Via Huw I saw this post this morning on Kirkepiscatoid (don’t even ask me to pronounce it!) about a . . . well. . . ecclesiastical “spat” over a Gospel book. While I actively avoid posting on anything but OC/IC issues this caught my eye because it does touch on a theme we’ve had going here for over a year now – the role of technology in our community.

The synopsis of the story is this: an Episcopal community has a deacon who is legally blind. She can see if the text is large enough – and a laptop with the font set at 500% works just fine allowing the good rev. deacon to confidently fulfil her role in the Liturgy. Most of the regulars here at Boze! are probably sitting there thinking: great, so what’s the problem?

It seems that the problem is, well, that the “Gospel book” is not a “book” and that according to the canons of the Episcopal church – it must be a book. Or is that really the problem? I suspect that part of the problem is the natural conservatism of religion – the encroachment of technology, the “new” and possibly fad-ish into the “ancient” rites of the cult. This is a point worthy of discussion. Let me throw a few curious tid-bits into the frey and see what the cat thinks of it.

1)    The use of a “book” is uniquely Christian. That is to say that the book, or codex, was a “new” technology in religious settings, in the first centuries of the church, one that Christianity favoured over the scroll. Who’s to say then that faced with a new technology we ought not consider it as being preferable to the old (which we were responsible for introducing in the first place)?
2)    In our Eastern setting the Gospel book is an icon – and as such it is one of the most accessible relics. How does the possible introduction of a “new” technological replacement affect our sense of the symbolism, sanctity, and the inherently tactile nature of the “codex”? That is to say – would you kiss the corner of a laptop during the little entrance?

I have used my Palm on occasion to celebrate Liturgy – when for example I am travelling light, or when there have not been enough service books to go around. Aside from the occasional awkwardness of using an unfamiliar piece of kit it works fine, and has no observable negative affect on the liturgy. Huw has been building a prayer book that he uses via his iPhone. Churches of various traditions are making more and more liturgical resources available for use with various media including laptops, mobiles, and PDAs. Are prayers offered on commuter trains, plains, and in homes from these sources somehow less valid, or worse – heretical, and if so, why or how?