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The message of the various artifacts is clear: many Americans are seeking spiritual solace anywhere but in the pages of the Bible, which is increasingly seen as irrelevant or even harmful.

Paauw's group found other problems people had with the Good Book.

"They see the Bible as a malleable text that can be made to say anything religious leaders want it to say," he says. "Others associate it with a wrathful Old Testament God or the intolerance of the Religious Right, and some people see it as demeaning to women or even harmful to people's spiritual lives."

For example, a cover story in the summer 1998 issue of The Wilson Quarterly asked, "Is the Bible Bad News for Women?" One answer came in the October installment of "Soul Searching," a regular column in Glamour magazine. "Sure, the Bible tells you not to sleep with your married neighbor, but did you know it also encourages slavery?" asked the column, which also interpreted the Bible as saying that "women make good slaves" (Exodus 21:7) and "menstruation is bad" (Leviticus 15:19-24).

But Paauw, who spends more time than most men in scanning women's magazines, says not all contemporary artifacts are so critical. O magazine includes ecumenical Bible studies among its offerings of spirituality and inspiration. The July/August 2000 issue, for example, featured an article about the Parable of the Prodigal Son, complete with an introduction by Hillary Clinton, an essay by Henri J. M. Nouwen, and group discussion questions.

"Cultural connotations may keep people away from the Bible," says Paauw, a graduate of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. "But the response people have had to things like Bill Moyers's Genesis Project demonstrate that when they get a chance to experience it apart from those connotations, they're eager to do so."

"In most traditional Bibles, the actual text is broken up by a series of chapter divisions and verse numbers that destroy the narrative flow and serve as an impediment to unchurched readers," he says. "And the text often is sandwiched between unattractive black covers that make it look less inviting than any of the thousands of other books people see in mainstream bookstores."

During the past two years, Paauw has been investigating ancient church history to devise new ways of packaging the Bible. For example, the Wisdom Chronicles is a series of four CD-sized booklets featuring passages from Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Job, and the words of Jesus. Bible books are packaged separately, much as they were for the first millennium of the church, when hand-inscribed vellum copies of biblical books were simply too bulky to be bound together into one comprehensive volume.

And in the lavishly illustrated volume titled David, which is part of IBS's new People of the Book series, the story is told in a narrative format much like a contemporary novel. Though the text comes straight from the NIV, it is packaged without chapter and verse divisions, which were first added to Bibles in the 16th century.

"Some people get offended that these books don't have Holy Bible stamped on the cover or numbers before each verse, or all the biblical books bound together in one volume," Paauw says. "They say we're compromising by repackaging Scripture. But I believe these products are closer in form to what the Bible was in earlier centuries. They also happen to be more attractive to contemporary readers."

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April 23 2001, Vol. 45, No. 6