I Just Want To Slap Somebody...

[gehayi]

The Bible--or at least the New Testament--has just been redone, and I cannot say that I have ever seen a tackier-looking Testament. It resembles an issue of Sassy or Seventeen, though the editors claim that they have given the Bible a "Cosmo look

Comments

[alliterator]

Thank God I'm Jewish.

I agree.

[tinuviel8994]

x_X

[st_salieri]

Absolutely unbelievable. I'm having to rein in my own rant. This article from ABCNews.com contains most of the same information, as well as a scan of the cover. First off, I've never heard of the New Century Version -- I'm curious as to which translation it's based on.

What bothers me is that Revolve appears to feed into some of the same stereotyping of women seen in some of the teen mags -- girls as boy crazy and obsessed with social status, marriage and appearance. Yeah, degrade them in order to witness to them. What a wonderful idea. These people do not want to raise strong Christian women, as they would like the world to believe -- they are, consciously or not, trying to mold girls into these stunted, submissive beings, the second-class citizens of the spiritual world. I'm not so much worried about girls reading this -- I'm worried that the people who published this and wrote the "articles" inside may be youth leaders and parents of young girls themselves. Behold the next generation

[gehayi]

Well, here's something about the New Century Edition at http://kenanderson.net/bible/new_century.html

I recall hearing some of the Revolve messages in my youth. One that I absolutely did not believe was that it was a woman's mission in life to bear children and if she failed to do that, she was failing to obey God's will. I asked the nun who told me that if she had failed to obey God's will, because after all, she was a nun and nuns weren't supposed to have any children. Never got an answer, either

[irian]

That was one *interesting* story. I have to say, you had more guts than myself when I was a kid. I wouldn't have *dared* talk back to a nun like that. But then, I didn't study in a Catholic school, so the situation never came up.

[gehayi]

The odd thing is, I wasn't even thinking about sounding sarcastic. This kind of thing frequently happened in religion class, as my mother, aunt and grandfather had not reared me with any consciousness of deities or faith. I was so ignorant of the basic tenets of the Catholic faith that when Sr. Francis de Sales asked me in my first religion class, "How many gods are there?", my immediate, unthinking, cheerful response was, "Three

[scriva]

Excellent rant! The example you gave just feeds my personal pet peeve: extremely conservative Christianity disguised with pop-art. It also proves that they consider the girls as too stupid to have their own opinions about faith or the Biblie in general. I think there might be many other ways of making the Bible interesting for young readers

[polaris_starz]

*buries her head in her hands* Is it any wonder I'm agnostic?

I should rant here. But everyone has already said pretty much what I think, so I'll just add: This sort of thing is disgusting. I almost wish I had gone to a religious sort of school, so I could shoot holes in their theology.

[scrollgirl]

Rhys, is that you? Hi! *waves* I didn't know you had an LJ!

Re: Revolve. I haven't seen or heard of this new Bible, but it sounds pretty bad just from your description.

I have to admit that my "teen" Bible, which has served me well lo these many years, actually does have Q&As and pseudo advice columns. But they're not done in an exploitive manner, I think. The Q&As are focused on historical facts of specific Bible passages, and the columns deal with more serious issues like, what does it mean to forgive, why should you honour your parents, etc.

But I think one problem with Revolve is that it tries to distill complex issues with complex answers into catchy phrases and captions, like magazines do. And religion is just one of those things you cannot, IMHO, reduce to a catchy phrase or soundbite. And so it gives the wrong impression of what the Bible really means, what young girls "should" want or do, and what Christianity is about. I agree with you, the Bible is not really that entertaining. It's a holy book (IMHO) and not exactly a

[gehayi]

Yep, it's me! Hi, scrollgirl!