New media approach to Bible
brought to Seminary's Lutherhostel

Keynoter Hagedorn with Lutherhostel planners Dr. John H. P. Reumann, left, and the Rev. John Kinzel.

Literacy can serve as an invisible barrier to God.

The Bible is more than ink marks on paper.

Images, music and sound are ingredients to making the Bible more accessible to today's culture. But these avenues of accessibility have been silenced for decades.

These ideas were introduced powerfully this week at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia by media specialist, Fern Lee Hagedorn. She's won recent national awards as an executive producer/consultant for The American Bible Society (ABS).

Her keynote remarks included a web, CD and video tour of contemporary approaches to Scripture developed by the Society as part of an experimental new media platform. The experimental platform has included a "Life of Christ" series, featuring six video translations of Bible passages, three CD's and a web site, www.newmediabible.org.

Hagedorn, a Lutheran, spent ten years with ABS researching and developing new media approaches, sounding out youthful audiences in an attempt to reach them with the Bible, assembling a team of media, marketing, design professionals and biblical scholars to develop the right word, image and sound tracks for translation resources. The process was both exhaustive and exciting. At times the creative team, with its various disciplines, got into spats. But initial suspicions were overcome, she said. "We were all asking the right questions," she contended. Unlike predecessor popular feature films, the platform had a different approach. "The medium drives the message in Hollywood," Hagedorn said. The opposite was true with the ABS campaign. And the project recognized that while the "Bible contains historic information and is one window for knowing God, simply handing someone a Bible and hoping they will understand God is being naive. People need support and assistance to more fully understand Scripture's meaning."

She said the platform developed in new media by ABS is clearly experimental and not the final word about what is possible. "The models for what we did are probably as important as the videos and CD's themselves," Hagedorn said. Youth researched for the project said the favorite passage for such a new media treatment should be the Gerasene Demoniac passages (Mark 5: 1-20). In the passages, Jesus drives demonic spirits out of a possessed man and then invites him to tell his neighbors what the Lord has done for him. The video translation is replete with modern musical treatment and images "that bring the story forward in time while they also bring the user back in time," Hagedorn said. Scholars developed an English translation based on the original Greek text. "The music is not a cosmetic add-on," Hagedorn said. "It is designed to be part of the text." The CD of the story enables users to explore other approaches to the text through prayer, story-telling and even rap music. The CD also features considerable scholarly background on the passages. Users can even make their own contemporary video based on the original story. Or they can journal about the demons that plague their own modern lives.

Other treatments in the platform include the Prodigal Son ("A Father and Two Sons"), the Good Samaritan ("The Neighbor"), "The Resurrection" and "The Nativity."

Twenty-three enrollees took part in the week-long Lutherhostel event at the Seminary, which took a look at "The Spirituality of the Arts and the Art of Spirituality."

Presenters included the Rev. Dr. John H.P. Reumann, Ministerium Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Greek; the Rev. Dr. Robert Bornemann, Anna Burkhalter Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew; the Rev. Dr. John Jorgenson, a media specialist who also directs the Center for Successful Aging, Inc., and Dr. James Hopkins, a psychotherapist with The Growth Opportunity Center in the Philadelphia area.

Dr. Reumann led three sessions on the event theme. Dr. Bornemann also led sessions on the theme and led discussions on "Music and the Arts" with the event's musician, the Rev. Bruce Todd, Pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Lafayette Hill, PA. Jorgenson spoke on the "Spirituality of Aging." Hopkins led a workshop on "Retirement: Horizons of a New Frontier" at the Artman Home in Ambler, PA. The Rev. Dr. Rinda Rogers was chaplain for the event.