New Bible as a graphic novel

From the NYTimes today: "The Bible as Graphic Novel, with a Samurai Stranger called Christ"

"Publishers with an eye for evangelism and for markets have long profited by directing Bibles at niche markets: just-married couples, teenage boys, teenage girls, recovering addicts. Often the lure is cosmetic, like a jazzy new cover.
Sales of graphic novels, too, have grown by double digits in recent years. So it makes sense that a convergence is under way, as graphic novels take up stories from the Bible, often in startling ways. In the last year, several major religious and secular publishing houses have announced or released manga religious stories."

Zondervan started doing some of these graphic novels of Biblical stories; they gave out a few as samples during the NYWC this year. Here's their link.

It's a great idea. For a visual culture, provide visual evangelism. The story makes reference to the tradition of providing ways to access the Bible that people can easily be drawn into-- stained-glass windows were originally intended to share God's story with illiterate people.

Shameless Plugging for Something Cool

I opened this book and the page I looked at was my "favorite" (when I'm talking to kids, and in a bad mood) Bible story: the one where the bears ate the children.

Get this book: "Rejected Sunday School Lessons"-- it's 20 or so perfect examples of how not to do Bible study, and would be useful for training new adult volunteers or Sunday School teachers.

It's also hilarious. With a capital Arious!

(Unfortunate information: The book isn't listed on the YS website or Amazon, yet, so keep looking-- or sign up for the NYWC in Atlanta!)

Books on God's existence, coming soon

An article in the New York Times magazine last week reviewed two books coming out in the next few months, one on an atheist turning Christian, and the other about a Christian turning agnostic.

This column, "Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God" summarizes both books.

[T]he central problem of theodicy [is] the existence of suffering and evil in a world presided over by an all powerful and benevolent deity. The occurrence of catastrophes natural (hurricanes, droughts, disease) and unnatural (the Holocaust ) always revives the problem and provokes anguished discussion of it. The conviction, held by some, that the problem is intractable leads to the conclusion that there is no God, a conclusion reached gleefully by the authors of books like “The God Delusion,” “God Is Not Great” and “The End of Faith.”
Now two new books (to be published in the coming months) renew the debate. Their authors come from opposite directions – one from theism to agnosticism, the other from atheism to theism – but they meet, or rather cross paths, on the subject of suffering and evil.

This article, "The Turning of an Atheist" describes Anthony Flew and his upcoming work.

"“There Is a God” is an intellectual’s bildungsroman written in simple language for a mass audience. It’s the first-person account of a preacher’s son who, away at Methodist boarding school, defied his father to become a teenage atheist, later wrote on atheism at Oxford, spent his life fighting for unbelief and then did an about-face in his old age, embracing the truth of a higher power. The book offers elegant, user-friendly descriptions of the arguments that persuaded Flew, arguments familiar to anyone who has heard evangelical Christians’ “scientific proof” of God. From the “fine tuning” argument that the laws of nature are too perfect to have been accidents to the “intelligent design” argument that human biology cannot be explained by evolution to various computations meant to show that probability favors a divine creator, “There Is a God” is perhaps the handiest primer ever written on the science (many would say pseudoscience) of religious belief."

Probably some heavy stuff here, but I'm planning to track down both books.