Translating Christianity in a Sufi Milieu: The Urdu Biblical Work of Liberius Pieterse

Last update: 2026-07-07 15:37:12

Last 6-7 June, the conference Of Priests and Sufis: Revisiting Catholic Scholarship on Islamic Mysticism was held at the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) in Cairo. Organized by Riccardo Paredi, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Catholic University of Milan, as part of the SEMENSUF (Seminal Sufism in Motion) project, the conference explored the contribution of Catholic priests and religious to the study of Sufism. Among the speakers was Charles Ramsey, chaplain at Baylor University, who presented a paper entitled “Liberius Pieterse (1905–1993) and the Sufic Roots of the Urdu Bible.” His presentation focused on a Dutch Franciscan missionary who spent nearly forty years in Pakistan and whose theological outlook was profoundly shaped by the country’s devotional and mystical traditions. We asked Ramsey to tell us more about this remarkable figure and to explain how Pieterse came to produce his Urdu translation of the Bible

 

Interview by Claudia Catanzaro

 

In the conference Of Priests and Sufis held in Cairo on June 6-7, you presented a paper on Liberius Pieterse. Who was this little-known scholar and what makes his missionary experience different from that of other Catholic missionaries in Pakistan?

What drew me to this person was that he was like one of those aromas that you smell and then ask yourself where it is coming from. Who is that? Liberius Pieterse, born Simon Carel, who converted to Catholicism as a young man. He took on this name and became a priest, but he remained someone about whom we know relatively little. He adopted a hidden spirituality. Not that he was hiding anything; rather, he wanted to make himself truly a servant of the Church, a servant of the people, and to live among the poor. I think that was at the heart of his spirituality, and it was faithful to his religious tradition as a Franciscan.

I had heard many times about the Catholic Bible translated by Pieterse. I myself am Protestant and Baptist, and so it was one of those that we’d consult on occasion, but it’s not something that I use daily. But everyone who studies Urdu, Urdu theology, and Urdu biblical tradition, agrees that the Catholic Bible is better. We all agree that the phrases are nicely said and sound somehow a little more natural and more literary than the Protestant version. There is an Urdu Bible translation that was prepared mostly in the modern era by Protestant missionaries – British, American, German. The Roman Catholics in the Punjab, what is now Pakistan, came quite late. Part of what Father Liberius Pieterse did was address a community that was forming. It was a church that was coming into being and that was using the Bible prepared by Protestants, that was missing the deuterocanonical portions of it – which can be important in liturgy. 

At this time, there was no formal liturgy in Urdu, no songbook or hymnal, and people had to use what they had. Liberius Pieterse took what was there and, with a deep understanding of the community and love for the people, improved the Urdu Bible, brought forth the additional deuterocanonical books, and, through deep engagement with the biblical texts and Church tradition, as well as a knowledge of poetry and music, combined singing, poetry, hymns, and the music of the people with the scriptures of the people, the Bible of the people.

That is very special, that usually does not happen in such a way. It usually takes hundreds of years, many different people. He was not a lone man working by himself, he’s a man working in community, with other priests and scholars from the community, men and women, mostly Pakistani. But he’s the one who helps and guides them and provides a culture for those who are translating the texts and are committed to the culture and the local language. A Sufi culture, but also committed to the church. 

Pieterse wanted the Bible to be clearly and evidently connected to Rome and to its tradition, but truly and authentically Pakistani. I emphasize Pakistani because he lived there before and during the violent and chaotic period of Partition. He lived among the people and learned their languages. Partition happened, and he, unlike any other missionary we know of, became a Pakistani citizen. He was so committed to the land, to its people, and to the future of this new nation that he lived among them until his death. He died during a visit to Rome. He was there for a conference and suffered a heart attack at the airport. By that time, he had been in Pakistan for over forty years, and we can only assume that he would have remained there until his death.

Liberius Pieterse was a very special man: not very well known, and someone who did not draw attention to himself. Most of the things he wrote did not bear his name, and additional research is needed to find him there. But his voice and his influence have been very faithful and fruitful. 

 

Which elements of Sufism are most clearly reflected in Pieterse’s Urdu translation of the Bible? And which linguistic choices most clearly reveal the influence of the Sufi context?

I would begin with the culture. As someone living in that land and among the people, the Islam that Pieterse experienced and came to know was Sufi Islam. He was in rural Sindh, in an area that is known even today as the heartland of Sufism in Pakistan. It was almost a rebellious center, because there was so much pressure from the Arab world and from the modernizing world to leave these old traditions and this spirituality behind.

In my paper, I emphasized that there is both a theological aspect and a sociological aspect. The theological aspect concerns the importance of these living saints, these awliyāʾ, spiritual figures who have authority. Through them comes the grace of God: healing, health, childbearing, protection from demons – everything related to the spiritual and inner world – and access to divine power through what we would call shafāʿat, the ability of one person to intercede on your behalf. In fact, throughout much of Sindh, not to have an allegiance to the Sufi awliyāʾ and to the chain of blessing would be seen as a character flaw. The whole idea is that there is this chain of blessing that has been passed on, so that they can intercede. The theology of that is very important. These people occupy a great place of honor. 

From a sociological perspective, the awliyāʾ have a great deal of social power. They are able to gather people and give them direction. They can greatly influence elections, and they have access to significant financial resources and land. They have both social and financial capital. Even today, many elections in Pakistan are shaped by the authority, the sīfārish, of these great leaders. One of the most famous is Pir Pagara, who lived in the very area where Liberius lived, during a time of social unrest, when people wanted the British to leave. In fact, one of the last people executed – hanged by the British for insurrection – was the father of the Sufi leader living in the area where Liberius was.

Liberius lived within this whole world of theological, cultural, and political Sufism. He understood the place these spiritual authorities had in the lives of the people. He understood the rhythms of going to festivals, to the ʿurs, and he understood the music. Sindhi Sufism is deeply musical: its shrines hold regular singing events. It is a thriving, vital, and very colorful culture. That is where he learned Islam and the language. The conversations he had there shaped his view of the world and of the people.

Secondly, this was a time when Pakistan was defining itself as a land for Muslims. Those translating the Bible or working as missionaries before Partition had always worked with a multi-religious audience. They had been preparing something that had to be understood by Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Muslims. The questions were many: what language should we use? What codes should we use to clarify and communicate our vision of the divine and the meaning of Scripture in a way that was understandable to the people?

Pieterse, however, was writing for an audience that had defined itself as Muslim. This was a Bible for the Urdu-speaking Church of Pakistan. There was already a history of Muslim influence in Urdu Bible translations, going all the way back to Protestant work, such as that of William Carey and Henry Martyn, and others who had drawn on Muslims because they were leaders in society, they had great influence, and they were also specialists in Urdu. Urdu had so many Persian and Arabic roots that it made sense to draw on Muslim interlocutors.

Fine modulo

When Pieterse was working on his translation, he was looking through a particular lens, one shaped by the linguistic and cultural tools available in the Sufi culture around him. The audience that was going to receive, hear, and read it was Muslim. Also, most of the people among whom he lived were poor and illiterate, whether they were Muslim or new Christians who had become part of the Church.

Those who could read were likely to belong to the middle or upper classes; they were likely to be Muslim and to have been educated in a very particular way, through the Persian kitābī tradition. To be educated meant that you had memorized and learned a great deal of Persian poetry, that you had learned how to read Arabic and recite the Qur’an, but that much of your cultural learning, your poetry, and what shaped your vision of the world was actually Persian. Those who could read were reading that tradition. Those who could not read were reciting Sufi poetry, and so these were the tools that were available to him. When Pieterse sat down to prepare his Urdu translation, he read it in the company of friends, both Christian and Muslim. As he read it, he worked on the phrases and the language to make sure it was understandable to them. He made it as indigenous and as contextualized as he could.

For instance, many of the deuterocanonical books contain a great deal of poetry. What Pieterse did was take the existing Hebrew, and some Syriac, and, as he looked at the poetic structures there, try to match them and bring them into a localized poetic idiom, with a rhyme form that would be familiar and, as I like to say, “prayable.” It is something that, when you read it, you can pray it. There was a rhythm, there was a cadence. It was natural not only to understand the meaning, but to engage with it and to pray these words.

There is a sense of the poetic nature of the language in the theological aspect of intercession. Pieterse inserted a word that is very clearly Sufi, we see it in poetry over and over again: wajd. It is the idea of experiencing the Holy Spirit, of being overcome by the Spirit by entering the Spirit. He was in a very ecstatic culture, where people wanted to cultivate that kind of experience. So he pointed to the experience of the Holy Spirit, to the coming of the Holy Spirit, through a word that had direct Sufi connotations and had not been used in any other Bible translation, certainly not in the Urdu one.

 

And when there was no equivalent in the Sufi lexicon?

Indeed he created some new categories. He was trying to say: we can bring the Hebrew into Urdu, but some ideas are not simply one-to-one. Even when we talk about love: what is the definition of love? What does love look like? How do we take a term like agápē, love, and bring it into Urdu? It had not been easy for earlier translators to move from Hebrew to Greek, and it was not easy for him either to bring these ideas into Urdu without mixing the meaning. That is the difficulty of translation. It needs to be understandable and somehow digestible, but without lessening the value of what you are saying. You want the reader to grapple with this new idea, or with a new way of understanding the word itself.

I think Liberius was very intentional about that. He made certain choices in order to make the Gospel appealing to a Muslim reader hearing or reading it for the first time. I think he wanted it to be familiar, but at the same time he did not want them to think that it was exactly what they already had. That would have confirmed that they were right and that they could simply go on unchanged. He invited them to reflect on certain words, such as “church” and “baptism.” The Protestant Bible had rendered “church” as jamāʿat, a gathering. He decided to stay with the Greek and use ekklēsía. He then reflected on what it meant to be part of the Church, because he wanted to introduce the ecclesiology of which he was a part. He wanted them to understand the importance of being grafted into this larger structure of the universal Church, the Roman Church. The other word was “baptism.” There were many options, but again he chose to use the Greek term, báptisma. Sometimes, instead of giving a meaning that would be more readily understandable, he left the word opaque, so that the person had to reflect on its meaning.

 

What are the advantages or potential risks of translating Christianity through a vocabulary closely associated with Islamic spirituality?

I would say that this is no more dangerous than translating the Bible into German and placing it within a pre-existing German spirituality. That was very difficult. People already had their own understanding. Before someone like Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, people already had a Bible in their own language, and there was already a spirituality there. There were things they had heard and things they had read. So the translator was grappling with the text, with the language, and with the spirituality of the people. There is a context, a pretext, and a text.

I do not think we need to be afraid of coming too close to Islamic spirituality. I do not think it is any more dangerous, or any more difficult, than translating the Bible into any other cultural spirituality. There are certainly points of connection, echoes, and a language that is very rich and full of meaning.

If we think about the history of Muslim-Christian relations, the Bible has been a place of disagreement and conflict. We have not seen the Muslim community engage deeply or closely with Scripture, not even scholars. It is quite a modern phenomenon to see this kind of intentional engagement.

We have plenty of examples of Muslim exegetes who studied the Bible and included it in their commentaries of the Qur’an. We also have plenty of sayings of Jesus. But when one tries to grapple with the Christian and biblical message, it has always been a point of contention. I do not think we made it easier for them. In Pakistan, as the translation moved forward through successive editions, it became less available to Muslims, not more. The language began to shift, with fewer Arabic or Persian words and simpler sentences, so that a common laborer, or a reader without much education, could understand it. Today the Bible, particularly the Protestant Bible more than the Catholic one, has a kind of “Christianese” Urdu: a language known only to Christians and used only in the Church. This translation choice was intended to protect a community that owned the word and the Bible. It was the Bible for their community; it was not for the majority of people. I do not think that was Liberius’ heart. I think his intention was to create a Bible accessible to everyone, because we do not know who is going to end up in the Church.Today, most of the church comes from one particular segment of society. They tend to be from the Punjab, quite poor, from a particular background that doesn’t connect easily with their Muslim or “higher status” neighbors. There is a 5,000-year history of division between them that predates the modern era. They comprise the majority of the church today and this pre-existing cultural identity affects the reception of the translation in use today. Liberius was creating something available to everybody, and he had to use a language that was understandable, a Sufi-infused language. 

After him, and in Pakistan today, there are Christians and Muslims working together who have experimented with studies of the Bible in an Urdu that readily embraces Muslim spirituality and Sufi terms. Those trained there were trained in the seminary founded by the Franciscans, and we see some of that heritage and teaching. There is a journey today; it is not a closed book, but a thriving community. It is a community of growing relationships and growing influence in society. We see that in the arts, in music, and in so many areas of Pakistani culture. It is an exciting day when you see Muslim scholars reading the Bible with care and interest, wanting to study Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and attempting studies on their own. I see that as connected to the legacy and work of Liberius Pieterse. He is known among the people as Āzād, which is the translation of Liberius, meaning “free man” or “the man who has been set free.” We see his spirituality being carried forward even among some Muslim scholars and thinkers today.

 

If Pieterse were working in present-day Pakistan, a country that differs profoundly from the Pakistan of the first year of independence, would he still adopt the same approach?

I cannot help but compare Father Liberius to some of the Catholic missionaries I know today. Two are from Ireland, one from the Netherlands, and they have done beautiful work. They themselves have adopted a form of dress and a style that are very indigenous, very Pakistani. Walking through the community, they look like Sufi saints, with their clothing, their white beards, and the love people have for them. People go to them for prayer and blessing; they are seen as holy people in the community. There is something very Sufi in the way they carry themselves. But I think they are also very gentle and careful to remain under the authority of the indigenous Church, of the bishops and the archbishop. The culture today is one in which protecting people from danger and persecution is very important. Nobody wants to be accused of pretending to be a Muslim, or of trying to convert Muslims, or of saying anything negative about Islam; that can be extremely dangerous.

The second element is that you do not want your Church to be confused or to come under pressure to become Muslim. If Liberius arrived in Pakistan today and were beginning his work, I think he would look around the community and say: “Wow, there is so much to be done, so many educational needs, so much poverty. We do not need to put our energy into evangelization, or into taking the Gospel into other languages and communities, because we have so much to do right here.” So I do not think he would adopt the same approach. I think he would have Muslim friends and would love music and poetry. But I think the fact that he arrived when he did gave him a particular perspective, a particular understanding. Again, he was a man within history. He was living at a time when the Church had not yet been formed. The clay was still very wet, and I would say that God used him to help shape the clay, which is the Church of Pakistan, and he did that very beautifully.

But no, I do not think he would be doing the same thing today. I think the contextualization of the Gospel within Muslim spirituality today is the work of Muslims. I think there is a curiosity and an interest, and those who are doing that today tend to be Muslims. The beauty of it is that they meet Christian friends, priests, and missionaries who are willing to engage with them and want to help: “Do you need a Bible dictionary? Do you need me to explain what this means? Because I hear that you want to do this in a way that is authentic and faithful. You are not trying to subvert the Bible; you are trying to understand it.” In relationships like that, I think something special happens, but there is also a shift of power.

Liberius, if you will, was going to be the one printing the Bible; he was going to be the one making the final choices. He was authorized to decide what went on that page and what people would read. The power was in his hands. When someone else reads the text and prepares their own translation, then in a sense the power is in their hands. That is a very different dynamic.

I think maybe the beauty of the Church today in Pakistan is that it is a vulnerable Church. It is not there with the force of empire, or of the East India Company, or of colonialism, and it can only survive if the community receives it and protects it. In my paper, we look back to a time when there were no Catholic Christians, zero Catholics. Now, there are likely over three million. I sometimes give a lower estimate, 2.5 million, but there are likely three million. It is a growing and thriving Church.