Principles
The convictions behind the app, and the rules that come out of them. Every one of these is checked before a build ships, and you can hold us to any of them.
The Pillar was built around a simple conviction: truth matters, and it's worth protecting, preserving, and making visible.
Scripture describes the church as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15) — not the source of truth, but the structure that holds it up so people can see it clearly. A pillar doesn't invent what it displays; it supports it, keeps it standing, and makes sure it's not lost or hidden. That's the principle behind this app.
In a time when information is abundant but clarity is rare, and opinions spread faster than understanding, The Pillar aims to do one thing well: put the truth of Scripture within reach, presented clearly, and preserved faithfully — without distortion, without agenda, without noise.
This app isn't meant to replace study, community, or the church itself. It's meant to support them — a small pillar doing its part to hold up something far bigger than itself, so that the truth stays visible, accessible, and undiluted for anyone who's looking for it.
That's the reason this exists. Here is how it's kept.
There is no Pillar account to create and nothing to log in to. The only sign-in involved is the account you already buy apps with — your Apple Account, or your Google account on Android — and the store tells the app nothing about you but whether a subscription is active. We don't have your name, your email address or a record that you exist.
The app reports nothing about how you use it. This website carries no analytics script either, and no social-media embed, because those track the reader. Nothing you read, note or record is used to sell you anything, by us or anyone else.
Notes, highlights, handwriting, journal pages and recordings are stored on your device and, on iPhone and iPad if you turn on iCloud, in your own private iCloud database. On Android, they sit in the backup Android already keeps of your apps. We have no server that can read them and no way to get at them. You can export all of your notes as Markdown at any time, and they stay on your device if you cancel.
Most of the Bibles in The Pillar are public domain or openly licensed. The ones that aren't — the New King James, NASB, Christian Standard Bible, New Living Translation and The Message — are licensed from their publishers and shown live, and we keep to what those licenses allow: their text isn't stored offline, can't be written over, and isn't copied out of the app. When you share a verse from one of them, The Pillar sends the same passage in a public-domain translation and says so. A translation we can't license honestly, we don't ship.
Strong's, the lexicons, the dictionaries, the commentaries, the cross-references and the place data come from public-domain and openly licensed sources, and every one is named in the app. A commentary always says whose voice you're reading. The short pieces The Pillar writes itself are grounded in those sources rather than in any one commentator, and they say so.
The King James text, Strong's, the lexicons, the five dictionaries, the topical index and the maps ship inside the app. Other translations can be downloaded where their license permits it; commentaries are fetched a chapter at a time. We'd rather tell you which is which than pretend everything is offline.
The Bible is free, in every public-domain translation, with your notes and plans beside it, for as long as you like. One price covers the study apparatus, with nothing held back inside it and no upgrade prompt three screens in. The price is there because the study content costs money to license and keep accurate, and the alternative is selling your attention or your data.
Nearly half the places named in Scripture can't be located with confidence, so the maps draw them as uncertain instead of guessing. Red-letter text is phrase-level where the data supports it and verse-level where it doesn't, and says which. Ink written over the words is shown the way the iPad was held when it was written, because it can't follow the words when they reflow. Where the app can't do something well, it says so rather than doing it badly.
The Pillar is built and supported by thefrenchpressedone LLC, a one-person studio in Alexandria, Virginia. Write to help@thepillarapp.com and you reach the person who built it, usually within two business days.
Seven days free. Then $4.99 a month, or $39.99 a year.