America magazine, a Jesuit publication in the United States, has launched The Living Word: Scripture in the Life of the Church, a two-year, multi-platform project in collaboration with the American Bible Society aimed at promoting deeper engagement with the Bible. Editor-in-Chief Fr Matt Malone SJ writes that this project represents a “two firsts” for the publication: “It is the first time America has undertaken such an ambitious programme of content devoted to a single subject,” and the first extensive partnership “with an interdenominational Christian ministry that has been engaging people with God’s word for nearly 200 years.”
2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Dei Verbum: The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, the ground breaking document of the Second Vatican Council, and while the church has been greatly enriched by the fruits of modern biblical criticism in the intervening decades, new challenges and opportunities have also emerged.
Through this unprecedented partnership, America and the American Bible Society will examine how the church can more fully realize the conciliar vision of a more biblically literate and personally engaged Catholic population and will model that engagement through the inventive use of 21st Century social communications. The Living Word project will include commissioned articles in print and online, Web-only content such as blogs, podcasts and videos and live events to connect authors and readers across all platforms.
Content for The Living Word will be organized around five themes drawn from Dei Verbum: Conversion through Scripture; Praying with Scripture; Worshipping with Scripture; The Aesthetics of Scripture; and The Theology of Scripture. [America magazine]