Mark Brown presented a paper titled The Bible in the Digital Space during the Christianity in the Digital Space Symposium at St. John’s College of Durham University, United Kingdom. Mark is CEO of Bible Society New Zealand and Priest Associate at the Wellington Anglican Cathedral of St Paul. The presentation opens with this:
"Recently appearing in a newspaper in New Zealand was an advert encouraging people to come to church to listen to a preaching series entitled: The Bible: God’s Facebook. Now without knowing what they shared, the title all the same intrigues me. How precisely is the Bible, the grand story of God’s salvation of His people, in anyway similar to a social network site?
... Studies in Australia and the US suggest three main reasons why people avoid church:
1. Its boring and unfulfilling;
2. They don’t have time and prefer to do other things; and
3. They believe that what is shared at church is plain weird.
Grace Davie argues that in Britain the data indicates that believing
and belonging have become increasingly separated.While Christian
“belonging” has clearly declined, Christian beliefs nonetheless persist."
You can download the presentation at The Bible in the Digital Space [PDF format, via Mark Brown's Brownblog].
I agree that this is a very good paper and well worth reading. However, when it comes to the issue of translating the Bible into minority languages, Mark Brown hasn't fully grasped the complexity of the task. I examine some of his suggestions on my blog http://www.kouya.net/?p=2085
Posted by: Eddie | August 04, 2009 at 02:57 AM