'As an artist and designer and a reader, I was thinking, 'This is not good design.'' This startup sought to make a Bible worthy of the 'gram.
Bryan Ye-Chung, left, and Brian Chung are co-founders of Alabaster. By Peter Holley Peter Holley Technology reporter Email Bio Follow March 8 at 12:53 PM Brian Chung still remembers the first time he attempted to read the Bible.
Five hundred years after the modern printing press spread biblical text worldwide, the book is struggling to reach one of its toughest audiences yet: millennials, a generation of expressive, digital natives who are increasingly more likely to read on a tablet than open a book. They are also far less likely to read or trust the Bible than older generations, surveys show, and their skepticism is at the forefront of Americans’ deteriorating relationship with the ancient text.
For inspiration, the partners didn’t look to contemporary Christian artists or the Catholic Church but urbane magazines such as Kinfolk and Drift . They also studied hip, era-defining brands such as Warby Parker, Harry’s , Shinola and Swedish watchmaker Daniel Wellington . Those companies, they say, understand something that the discerning millennial mind treats as, well, Gospel: The quality of a product’s visual packaging is just as important as the quality of the product itself.
“We’ll do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ,” Life.Church writes on its website. “For us, that means leveraging the latest technology, pursuing new ideas, and staying close to God’s Word.” The digital products may be new, but the sensibility is not, according to Matthew Engelke, a professor of religion at Columbia University . The Protestant impulse has always been to expand outward, Engelke said, finding new ways to engage new groups of people.
“It’s a renaissance in craftsmanship,” said Daniel Marrs, publisher of Thomas Nelson Bibles. “It’s amazing that we can sit down with a little app and see hundreds of different translations and then pick up a Bible bound in the old leather style with beautiful typography and engage with scripture that way, as well.”
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