Virgin Ben! We have found a new calling for you! A new teen 'mag' formatted bible has found a new niche to target...teenage girls. Okay, stop laughing. These are godly little lasses, who want their religion spoon-fed to them by a glossy magazine-cum-bible. No lung-irritating fire and brimstone of that nasty King James, that's like sooo 16th Century or what-ever...
It's called "Revolve: The Complete New Testament" and it's apparently racing up the Amazon.com sales charts -- whatever that means -- as it sucks up all the accoutrements of a teen fashion rag and rams them through the cute Christian grinder of humorlessness and sexual rigidity and homophobia, and regurgitates them as kicky dumbed-down slightly numb virginal tidbits of advice and admonition and, yes, Biblical storytelling.
Because apparently girls don't already have enough hollow dogma out there telling them what to do. Apparently they don't already face a large enough mountain of misinfo and scorn and sexual mixed messages, and not a single one of them telling them how to really tune into themselves, listen to their own unique voices, find their own sex and their own power and their own divine potency.
Nope. Instead they get this, a sweetly uptight, revisionist Bible cross-bred with a bad fashion magazine, full of Top-10 lists and quizzes and Q&As, telling them to "pray for a person of influence" every day and check the "godly" quotient of the boys they date, and that Jesus doesn't really like it when they wear, you know, thongs and sexy bras and low-slung jeans. Yep, that should clear things right up.
Oh, you just have to go read the whole thing. Be Afraid, be very afraid.
On the other hand, they might give the Virgin Ben an embedded column for counterpoint, for the sake of the Christo-Fascist Big Tent inclusiveness, writing missives from the Torah, if he can get that hip, Barbie-does-the-Bible riff down pat.
I think Kevin Smith needs to make Dogma II. But that's just me.
"Have faith, hope and chastity, That's how to keep your virginity, How do I know, This magazine tells me so."
posted by: Shag from Brookline on 09.23.03 at 02:30 PM [permalink]
Through the centuries we have had several translations of the Good Book with material
that has been heavily edited. Now we're going to have a glossy right-wing version. Kind of like reading the newspaper through the bottom of an old glass Coke bottle....whats the point.
Oh thats right...propoganda and indoctrination.
posted by: Byron on 09.23.03 at 10:44 PM [permalink]
I think you need this link to view that particular Morford column:
And be prepared... sfgate threw up THREE popups when I visited. Morford and Sorensen are among my favorites, but the popups are getting to be a bit much.
