Revolve

December 09, 2003

A few weeks ago I was introduced to Revolve. Wow, was I blown away at the incredible execution and attention to detail! The content is undeniably targeted toward teen girls, and it does exactly that. It’s meant to look and feel like a teen magazine to attract a young audience:

From the book description:

In focus groups, online polling, and one-on-one discussion, Transit Books has found that the number one reason teens don’t read the Bible is that it is “too big and freaky looking.” This fashion-magazine format for the New Testament is the perfect solution to that problem. Teen girls feel comfortable exploring the Scriptures in the New Century Version and over 500 further-study notes because of the relevant language and format!

If you know any teen girls in your community, get one and give it to them. I sent one to my cousins girls and they fight over it! You can buy them on Amazon.com for less than $11.

More Info about Revolve

Posted by pablohart on December 09, 2003 10:23 AM

Comments

i'm gonna have to lightly wave a cautionary flag over my brother's enthusiasm here. he bought me this book and i've been studying it for a couple weeks. (thanks paul!) while i do see that this publication is putting the bible in more young girls' hands, i do have some hesitations about it.

first, i should mention that i don't particularly like study bibles in general. whenever someone fills up space around the biblical text on a page, they are making theological interpretations on the passages. when one reads interpretation on the same page as the text, they often don't understand that vast ontological difference between inspired word and the publisher's words. interpretation on the same page can also be distracting. Revolve is particularly dangerous in this regard. i find myself, when reading the scripture in Revolve, very distracted by the graphics, quizes, and Top 10 lists on every page. do young girls not have enough exciting distractions all around them? do we need to also allow them to invade the very pages of scripture?

second, even if i was willing to fully accept the format of this bible, i would be a little concerned about mixed messages. obviously, this book is designed to look and feel like Cosmo. Cosmo, in essence, is the antithesis of the gospel: sex and consumption make one happy. of course, the words on the pages of Revolve don't affirm this thesis, but the people in the images are beautiful, thin, and well-dressed. pictures speak a thousand words... are stereotypes and societal pressures simply reinforced on these pages? and do the words of scipture contradict those pressures?

lastly, i'm a little concerned about trivializing scripture. our faith heritage is rich with people having deep reverence for every word of scripture. for example, when jesus went to the temple, he would have witnessed people reading the scriptures with a small metalic or clay pointer. touching the page with a human hand would be disrespectful. this example may seem extreme, but i think there is some merit to viewing scipture as something "other" than worldly material. the words therein are the very words of God and should be separated from, say, tips on how to effectively remove eye shadow.

i agree with the goal here: to "translate" the bible into all cultures, including that of my young cousins. but i'm not sure i am completely comfortable with the means by which these publishers have attempted to do it. i'll be the first to say that the bible needs to be in as many hands as possible, be that through Jerome's Latin Vulgate, the printing press, or hypertexted online searchable bibles. but i think all of these examples are free from the above-mentioned cautions.

consider these, as i said, lightly-waved cautionary flags. just some things to consider. commence scripture reading now :)

Posted by nathan at December 9, 2003 11:04 AM

Nathan... such a conservative view from a flaming liberal. I'm shocked. Kidding!

I agree with what you're saying, but think perhaps the potential good outweighs the potential bad here. I personally find it completely obnoxious. But a teenage girl I'm not. I also suspect there is a strong subset of teenage girls that would vomit at the sight of this thing (and I'm not talking about the girls that would vomit just to look like the girls on the cover). I'm guessing girls that are completely hypnotized by consumerism are fascinated with this NT offering.

Disclaimer: I have never met nor do I know the cousins in question and nothing I have said is a reflection on them. ;-)

Posted by John at December 9, 2003 11:47 AM

nate,

i'll respond to the first part of your comments later, when i have more time. for now, i'll respond with this question...

have you ever read a children's bible to a 3 year old child?

Posted by pablohart at December 9, 2003 2:08 PM

john, conservative, liberal... it's all relative. i assume that when Martin Luther was crying sola scriptura nobody in the catholic church was calling him a conservative.

paul, it's a good analogy: the children's bible. it's a way of bringing the scripture into the hands of more people than it might usually go. that's a good point. but again, i would argue that a child doesn't need water color paintings of Daniel in the lion's den to understand the story. further, how many of those pictures of white people, once embedded into the minds of children, need to be unlearned when they grow older? my caution #1 above applies here.

if you were to make the point that a children's bible is analogous to Revolve, but for a different audience (i'm not sure that's the point you'd make, but assuming it is), then i would concede that Revolve is entirely appropriate, yet my caution #2 remains very important.

as i stated above, i definitely agree with the goal of this book. making the scriptural message relevant to all audiences. but i'm not sure that has to be accompanied by mixed messages, unnecessary distractions*, and things utterly irrelevant to scripture such as lipstick color choices.

*i can appreciate "necessary" distractions such as hyperlinks on a web documented scripture text to academic commentaries, for example.

Posted by nathan at December 9, 2003 3:10 PM

Children's Bibles. Uhg. Huge pet peeve of mine. I finally found one that was tolerable but frankly I'll be moving my kids to the new readers version ASAP. Or maybe just skip to the NLT.

Nathan... I was kidding.

Posted by John at December 9, 2003 8:47 PM

i know john :) ...i'm thinking about buying one of monkeyboy's "proud liberal" tshirts.

Posted by nathan at December 9, 2003 9:39 PM

Dead on Nathan, your arguments are very well stated and I agree entirely. Some off-shoot thoughts: consumerism (which is what I read on that cover) is not a method of interpreting scripture rather it is the context within which we need to interpret it. Living in an advertising soaked world, surrounded by the sounds and sights of consumerism. I know that I for one am looking for an alternative. A respite.

Scripture is not 'cool' because it is like the culture. The text is relevant and 'cool' because it offers a radical alternative to it. I think this is as true for teenage girls as it is for fifty-something baby-boomers (even if they don't know it yet). As Rob Bell likes to remind us we are part of a revolution and that revolution (despite the CCM media's messages to the contrary) is a radical departure from the things of this world.

I worked for a while in a Christian bookstore selling Bibles (among other things). I was amazed by the fad of month Bibles that sat on our shelves: the golf Bible, teen Bibles (updated weekly it seemed), Bibles in Italian leather, discovery Bibles, Bibles for specific denominations, college Bibles, marriage Bibles. How many Bibles can one person own? The pastor's Bible, large print, giant print, encouragement Bibles, pre-marriage Bibles, the list goes on and on. There are parts of the world that don't even have a classic Bible let alone the American onslaught of consumerism-come-Bibles.

I'm sorry - this is more a reflection on my personal frustration with the Bible making machine in America than it is on your post Paul. I'm sure that I, like you, could appreciate the craftsmanship of this devotional Bible. I think I'll stop while I'm ahead.

Posted by Samuel at December 10, 2003 5:36 PM

hey guys, you know... i have to admit that i resonate with some of the things you're saying. i feel the same way about the over-saturated market of types of bibles out there. i think it's a poor commentary on an already behind the times christian publishing world.

however, when i picked up revolve, something was different. i don't know... maybe it was closer to what i thought a niche-bible should be (not that i want this to be put in the same category as other focused bibles). something about this just worked. then, i had some thoughts along the lines of samuel and nathan's arguments, but this new approach kept coming back to surprise me.

to counter you a little samuel, you said:

The text is relevant and 'cool' because it offers a radical alternative to it.

and i couldn't agree more. i think "revolve" does that better than any "niche" bible i've seen aimed at teen girls.

to counter you, nate, you said:

this book is designed to look and feel like Cosmo. Cosmo, in essence, is the antithesis of the gospel: sex and consumption make one happy.

and, again, i agree wholeheartedly. but if we were to take this arguement into other arenas, say, music, we could also say that it's not a good thing to create "CCM" that sounds like "secular" music because that music represents "sex and consumption."

all in all, there are good points and bad points to doing something like this, but i agree with john... the good outweighs the bad. just like when i cringe at the sometimes incorrectness of the simplified stories in my daughters children's bible, i cringe knowing these teen girls aren't getting all the "vast ontological difference between inspired word and the publisher's words." in reality, do any of us, and isn't our walk a journey? even at age 33, i am amazed how often i learn new things about the bible.

if revolve helps teens get into the bible more than they would otherwise, and if the sidebar commentary helps them through an issue they're facing in their lives, and if they do good because of it, more power to 'em!

Posted by pablohart at December 11, 2003 9:24 AM

That was also well put Paul. Although I'm not sure I could bring myself to buy one of these bibles I must say that I appreciate your heart. I can see that you want to reach your cousins in their own context and I admire that.

One little thing: I think I agree with this statement in part, "... it's not a good thing to create 'CCM' that sounds like 'secular' music ..." - Amen! Another thing I'm tired of (and this is an entirely other subject) is the Christian Contemporary Media mimicking instead of leading. I think we should make art because G-d made us in his own image: creative - not because we are trying to 'trick' people into consuming media about Jesus.

I think one of the pitfalls of our capitalist society is the lie of commercialism. The lie that we buy into is that everything, including our faith, needs to be sold. I don't think that Christ came to be bought and sold but rather to be known. This knowing requires something deeper than a glossy magazine finnish, a good drum beat, or a big headline. This knowing requires a relationship.

I would say, and I think you would agree, that what is more important than a 'cool' Bible is a person in these cousin's life who displays Christ. It is through these sorts of relationships that the girls will become excited about the scripture.

Two ideas in conclusion. First, I saw a t-shirt once that said, "Jesus helps me trick people." - this rang so true for me as I worked in an advertising firm that developed commercial campaigns for the very Bibles we are speaking of. I think it's important for us to be conscious that we are relating & displaying Christ more than we are trying to sell him.

Second, I think we need to be careful not to let the fact that these 'tools' exist keep us from relating, showing, and Being like Christ. It's easy to fall into the idea that if our children/teens/the rest of the world have enough of this slick CCM we can just sit back and let them figure it out.

I don't think you are doing this Paul. These are just some thoughts as I reflect on the ideas that have been presented here. Thanks for hosting the conversation.

Posted by Samuel at December 14, 2003 2:17 PM

Add your comment