This document discusses how digital technologies are transforming biblical interpretation and religious community. It begins by outlining the speaker's presentation on the social logic of communication through history and how new media allow for more interactive and distributed interpretation. However, this also raises issues around maintaining context, authority, and accuracy. The document suggests that religious leaders, designers, and users can address these by strengthening contextual links between interpretations, expanding interactivity, and encouraging cross-platform sharing. It concludes by introducing the speaker as a Christian scholar interested in how ordinary believers shape religious practice through both traditional and emerging media.

1. +
People
of the
Facebook?
Biblical Conversation, Community, and Social Media
Elizabeth Drescher, PhD
Church Divinity School of the Pacific
March 26, 2010

2. +
Presentation Overview
 A Brief Apology
 The Social Logic of Communication
 Issues in Digital Hermeneutics
 What Designers, Religious Leaders,
and Users Can Do
 Your Comments and Questions

3. +
The Medium is Not the Message
“In the name of ‘progress,’ our
official culture is striving to
force the new media to do the
work of the old.”
~Marshall McLuhan, 1967

4. + From Wyclif to Zuckerberg*:
Tracing the Social Logic of Communication
Historical Dominant Cultural Primary Source of Available
Context Communication Communication Communication Authority Communication
Mode Logic Practice Tools
Pre-modern Oral/Aural Grammatical Interpersonal What is said Stories
Dialectical Verse Forms
Rhetorical Structural Images
Early Modern Print Dialectical Private What is written Broadsides
Rhetorical Books
Grammatical Pamphlets
Magazines
High Modern Broadcast Rhetorical Public What is Radio
Dialectical presented Television
Grammatical Movie
Photograph
Telegraph
Telephone
Microphone
Postmodern Digital Grammatical Interactive What is re- Email
Rhetorical presented Internet
Dialectical Video
Social Networking
Cell Phone
Texting
PDA
* Gratefully adapted from Keith Anderson’s wonderful presentation, “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, available online at http://tinyurl.com/yjjcxqe

5. +
Social Logic of Communication
 Classical Trivium of the liberal arts:
 Grammar—Structure/Rules
 Dialectic—Reasoning/Argument
 Rhetoric—Presentation/Persuasion
 In the classical pedagogical tradition, the levels of
the trivium were equated to social categories:
 Grammar—Childhood/Female/Slave
 Dialectic—Adolescence/Boy/Peasant or Laity
 Rhetoric—Adulthood/Man/Lord or Clergy

6. + From Wyclif to Zuckerberg*:
Tracing the Social Logic of Communication
Historical Dominant Cultural Primary Source of Available
Context Communication Communication Communication Authority Communication
Mode Logic Practice Tools
Pre-modern Oral/Aural Grammatical Interpersonal What is said Stories
Dialectical Verse Forms
Rhetorical Structural Images
Early Modern Print Dialectical Private What is written Broadsides
Rhetorical Books
Grammatical Pamphlets
Magazines
High Modern Broadcast Rhetorical Public What is Radio
Dialectical presented Television
Grammatical Movie
Photograph
Telegraph
Telephone
Microphone
Postmodern Digital Grammatical Interactive What is re- Email
Rhetorical presented Internet
Dialectical Video
Social Networking
Cell Phone
Texting
PDA
* Gratefully adapted from Keith Anderson’s wonderful presentation, “From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, available online at http://tinyurl.com/yjjcxqe

7. +
Pre-Modern Worries
for Post-Modern Bible Study
For it is a dangerous thing, as blessed St. Jerome witnessed, to translate the
text of the holy Scripture out of one tongue into another; for in translation
the same sense is not easily kept, as the same St. Jerome confessed, that
although he was inspired, yet oftentimes in this he erred: we therefore
decree and ordain, that no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any
text of Scripture into English or any other tongue by way of book, libel, or
treatise; and that no man read any such book, libel, or treatise, not lately set forth
in the time of John Wickliffe, or since, or hereafter to be set forth, in part of in
whole, privately or in the open, upon pain of greater excommunication, until
the translation is allowed by the ordinary of the place, or, if the case so
require, by the council provincial. He that shall do contrary to this, shall likewise
be punished as a favorer of error and heresy.
~The Constitutions of Archbishop Thomas Arundel, 1409
(modernized from John Foxe’s 1563 English translation in Acts and Monuments, AMS Press, 1965)

8. +
From Lexical Translation
to Digital Transformation
 Translation, from the Latin translatio, to carry across or to bring across:
 The act of rendering into another language; interpretation; as, “The translation of
idioms is difficult.”
 The act of translating, removing, or transferring; removal; also, the state of being
translated or removed; as, “the translation of Enoch”; “the translation of a
bishop.”
 Transformation, from the Latin transformare, to change the shape of:
 A thorough or dramatic change in appearance; as, “The artist transformed a
rough stone into a beautiful statue.”
 A metamorphosis in the lifecycle of an animal or plant; as when a caterpillar
becomes a butterfly.
 A process by which an element in the underlying deep structure of a system is
converted to an element in the surface structure; as when grammatical forms
(Noun-Verb-Noun) are transformed into sentences in conversation (“Sally ran
home.”).

9. +
Issues in Digital Hermeneutics
 Cross-media translation and
transformation
 Interpretive authority
 Distributed interactivity
 Error management

10. + iTalk to God:
Cross-Media and Platform Translation and Transformation
Bible Promises Bible Quiz 201 Comic Jesus
A Buddhist
Children's Bible Bible Daily Devotions
for Women
More than 400 bible-related iPhone
TouchWord Bible Tree Bible iArt Pocket Bible
Apps (not counting searches for
(Free) “Jesus”, “Christian”, and similar terms.

11. +
Legos and Interpretive Authority
Illustrations from thebricktestament.com. Used by permission.
“…for in translation the same sense is not easily kept…”

12. +
Distributed Interactivity:
Tweeting to the Disciples

13. + The Bible on Facebook:
Ever Expanding Interpretive Communities and Strategies
 A search of “bible” on Facebook currently yields more than
42,000 results (not including “Jesus,” “Christian,” and
related search terms)
 “Greatest Hits” include:
The Bible (Also) The Bible
28,471 fans (No, Really) The Bible
1,958,537 fans
Created by the Rev. Mark Brown Creator unidentified 10,933 fans
Australian Anglican Priest, blogger, Accra, Ghana Created by Valerie Smith
Site purpose: “The Bible contains the Atlanta, GA
founder of the Anglican Second
mind of God, the state of man, the way of Site purpose is to gather “1,000,000 men
Life Cathedral, “ministry
salvation, the doom of sinners, and the and women of God who believes in THE
entrepreneur”
happiness of believers.” BIBLE- is right!”

14. +
And Open-Ended Interpretive Process

15. + Affirmative, Non-Critical Exchange

16. +
A More Limited Exchange of Texts

17. +
Error Management:
The Wikipedia Effect
 Thegreater the general interest in
the content…
 The
more textually and visually
developed the content…
 The
more editorial access people
have to the content…
 Thegreater the factual accuracy and
critical quality of the content.

18. +
The Digital Translation Challenge
 De-textualization of Scripture
 De-contextualization of Scripture
 De-institutionalizing of Scripture
 Disembodiment of Scripture

19. +
What Designers, Religious
Leaders, and Users Can Do
 Extend contextual linkages
 Expand interactivity
 Encourage platform transfer across
digital and physical platforms

20. +
About Me…
I am a Christian spirituality scholar who explores the practice of
faith by ordinary believers today and in the past. I am particularly
interested in how ordinary believers have reshaped the Church by
using resources that are traditionally thought of as being under
the control of "elite" religious and academic authorities in the
contexts of their daily lives. In pre-modern Christian
communities, this often involved access by laypeople and lower
clergy to spiritual and theological writings and the involvement of
laypeople in the day-to-day management of cathedrals, churches,
and guilds. Today, new social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube are much at the center of new practices of religious
leadership, communication, and community, and this is the focus of
much of my current research, writing, and speaking.
As a writer, public speaker, educator, spiritual director, and
Elizabeth Drescher, PhD
preacher, I am committed to supporting the spiritual nurture and
www.elizabethdrescher.net growth of ordinary believers by exploring with them the
elizabeth@elizabethdrescher.net complicated relationship between religion, culture, and personal
and community well-being.
As a person of faith in a pluralistic, post-Christian, and post
-traditional world, I attempt to practice a spirituality of
inclusiveness, critical reflection, and practical engagement with
those in need.