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)

We’ve been told that the iPod’s earphones may damage our hearing and distract us from traffic, but now a scholar from the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo has warned that listening to recordings of the Qur’an is dangerous for the soul.

Sheik Gamal Qutb has warned that if someone listens to the Qur’an in public (presumably meaning on headphones while out in public, as I’d imagine public broadcasts of the Qur’an were something different) they are inevitably distracted, and so disrepect it. A theologian from al-Azhar, however, Ahmed as-Sayeh, countered that

“Listening to Quran in public places does not imply any carelessness,” he told al-Arabiya. “On the contrary, those who do that honor the Quran to the extent that they need to listen to it everywhere.”

This comes two years after the Saudi government banned imams from reading the Qur’an over the phone for night prayers during Ramadan.

There’s an interesting piece on the matter at ReligionDispatches, that interprets Qutb’s issue in light of Marxist theory and “passive listening”.

Hussein Rashid ‘Marxism Meets Al-Azhar: Can You Listen to the Qur’an on Tape?‘, ReligionDispatches (2/9/09)

Just like in the Stone Age!

Seminarians at the Redemptoris Mater House of Formation (peopled by those called from the Neocatechumenal Way) on the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization campus in Denver (they can also be found all over the world, including Perth and Sydney) lead a more disciplined life than their brothers in other, typical seminaries. They are not allowed to keep their own money, but must instead ask for it from their superiors to make purchases of any sort. They do not keep mobile phones or personal computers. They must generally always be accompanied by a peer. This stands in stark contrast to the life lead by another, larger seminary on the same campus, St John Vianney.

SJV mirrors contemporary seminary life. The men take notes on laptops, carry Blackberries, live in single rooms, gather for TV-watching in a common room, maintain their own blogs and spread news about snow-cancelled classes on Facebook. Basically, that’s the rule when it comes to contemporary Catholic seminary life in the U.S.

The men of Redemptoris Mater — the name is Latin for “Mother of the Redeemer” — take notes on steno pads, must seek permission before hanging anything on their residence hall walls and share everything, down to a single e-mail address on a second-floor computer.

I’m reminded of a glimpse I had once through the window of the monastery at St Peter Julian’s on George Street from a bus stop across the road. All I could see was an ink-jet printer, and for some reason the mental image of a robed monk dealing with a paper jam has stuck with me since.

As far as I can tell, the Redemptoris Mater boys aren’t forced to speak (Vat.) Latin to each other at all times, so they should count themselves lucky.

apud Eric Gorski ‘Catholic seminarians embrace strict rules‘, msnbc.com (29/8/09)

T’were awful puns, I know.

Twitter user @TheKotel has established a free service whereby prayers tweeted on his profile will be printed and placed in the Western or ‘Wailing’ Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. This is by no means an ‘official’ service, and the associated website’s FAQ attributes it to “a young man from Tel-Aviv”. It should be noted however, that the Israeli Telephone Company already has a similar service that accepts faxes and email. Some of these have been published by Joyce Shira Starr who, as in any book, claims copyright over the contents (I only mention this because of my previous post).

apud Steve Weizman ‘New service lets Jews tweet a prayer to God‘, msnbc.com (23/7/09)

Bibliography
Joyce Shira Starr Faxes and Emails to God: At the Western Wall of Jerusalem, 2nd ed., Writers Club Press, Lincoln NE, 1999 [1st ed. Faxes to God, 1995]

UPDATE: Reuters did a follow-up story, and have revealed the man behind @TheKotel as Alon Nir, a uni student in Tel Aviv.

Lianne Gross ‘Twitter site offers followers line to God‘, msnbc.com (19/8/09)

Rumours of Obama using a Zune may have been totally bogus, but that doesn’t mean he’s extended his love of Apple to replacing the treasured BlackBerry with an iPhone.

Obama receives daily prayers to his smartphone from the White House’s “faith director” Joshua DuBois. DuBois is a Pentecostal minister who signed on to the Obama campaign after watching the then-Senatorial candidates speech to the 2004 Democrats convention, and is now head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (founded in 2001 by George Bush Jr).

apud AP ‘Obama says he gets daily prayers on BlackBerry‘, msnbc

No longer do you need to make the long trek all the way to St Peter’s to see the Pope: now you can stream him direct to your smartphone! The Pope2You portal features links to their Facebook and iPhone apps, WikiCath and the Vatican’s YouTube channel.

This is something of a turn-around for the Vatican, after the Pope came under fire earlier this year after he lifted excommunication of  the Holocaust denying Bishop Richard Williamson. Footage of a television programme in which he did so on air was soon produced, and the Pope admitted that somebody should have done a web search before he was let back in. And while cautioning that the internet can be used to spread hate and pornography, people should try to foster a world-wide sense of fraternity, and even use it evangelise.

The architect of Pope2You was Rev. Paolo Padrini, of iPhone app iBreviary fame. His mission (pun intended) with the Facebook app was to keep the focus on the Church, rather than the personality of the Pope. This does not mean all clergy refrain from Facebook profiles, however, including some Cardinals.

Padrini is not sure, however, if the Pope is even aware of his own portal.

apud Ariel David ‘Vatican takes tech-savvy approach‘, msnbc (22/5/09)

Bach’s Matthäuspassion takes almost 5 hours to perform in full, and the passion plays at Bozen in Tyrol were known to last for 7 days. Wall Street’s attention span is a bit more meagre, however, and from 12-3pm the Episcopalian Trinity Church delivered a passion play via Twitter in no more than 140-character ‘tweets’. Dramatis personae involved were such figures as “Pontius_Pilate,” “ServingGirl,” “Mary_Mother_Of” and “_JesusChrist”. Presumably “Jesus Christ” (with a space and no underscore) was already registered, although “Mary_Mother_Of” has me mystified. “Mother_Of” whom?!

“_Peter_Of” updated his status as “is waiting in the courtyard of the High Priest Caiaphas. I ran scared when the officers came but I need to see how this ends”, while Pontius_Pilate tweeted “Bad feeling about this. The prisoner won’t talk. The priests accuse him of blasphemy and sedition, and he just stands there, waiting”. If you really feel bad about it, Pontius old boy, maybe you should put your iPhone down for a minute and do something about it!

Parishioners simply had to follow the account “twspassionplay” and enable direct messages, and it seems to have been popular among the more tech-savvy. LeAnn Thomas, all the way across country in Bakersfield CA commented “Thank you 4 the follow & 4 this beautiful version of the passion scriptures” (apparently “twspassionplay” made people feel wanted by following their own Twitter accounts in return). Matt Reeve, a youth pastor from Minnesota said “This is a fantastic way of sharing Christ in a updated way. Love it”.

Apud AP ‘New York church tweeting the Passion of Christ‘

Several bishops of Italian dioceses have suggested their parishioners give up modern technology alongside meat on Fridays during Lent. Turin has suggested not watching television during the fast month, while Modena, southern Bari and a few other dioceses asked for a ban on text messaging on Fridays. The Modena diocese stated this is to draw attention to the conflicts in the Congo, which are often based around the control of Coltan mines: instrumental in the manufacture of mobile phones.

Trento has established a more thoughtful approach: a “new lifestyles” calendar with different suggestions for each week of Lent: taking public transport or bicycling to work, recycling, and an internet and iPod-free week of “silence”.

This may seem strange after the Vatican has begun to embrace modern social media and technologies (eg. their January launch of a Vatican YouTube channel), but is in line with Benedict’s admonition that, while such media create friendships and understanding, they are no replacement for real social bonding.

Apud Ariel David (AP) ‘Catholics are urged to give up texting for Lent‘.

Twitter have suspended an account that purported to belong to the Dalai Lama, although there has been no report as to how they discovered it wasn’t genuine. In only a few days the account had attracted tens of thousands of subscribers, making it probably Twitter’s highest-profile suspension.

I can only assume this anti-Dalai Lama will set up some sort of Micro-Blog in Exile on Jaiku.

Padre Paolo Padrini has teamed up with programmer and Hip-Hop enthusiast Dimitri Giani to create the iBreviary, an iPhone app that contains the Roman Catholic prayer breviary so priests don’t need to carry around those cumbersome books any more. I mean, have you seen a Bible recently? Those things are heavy! English priests be warned, however. The only user comment is from an English speaker, who says that the “translation” is useless and empty.

Other apps popular with priests include day planners to remind them which church to be in when, GPS tech so they know how to get to those churches, and the Lightsaber app, to hang in the censer so it makes awesome noises while it swings.