Gospel According to Gullah

ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. — \o7The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want\f7.

No matter how often he read Psalm 23, Emory Campbell never could understand that line. "I shall not want: What does that mean?" he'd ask himself.

Then he joined a project to translate the Bible into the language of his ancestors -- the language of slaves who toiled for centuries in rice paddies off the Carolina coast.

That first line became: "De Lawd me shephud. A hab ebryting wa A need." I have everything I need.

It reminded Campbell, 64, of his grandmother's way of talking, earthy and frank and deep-down resonant. "Yes, indeed," Campbell said. " 'I have everything I need.' That made sense to me."

Campbell had always considered himself above the slave language, known as Gullah. As a boy, he giggled at his grandma's speech. In college, he considered her "dem" and "dat" and "dey" a brand of ignorance. Psalm 23 opened his eyes to Gullah's riches.

He would spend the next two decades struggling to make the word of God sound like his grandmother.

The result -- De Nyew Testament -- was unveiled here last month at an annual festival to celebrate Gullah culture. Twenty-six years in the making, the Gullah gospel was written by descendants of slaves under the direction of traveling missionaries.

As a tool for evangelizing, it's not that efficient. No more than 10,000 people speak Gullah as their primary language; most are elderly and isolated on the Sea Islands, a chain off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Perhaps another 250,000 coastal residents lapse into Gullah now and then among friends.

The small market doesn't trouble the missionaries who devote their lives to such projects. They consider it their calling to bring the Scripture to every tongue around the globe: to the 4,000 Africans who speak Igo, to the 3,000 South Americans who speak Chachi, to the 1,200 Pacific Islanders who speak Angaatiya.

"It's my vocation. It's my passion," said David Frank, a linguist who helped finish the Gullah project.

When the Bible is not available in their "heart language," even the most devout Christians see it "more as an icon" than a meaningful message from God, Frank said. "They know the Scripture is something you have to have, but they have given up on the idea of understanding it."