You may recall a few years ago I pointed you towards a project digitising the Codex Sinaiticus – now you can view a digitised version of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well.

A fascinating video from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly about how social media is changing the way we interact with our religious communities. What grabbed my attention was the comparison (towards the end) between the introduction of the printing press (a new technology), the reformation, and what might be happening in the life of Christian communities now via various forms of social media.

What do you think? Are we at the start of a new reformation? How will this change our theology? Do you see it eventually (or even now) changing the way we think about, and practice our Christian faith?

Watch the full episode. See more Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

I’ve long argued that “Gnosticism” or as I generally refer to it “neo-gnosticism” has no place in the Indie community. It is, has been, and will always be, antithetical to Christian teaching and praxis. Tom Write, the Anglican bishop of Durham, offers in this video a wonderfully refreshing take on Gnosticism.

I’m a huge fan (read pusher) of home-grown scholarship in the Independent Catholic community. I’ve argued many times on this blog that we “appropriate” too much from other traditions without necessarily thinking it through in our own context. I also think that with the availability of modern technology it is now, more than ever before, more feasable to circulate Indie scholarship within the community and beyond – cultivating our own voice, rather than simply riding on the coat-tails of the voices of other traditions.

Recently I’ve been playing with a great new research tool called Zotero – it is a plugin for Firefox (and I think Explorer and Chrome) that allows you to archive articles from the web, take notes in them, sort them, and tag them. It also handles PDFs, pics, video clips and collects all the relevant bibliographical data so you can automatically create a bibliography when working in say Word.

Speaking of working in Word – Zotero makes inserting citations and your own notes a snap with a handy plugin.

I could go on and on about how useful this little program has been for me in my own research projects over the past two months; and cannot reccomend Zotero enough.

A few months ago when all the hu-hah ocurred in the American South over a fundamentalist church deciding to burn Korans I wondered – would the same sense of indignation, the same tension, and issues be raised if for example a group were to burn bibles, icons, or smash statues of Mary?

At the time – I was more interested in expressing solidarity with the Muslim community who were being assailed by ignorance and attention grabbing. I think I Tweeted something along the lines of lets show solidarity with Muslims and burn our bibles.

I was also privately wondering what if . . .

What if a group of say . .  Atheists decided to burn the bible. Would anyone “react”? Would anyone care? Oh sure Fundamentalists would – but frankly, while it is the case that they are an all too vocal minority they don’t really count for much. Would the more grounded branches of the Christian community express horror and indignation?

We see a number of examples of contemporary art – one of the more famous that pops to my mind is the “Piss Christ” – that uses Christian religious imagery in shocking ways, out of context, or in an alien context – even an offensive context. Images and symbols of our faith have been used in this way for the past few decades. They sometimes cause scandal – as did the “Piss Christ”, so too the movie “Last Temptation of Christ” but aside form the rantings of a few groups of Fundamentalists, and the titilation of media outlets – little else happens. Why? What is different between our Christian approach to very sacred symbols and their use – and that of others? Or is it that at this moment the “other” (namely Islam) is a highly politicised topic – a “hot button issue” if you will across Western Europe?

These questions were brought to the fore again yesterday and today when I came across the news item that a 15 year old girl was arrested for inciting religious hatred here in the UK because she burned a Koran (why exactly she did it I’m not sure – I’ve not come across those details yet). My question is – here we are in an ostenbly, officially, Christian country, and if I were to go out and burn my bible and post it on youtube would I too be arrested?

I don’t have satisfactory answers to any of my questions, however, if you’re thinking about this too, you might wish to visit Cranmer who has posted similar and has some very good observations on the matter.

Here’s an interesting vid (and its transcript) discussing the interrelationship between the environment, embodiment, and faith. Paul Collins, a former Roman Catholic priest speaks about the failure of Christianity to respond to the environment in a throughful manner, and the steps he envisions we might take theologically and in practise to re-establish the balance.

There is an interesting article in the Telegraph and in the American USA Today about a study done in the states that suggests that religious people are more friendly than non-religious people.

According to the study’s findings: religious people are more likely to be charitable than Athiests. Indeed a surprising finding is that they are more likely to financially support secular causes. Religious people also volunteer in their local community more than non-religious do.

One point made in the articles is that there is a connection between participating in an organised faith community, and in organising, or participating in local and regional organisations.

Additionally there appears to be a relational connection – that is that those who are active in a faith community make friends, and friendships foster neighbourliness, and are better in a civic context.

We have successfully done some behind the scenes house-maintenance, and moved the blog from “standard” hosting to “cloud hosting” with Laughing Squid our provider (yes this is a plug for Laughing Squid – they offer a fantastic service). It took a bit longer than I anticipated – but that was down to me taking my time and making sure I did not ruin everything through blunder.

Now that the move is done its time to decorate. You may have noticed over the past week that the site has become rather . . . “grey” this was because I had a big clear out of unwanted plugins and unnecessary files, so as to not waste effort and storage space transferring unwanted junk. So hopefully you’ll see some improvements in the house over the next couple of weeks.

The Independent yesterday, had an interesting article about the plight of Eastern Christians in the Middle East. You might be aware of a synod recently held in the Vatican to discuss the fact that Christian communities in the Middle East are being actively persecuted, and marginlised to the point that many are fleeing their homelands.

The tragedy is that most of these Christians are Easterners – and that when they come to Western Europe or the US they face a loss of identity, because many Western Christians do not acknowledge, or understand that these folks are in fact real Christians. A point often driven home in media reporting in here in the UK about the history and development of Christian art, ideas, and praxis.

Via a suggestion through reading Bp. Rob Angus Jones, newest book, I’ve bought a copy of Abba Seraphim’s Flesh of Our Brethren. It is published on LuLu, which some of you know, I’m a huge fan of for producing much needed quality Indie research and resources. You can visit our own little kiosk by clicking here.

I’m only a third of the way through Flesh of Our Brethren, and so far I cannot reccomend it enough. Don’t let the typesetting put you off – Abba Seraphim has clearly done the research, and his presentation is both clear, readable, and well documented.

Flesh of Our Brethren focusses on the histories of three principal figures in our history, St. Mar Alvarez, Abp. Vilatte, and Bp. Ferrette, and their connections to the Syrian Church.

If you have already read Flesh of Our Brethren, and would like to share your own impressions, please do so in the comments below. Once I’ve finished it I might post a “proper” book review here.