Bibeln i nya medier : Livsåskådningsmiljö och bibeltolkning bland svenska ungdomar

Sammanfattning: Will new media contribute to Bible reading outside churches? What role does the Bible play in the life of contemporary Swedes? This is examined in three ways. First, a representative sample (n=1000) of the Swedish population was interviewed on uses of and attitudes to the Bible in different forms. Second, a Christian website concerned with the Bible was studied using an online questionnaire among 722 visitors. Third, 20 of those respondents, aged 15-24, were interviewed focusing the interpretation of a Bible text, religious background and participation, as well as media use. The results indicated, that the Bible actually is related to wider audiences by being used in different forms of distribution, a new finding compared to earlier research. The analysis identified a scale of relations to the Bible ranging from an explicitly religious dimension to a cultural dimension, interpreted as part of a chain of memory. Further, religion on the Internet functions either as a complement, or an alternative to local church involvement, despite the young peoples’ views of the Bible. The study indicated that in contemporary society individuals use the Bible indirectly via different forms of media by which they relate to the Bible as a cultural resource or icon, but also that this more private use opens up possibilities of reading the biblical texts in ways that may differ from traditional interpretational patterns.