Lisa Miller is the author of Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife (2010), and formerly served as religion editor at Newsweek. She recently wrote “My Take: how technology could bring down the church,” for CNN’s Belief Blog. In this article Miller argues that the printing press was the key technology that enabled the success of the Protestant Reformation and the current move away from print editions of the Bible to digital ones like YouVersion may enable the church to go virtual rendering face-to-face gatherings for worship and study obsolete.
She concludes her post with these words:
When Bible study can be done on Facebook as easily as in the church basement, and a favorite preacher can teach lessons via podcast, the necessity of physically gathering each week in the same place with the same people turns remote.
Without a doubt, this represents a new crisis for organized religion, a challenge to think again about what it means to be a “body” of believers.
So What?
No serious student of culture or religion would ever suggest that Christianity, or other religions, are unaffected by changes in technology. The idea that the move away from printed editions of the Bible to digital editions in some way creates a crisis is an odd leap. The printing press made the Bible more accessible to more people than ever before in history. Now, in the early twenty-first century a new technology has emerged that will enable even greater access. I view neither shift as a “new crisis for organized religion” in the sense Miller does. I do however, consider them to be opportunities for growth that was not previously possible.
What impact (positive and negative) has your congregation experienced as parishioners move from a preference from print to digital versions of the Bible?
Note: For more on the other issue Miller raises regarding the church possibly moving from gathering primarily face-to-face to virtually, consider my recent posts New Ways of Being Church and Is Virtual Community Real Community?