Biblezines are the up and coming new form of bibles for adolescents. They are serving as children’s bibles but for the older youths. These biblezines are what they sound like: a magazine with biblical scriptures. Similar to magazines like Seventeen, they contain content designed to capture its your audience’s attention. However, the scripture in the magazine is sparse and limited in the forms of trivia and cartoons. Can these magazines be called ‘bibles’?
In my opinion, comic book bibles contain more credibility than these biblezines. At least in the comic book bibles, they focus more on actually biblical text. I don’t think these magazines are an acceptable substitution for bibles. Yes, we need to find a way to keep these new generations involved in the church and make sure that they know the scripture, but is this really the way? In Beal’s book The Rise and Fall of the Bible, he states that “On every page, the plain biblical text is overwhelmed by bold and colorful callouts, special columns, and other extras laid out in catchy fonts and colors” (43). In my experience with magazines-as well as my friends-when they read magazines, they typically don’t read everything but instead jump around and look at the articles with catching titles and are colorful.
Despite my reservations to these biblezines, I can see how they can be effective. Since I still had reservations after reading the texts, I went and looked for more information on these bibles and the effects they have with these youths. In an article in Christianity Today titled Ten Things You Should Know About The New Girls' Biblezine, they talk about all the pros that these substitute bibles have on girls. The responses to these magazines have been mainly positive so they are obviously reaching their intended audience. My only question, though, is that even though this media source seems to be effective, can they be considered scripture or not?
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