Churches post Bible verses online every day, and most never think about copyright. Usually that is fine. But if your church puts verses on branded images and posts them daily — essentially reproducing scripture at scale for a public audience — it is worth understanding the ground you are standing on.

This is a practical overview, not legal advice. When in doubt, ask a lawyer.

Modern translations are copyrighted

Most of the translations people know best — the NIV, ESV, NLT, and others — are under copyright held by their publishers. Those publishers offer generous "fair use" allowances for quoting a verse or two, and for normal church use you are almost always within them. But the allowances have limits: a cap on how many verses, a rule against reproducing whole chapters, and a required copyright line. Daily branded posts across a public feed can drift toward the edges of what those courtesy allowances were meant to cover.

Public-domain translations are free to use

Some translations are in the public domain, which means anyone can reproduce them freely, at any scale, without permission or attribution:

  • The King James Version (KJV) — the familiar classic
  • The World English Bible (WEB) — a modern-English update of the American Standard Version, written specifically to be copyright-free

Public-domain text is the safest foundation for anything you produce repeatedly and publicly, because there is simply no permission to exceed.

A reasonable approach for churches

  • For occasional posts, quoting your church's preferred modern translation is generally fine — include the copyright line the publisher asks for.
  • For anything automated or high-volume, lean toward a public-domain translation so scale never becomes a problem.
  • Always quote the verse exactly and cite the reference. Accuracy is both a legal and a spiritual matter.

This is why inspire.day defaults to the World English Bible: it is faithful, readable, and free to reproduce as often as your church posts, with no copyright ceiling to bump into. If your church later licenses another translation, that can be added — but public domain is a clean place to start.

Getting this right is not about fear. It is about handling scripture with the same care in public that you give it from the pulpit.