i-sako.com

From the people who brought you WWJD? bracelets comes a new Bible, Cosmo-style.

Pop Goes the Bible

With a trio of smiling teenage girls on the cover, along with teasers for beauty tips and dating advice, Revolve looks like it has more in common with Glamour than Gideon.



But don’t judge the Good Book by its cover. Revolve is an honest-to-goodness Bible, encompassing the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation. But its magazine-like styling and bright cover will help it seem hipper to today’s girls, the publishers hope.



“We asked teen girls how often they read the Bible,” says Laurie Whaley, one of Revolve’s editors and a spokeswoman for its publisher, Thomas Nelson Bibles. “The response that came back was, ‘Well, we don’t read the Bible.’



“They said, ‘It’s just too freaky, too intimidating. It doesn’t make any sense.’”

Reaching out to young people about matters of faith is not a bad thing, but I don’t think wrapping it up in pop culture is the best way to go about it. Perhaps I’m showing my elitist tendencies a bit, but why be trendy when you could be sublime?

Ultimately, religion should be about transmitting values, but are the values of pop culture consistent with our religious values? I ask because, as a father wondering what to teach his children about religion, I have serious doubts about our popular culture (which is largely an outgrowth of consumer culture, which is not a religious priority for me).

I hope to be able to educate my children about the finer points of all major religions, which seems to me like something that we should all be doing. If there is anything that can put a rest to religious conflict, it must be religious understanding. For some reason, I doubt the publishers of Revolve have any such thing in mind. Pity.

(Thanks to MetaFilter for the link.)