Stefano Rellandini / REUTERS

Enterprising Italian inventor Luciano Marabese has developed an automatic holy water dispenser to be used until fears of Swine Flu (the H1N1 Virus) have abated. Many churches, including Milan’s cathedral, had suspended use of their holy water fonts following 15 deaths in the nation, so Marabese has been inundated with orders for the device.

I sure bet Sam and Dean would like one of those in the back of the Impala.

Reuters ‘Invention washes away sins — without flu fears‘, msnbc.com (11/11/09)

Returning from an Xbox 360-enforced hiatus (having gotten one just after Christmas), it’s entirely appropriate I finally post the following story (and no, it’s not about alien religions in Mass Effect). Aaron Linne from Christian company LifeWay has developed a multimedia Bible app for the Xbox 360: Bible Navigator X.

The move from printed to digital text is hardly a revolutionary one (especially for this blog) but its location on the Xbox 360 is particularly interesting from a social point of view. Gamers are a strange bunch, and the multiplayer gamers who can find Bible Navigator X on Xbox Live are more known for their head-shots and trash-talking than their bible-thumping.

The video also features the initially-innocuous but rather stunning admission from Linne: “I’m more comfortable with a controller in my hand than I am with a book in my hand.” I hardly see this sort of thing as the next step in religious evolution, but the jump he’s made over the keyboard and mouse is conspicuous by its absence. I also wonder how many gamers have those gamepads with keyboards…

Some of you may have already heard about Conservapedia’s ‘Conservative Bible Project‘ (CBP). American “Conservatives” (who, like conservatives in Australia, are often the most radical) have begun a wiki project to rewrite the Bible free from “liberal distortion”. Their problem with current translations is as follows.

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other feminist distortions; preserve many references to the unborn child (the NIV deletes these)
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms to capture better the original intent; Defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words that have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Inauthentic Passages: excluding the interpolated passages that liberals commonly put their own spin on, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

I won’t draw attention to such hilarities as their intention to “Express Free Market Parables” or “Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness”, but instead point out at least one inconsistency they already suffer. Their second guideline is for a bible that is “Not Emasculated”, but consider the parallel ‘translations’ of the creation of Adam in Gen. 2.7 from the KJV and the CBP:

KJV: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

CBP: Then the LORD God formed a human being out of the dry powdered soil on the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And so man became a living person.

Emasculation!

They’re taking quite a while with their ‘translation’; I wonder how their pace stacks up against the LOLcat Bible.

How long-distance baptism was performed in the Stone Age. Or, you know, 3rd century Rome. From the Catcomb of Callixtus.

A piece on msnbc.com about online commuting to church. Apparently they even perform baptisms over webcams. I love this quote from Kurt Ervin, who runs the website for Central Christian Church

We live in a day and age and a culture where people go to school online, bank online, date online and do other things online

I think the only logical progression from “date online” is, well, you know. And is it just me, or was there an awkward beat before he said “and do other things online”? Oh, it’s just me.

Anyway, I love how immorally moral one church is about their Google keywords.

LifeChurch.tv has even found a way to attract people surfing for experiences that are far from pious. The congregation buys Google ad words so that a person searching for “sex” or “naked ladies” sees an ad inviting them to a live worship service instead.

Money spent saving souls from internet porn is money well spent

Rachel Zoll ‘Web is popular place to “open” a church‘, msnbc.com (1/11/09)

Photo courtesy of Atlas Obscura

Apologies to Msrs Diamond, Yauch and Horovitz.

David P often links on Facebook to places he’s discovered on Atlas Obscura, a site dedicated to weird and wonderful travel destinations around the world. One of these was the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, in Rome, which displays a number of bibles, prayerbooks and other items that have been seared with handprints apparently belonging to souls suffering in Purgatory.

Dissatisfied with the dearth of intercessory prayers from their loved ones, these souls burn their mark into items belonging to their friends and family as a reminder to remember their service to those lost. There’s something altogether creepy about this stuff, if only the placement of the thumb in the above image. That thumb isn’t opposed at all!

Of course, one can’t invoke Purgatorio without also invoking Dante. The prodigal David P has promised a post on Visceral Games’ latest marketing stunt for Dante’s Inferno, so lets hope he’s able to deliver.

Claire Soares ‘Souls Stuck in Purgatory Send Signals To Rome‘, Reuters (16/8/02)

Rabbi Ben Greenberg has collected a number of readings from the Torah – re-tweeted by a selection of Jewish users – into a book available from internet self-publisher Lulu.

Not everyone is pleased with the marriage of religion and social media, however, and Corey Hodges warned against obscuring Christianity beneath layers of entertainment, in his blog for the Salt Lake Tribune. Describing an unnamed church in Houston that encourages parishioners to tweet comments and questions during the sermon that appear on screens behind the pastor who later addresses them. Surely a greater danger is someone deciding to write “this sermon is lame” for all to see.

Social media and religion are not irreconcilable, however, as devotees of this fine blog are no doubt aware. Writing for Arizona State University’s State Press Joseph Hermiz draws the same analogy as A. Prof. Mark Goodacre of Duke, that in the 1st century Paul himself utilised the most advanced social medium of the time, the epistle, to evangelise the Mediterranean.

More traditional folk are still serviced by the digital revolution, however. The 1985 Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh has been made into an audio recording, replacing the previous standard audio of the JPS’ 1917 translation. The audio stretches over 60 hours and is published online in weekly podcasts.

Joseph Hermiz ‘“Tweeting” the Torah, bringing religion online‘, State Press (19/10/09)
Corey J. Hodges ‘Tweeting in the pews? Pray it ain’t so‘, Salt Lake Tribune (15/10/09)

Photo credit: Rusti Curry

The Glo Bible aims to update scripture for the iPhone generation (okay, I just decided that there’s an ‘iPhone generation’). This DVD-ROM features HD videos, maps and ‘virtual tours’ of 1st century Jerusalem and is suspiciously reminiscent of creator Nelson Saba’s iLumina (2002). Odiously, this DVD-ROM isn’t something you actually ‘buy’ for the US$90 price tag, but only “license” for use on three computers. A press release for the ‘service’ says of the creator

Saba has a calling to create projects that communicate Scripture and his personal vision is to use the gifts God has given him through the creation of projects and tools such as Glo, which will enable the world to know Christ.

I’m sure God had such proprietary attitudes in mind when he gave Nelson this vocation. Then again, it’s not terribly surprising when you realise that Saba has lodged a patent on “Systems and methods for providing a zoomable user interface“.

A bit of a weird round-up this time, but airport security stories have been turning up on the religion blogs lately.

The first story concerns a Canadian Roman Catholic bishop who was discovered with sexual images of young children on his laptop hard-drive by airport security. Tmatt at GetReligion asked “What made them search a bishop?” and, a week and a bit later, he was able to answer. From a story in Halifax’s Chronicle Herald he found why security staff became suspicious:

Bishop Raymond Lahey avoided eye contact, changed his vocal tone and gave evasive responses when a border agent at Ottawa International Airport questioned him last month about his electronic equipment.

A Canada Border Services agent asked the bishop if he was carrying any electronic media such as cellphones, laptop computers or BlackBerrys when he arrived at the airport at 3:43 p.m. on Sept. 15, says a search warrant application. Bishop Lahey had just arrived from London, England.

The bishop told the border agent he had two cellphones.

The agent then asked the former head of the Diocese of Antigonish if he had a laptop. Bishop Lahey hesitated before saying he did. In all, the bishop was carrying a laptop, two cellphones, four memory sticks, three memory cards and a portable hand-held device.

The agent flagged Bishop Lahey for a secondary inspection because of his behaviour and the fact he was a man traveling alone who had visited countries known to be sources of child pornography, says an Ottawa police officer’s application for the warrant on Sept. 23.

The other story concerns observant Jews being allowed by America’s Transportation Security Administration to carry vegetable material (lulavs, etrogs, etc.) for Sukkot. Those American security guards may be humourless, but at least they’re culturally sensitive.

Newsography:
Tmatt ‘What made them search a bishop?‘, GetReligion.org (1/10/09)
______ ‘This made them search the bishop‘, GetReligion.org (12/10/09)
Dan Arsenault ‘Warrant describes evasive bishop‘, The Chronicle Herald (9/10/09)
Michele Chabin ‘Jewish Holiday Objects Allowed Through U.S. Airport Security‘, Religion News Service (2/10/09)

Image courtesy of:

Following our earlier story on Mubarak’s culling of Egypt’s pigs, primarily owned by Coptic Orthodox Christians, recent reports show that the streets of Cairo are filled with uncollected rubbish. This is due to the fact that Zabbaleen, Coptic Christians who go door to door collecting rubbish, used to feed the organic scraps to the pigs they kep, which they would eventually slaughter and eat when fattened.

The Zabbaleen occupy the Muqattam district, also known to the locals as Manshiyyat Naser (‘Garbage City’), an area of cemeteries and home to St Sama’an’s Church. Also known as the ‘Cave Cathedral’,  St Sama’an’s is the apaprently largest church in the Middle East with seating for 20,000. I noticed at the time that the Zabbaleen were complaining they would be deprived of their livelihood by the culling, but I didn’t notice they also pointed out that no-one would collect the rubbish when the pigs were gone. Perhaps the government thought the international contractors they’ve engaged to collect garbage would be able to cover it, but Cairenes are used to having garbage collected from their door, not the street, and the Zabbaleen are apparently piling the rubbish they collect next to public bins that can’t be picked up quickly enough.

Michael Slackman ‘A Little Late, Egypt Discovers the Flaw in Killing All Its Pigs‘, The New York Times (19/9/09)

Continuing our consideration of God and Twitter A. Prof. Mark Goodacre, a New Testament scholar from Duke University, was asked by BigThink “What Would Jesus Tweet?”. He responded that Paul was much more media savvy than Jesus, and draws an analogy between everyone’s favourite micro-blogging service and that 1st/2nd century social medium: the epistle.