. Don’t spend your entire life believing something simply because somebody taught you that questioning it was a sin.

SCURV