Social Sharing and Biblical Interpretation

As our society has moved into the dialogue of interactive social media, people's use of Bible texts has become more fragmented and decontextualized, and is less and less controlled by what would be considered a "valid" interpretive process. This was the topics of the second part of Elizabeth Drescher's BibleTech 2010 session entitled "People of the Facebook." (In a previous post I reviewed the first part of this session.)

To set the context for this part of her talk, Dr. Drescher quoted Thomas Arundel, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of the 1400s, who decreed that "no man, by his own authority, translate any text of Scripture into English or any other tongue." His concern was that theological error would creep into people's use of Scripture, and that the magisterial authority of the church would be undermined by private interpretation.

So in light of these pre-modern concerns about "private interpretation," Drescher looked at the use of Bible texts on three platforms: iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook.

On the iPhone, there are more than 400 Bible-related apps, and all different kinds of lenses are being applied to Christian Scriptures. For example, there is a Buddhist Bible, which selects Bible texts and interprets them through the lens of Buddhism. There is no central control on the interpretation of Christian Scripture -- anyone can interpret the Bible in any way they please.

On Twitter, a lot of people are tweeting the Bible text (you can find out more about this from Steven Smith's BibleTech talk, Tweeting the Bible). Elizabeth Drescher has noticed two things: (1) A lot of "private interpretation" is going on -- people are interpreting Bible texts in all kinds of ways, without regard for the textual or historical context in which the verses of the Bible were written (she gave as an example of this Jana Riess's Twitter feed, where she is summarizing each chapter of the Bible in a single tweet, from her own perspective). (2) There is not a lot of interaction of Twitter -- people are just broadcasting.

On Facebook, there is more interaction taking place. Drescher looked at three examples of Bible fan pages:

1. "The Bible" is a fan page with 2 million fans. On this page, there is thoughtful and meaningful engagement both with the text of Scripture and with others.
2. Another page called "The Bible" (which I wasn't able to find) is a fan page with 30,000 fans. Here, there is only affirmative, non-critical interaction with what is being posted.
3. A third page called "The Bible" belongs to an individual and has only a limited exchange of texts

It would be interesting to expand this study to include how people are using Bible texts in their personal Facebook status updates -- but of course, it is more difficult to study this, because status updates are (at least supposed to be) private among one's friends.

On all of these platforms, people are using Bible texts in a fragmented, de-contextualized fashion -- individual verses, interpreted apart from their textual or historical setting, and apart from the church, which functions as a community of interpretation. What can help people to interpret the Bible in a more "valid" way, according to accepted principles of hermeneutics (interpretation)?

Here Drescher introduces the "Wikipedia Effect", stating that the greater the general interest in the content, and the more textually and visually developed the content, and the more editorial access people have to the content, the greater the factual accuracy and critical quality of the content. Simply put, get more people interested, and more people involved, in developing shared understanding of Bible texts together, and the result will be higher accuracy and quality in what is being said.

I am interested in the development of an online platform for the co-creation of Bible-related content. But I have some questions:

1. What kind of platform can support the creation of shared Bible-related content? Something like Wikipedia with Bible references?
2. Can we really suppose that having more people interact with the Bible text and edit the Bible-related content will result in higher accuracy and critical quality? I have my doubts, but perhaps the answer is to find a set of "rules," such as Wikipedia has (e.g., everything must be backed up by published citations), which will provide some kind of control on content without preventing all kinds of people from editing.
3. How can get people from a variety of traditions to work together and to come together in a shared interpretive space? Or will people divide up into different "communities of interpretation" online? I see such divisions as highly likely if an open & shared Bible-related content system is developed.

The Age of Engagement

One of the greatest changes that the internet enables is for people in different places to have a relationship with one another through the online, digital world. People can now find others who are interested in just about any specific topic, including a particular book or author, and form communities online around that interest. This is old news -- discussion groups are, with email, among the oldest uses of the internet (see, e.g., Google Groups, which incarnates Usenet).

What is a more recent development, though, is the use of online social services -- most notably Facebook -- to maintain one's online social life.

This climate means every author, every book, and every type of Bible, can be the focus for an online community. Sadly, publishers have been a bit slow on the uptake -- they have not recognized the opportunity or participated in helping to make this a reality.

Even though I'm not particularly a fan of the Huffington Post, I did appreciate and agree with some of the comments along these lines that Arianna Huffington made at Tools of Change in February, in her keynote address (insight in digital publishing knows no political boundaries). Here are the relevant graphs:

"Books don't end with the printed page. Books are conversation starters. That's really what we can do online better than anywhere else."

"The more we resist the change, the more we try to go back to some golden age that does not exist, the more we are missing the golden age that does exist right now, and that's the golden age of engagement. For the first time, news consumers and book readers don't just want to read, they want to engage with what they are reading. They want to talk back. They want to continue the conversation with friends on Facebook or let others know on Twitter what they're reading."

"Self-expression is the new entertainment.... People want to express themselves, to be part of the times we are living in -- whether it's politics or culture or entertainment, people want to heard, and now they can be heard.... And we need to celebrate that moment."

How can we "celebrate that moment" of opportunity for self-expression and social engagement online? Here are a few ideas of how we can help people express themselves and engage with others online while using digital Bibles:

• Personal Note-Taking. People ought to be able to take notes on what they are reading, and they ought to be able to share these notes with others as they see fit.
• Discussion Groups, both public and private. There ought to be a variety of discussion groups available, and people should be able to form their own private discussion groups and invite their friends.
• Integration with popular social-sharing sites (Facebook and others) -- sharing links and content, posting thoughts and reflections.
• Content feeds and widgets that people can use to post their own notes or content to other sites.

What do you think? How else can digital Bibles help people to express themselves and engage in relationships with others? Are there pitfalls that we have not discussed?