Seeing the Light: Ordinary Christians Encountering the Bible through video

Responses from ordinary English church-goers suggest that viewing filmed presentations of Bible passages can both elicit emotive reactions to the texts and promote a greater cognitive understanding of the stories portrayed. In some cases, differences between the viewers’ prior experience of the text and its interpretation in film provoked deeper engagement and lead to fresh and fuller understandings of the passages. However, the power of conveying the Bible through film is seen by some as potentially undermining an orthodox Christian view of the texts. A consideration of other visual presentations of biblical stories, past and present, supports the importance of such resources in promoting biblical engagement among ordinary English Christians. However, the context of their employment needs consideration and care should be taken to inculcate a healthy hermeneutics of suspicion regarding any film version as one possible interpretation of a text with more than one possible reading. Indeed, the very process of viewing the Bible on the screen can be used to introduce Bible-readers to the plurality of meaning inherent in these ancient texts and the different ways in which they may be understood