The New Yorker features an article on the Bible publishing industry and its inherent tension between spreading the gospel and commercializing the gospel. The piece highlights lots of interesting tidbits on different translations and marketing new Bible versions, but the main focus is on the trend of packaging different Bibles for different niches. Anyone who’s visited a Christian bookstore has seen the array: Bibles for men, Bibles for women, different “BibleZines” (glossy teen magazines peppered with scripture) for teenage girls and boys, Superhero Bibles for kids, a Bible for surfers, etc., etc. Some critics worry that the Bible publishing industry is becoming weighed down with commercialism; publishers contend that if marketing the Bible in this way is what it takes to get people to read the Word of God, then that’s what they need to do.
Bible publishing in the twenty-first century involves an intersection of faith and consumerism that is typical of contemporary American evangelicalism. Peter Thuesen, a religious historian and the author of “In Discordance with the Scriptures,” a history of Bible translation controversies in America, sees in Bible publishing “a growing comfort with commercialization.” He explained, “Different kinds of packaging can always be seen by true believers as having an evangelical utility. If it helps reach people with the Word, then it’s not bad. You can consecrate the market.”[...] It is easy to ascribe a cynical motive to publishers’ embrace of commercial trends. Tim Jordan, of B. & H., concedes, “You do get some folks that say you shouldn’t treat the Bible as a fashion accessory or a throwaway.” Nonetheless, he feels that, from the point of view of a serious religious publisher, fashion can’t be ignored as a way of reaching new audiences. The point, he says, is “to expose as many people as you can, because we believe that it’s God’s word, we believe that it’s life-changing, and we don’t take that lightly.”
[...] The problem, as [writer Phyllis Tickle] sees it, is that “instead of demanding that the believer, the reader, the seeker step out from the culture and become more Christian, more enclosed within ecclesial definition, we’re saying, ‘You stay in the culture and we’ll come to you.’ And, therefore, how are we going to separate out the culturally transient and trashy from the eternal?” The consumerist culture in which BibleZines and the like participate is, to Tickle, “entirely antithetical to the traditional Christian understanding of meekness and self-denial and love and compassion.” In Tickle’s view, reimagining the Bible according to the latest trends is not merely a question of surmounting a language barrier. It involves violating “something close to moral or spiritual barriers.”
Phyllis Tickle’s sentiments strike me as especially compelling. While most of us recognize that Bible publishing is a business that needs to make a profit and sell products, I get uncomfortable with the Bible as an eternal Word getting too entangled with an ephemeral culture. The question when it comes to packaging the Bible, of course, is how far is too far? A 2,000 year old book written in Hebrew and Greek should be made accessible to a modern, English-speaking audience, but how can we do so without it becoming trendy and cheapened? How do we strike a balance?
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December 15, 2006 at 14:41
I can definitely see Tickle’s side, and Jesus lashed out at the money changers within the Temple for commercializing what was intended to bring him honor.
However, Jesus also went to the well within Samaria, where he met a woman where she was at, wrong time of day, wrong place for a male, much less a jew to be. And then she went back and reached even more people within her community with God’s grace.
I appreciated my “trendy” bible when I was in high school, and in fact asked for it, despite having a great traditional bible. The additions to the text, the questions it asked me (and encourage me to find the answer in the text), all served to enrich and draw me in further. I use my traditional bible because that’s where I’m at in my faith.
Didn’t the reformers and King James translate the word so that it would be accessible to the people instead of just the clergy and those with high education (who knew Latin)? Why can’t we do the same today?
Can we be trusted to find a balance?
December 15, 2006 at 18:53
We are approaching the fine line between promoting the Word and “merching” it. As the publishing industry takes the next few steps to move the next few cases, we will see a growing discomfort with the trend. This conversation is just getting started. DT
December 15, 2006 at 21:14
I really fear we have become hypercritical. In many of our more traditional Bibles, there is commentary of one kind or another. Bibles aimed at a particular “niche” contain commentary geared towards helping people with specific problems or concerns. Who says a Bible has to have a black cover, gold-edged pages and be one-size-fits-all?
Anna
December 15, 2006 at 22:30
I don’t get too upset with the idea of commercialization when it comes to packaging. Before the Bible become a book, I’m sure parchment holders and scrolls were available for all kinds of tastes and prices (just think of all the Medieval manuscript illumination). God didn’t declare that His word could be only in a leather-bound fine paper form. The issue isn’t about what is done with the outside of the Bible, but what is done with the inside. That’s where commercialization is dangerous.
By cutting up the “sacred writings” and using discreet verses and passages for every imaginable product that can be sold, the commercial Bible industry has trivialized Scripture. It is perceived as little more than a huge content pool from which to make new things to sell. Forget integrity, context, and meaning—it’s all about products. It’s no wonder we are becoming less and less biblically literate—it’s no longer “literature,” but just trivial collections of Bible truisms.
This ground has been covered by many others, but when commercial potential drives translation, we have lost all sense of the sanctity of God’s word. The TNIV is trying so hard to be gender-neutral that it is willing to rewrite God’s word to be more acceptable to that “market.” Other “translations” try to so hard to be hip and trendy that they choose words based on appeal rather than on accuracy. The more segmented the marketplace, the more “translations” will emerge that dumb down word and meaning to build up sales.
Finally, commercialization has brought the holy word of God down to the level of common authors. I tire of all the “special” Bibles that include articles and essays by popular but common authors scattered throughout the pages of the holy word. It’s tantamount to saying the authors are more popular than the Bible, so sell the authors and get the Bible text free. There’s just something disagreeable about that whole trend.
Nuff said.
December 16, 2006 at 06:49
Two comments on this.
1. If we want to reach people from outside the Christian community, then we have to make the Bible accessible. If that involves, providing editions which contain notes speaking specifically to people’s issues, that doesn’t bother me. If it involves comprimising the message in anyway, it’s wrong. If it involves, some kind of shady business practice or leading people astray as to the content of the book, then it’s also wrong.
2. How do we look at this in the light of the amount of money going into funding new English versions, translations etc. when people from other language groups are crying out for just one single version in their own language. This seems to me a greater issue which is largely unaddressed by the church.
December 18, 2006 at 10:12
Acts 8:30-31
“Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked.
‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”
I see the danger of overcommercialization and of cheapening the Word of God. However, I also see that in this passage, the Holy Spirit led Philip to this Ethiopian official for a reason: he couldn’t understand the Scripture unless someone explained it to him. If the publishers can follow some good guidelines to help them walk that fine line, I think they should keep getting the Bible into the hands of those who need it, while also helping them to understand it.
December 18, 2006 at 14:34
Jesus told us to go out into the highways and biways and COMPEL them to come in. In other words, we go to them. We speak THEIR language. Paul took a lot of flak for de-judiazing the gospel when he discipled the Greeks. When speaking to Greeks, he pepered his preaching with secular greek poets and wrestling and boxing analogies (which are now canonized. Imagine, speaking in boxing metaphors!) He was accused of lowering the behaviorial and religous standards. Unfortunately, we are raising a generation that doesn’t read and doesn’t comprehend the written word very well. I say we use the language of the people we are trying to reach to communicate the gospel. And for a lot of this generation, that language is very VISUAL. I met the Lord after reading a JB Phillips New Testament and started with a Good News For Modern Man paraphrase. Once I began to catch the rythyms of Bible language and concepts and was filled with the Holy Spirit, I moved on to more literal translations. I really don’t think that someone who was first attracted to the gospel through a Biblezine or a surfer version will stay with that, do you? With a little more maturity and time I believe that all these young believers will be carrying complete, more literal translations. I have seen this happen over and over for 30 years.
December 25, 2006 at 11:30
As a child I read the comic book version of the Old Testament a million times. I was a voracious reader at that age and it stuck in my head. My husband came to Christ as an adult and is baffled by Old Testament stories at times. I (for one) am grateful for the simplified and illustrated version I consumed as a child.
December 26, 2006 at 14:31
Who says that ‘merchandising’ the Bible is a bad thing? The only criticism I can find above that makes any sense to me is that of chopping verses out of their context. This is the cause of most errors, inconsistencies, and misinterpretations of Scripture.