The Conversation: Bible Tweeter
Meet a man who's summarizing the entire Bible, one tweet at a time.
Sept. 6, 2010— -- People talk about almost everything on Twitter -- from their lunch plans to breaking news to the latest Justin Bieber sightings. But amid all of the earthly chatter, some Tweeters are also finding time for the divine.
Take Chris Juby, 30, from Durham, England, for example. For years, he's had a daily habit of reading the Bible, but he's recently launched a project to summarize the entire Bible -- one tweet at a time.
Juby, a freelance web developer and director of worship at King's Church in Durham, does not simply re-type the text of the holy book. He reads a chapter of the Bible every morning and boils the words down to a single, 140-character tweet.
Genesis 1 becomes, "God created the heavens, the earth and everything that lives. He made humankind in his image, and gave them charge over the earth," in Juby's summary.
"I was looking for a way to kind of focus my mind a bit more on what I was reading in the Bible," said Juby, "and I thought writing a summary would be a good way to do that."
Juby launched his project Aug. 8, and he's in it for the long haul. With 1,189 chapters in the Bible, he figures he won't be done until Nov. 8, 2013.
"I think my major hope is that it will inspire people to read the Bible for themselves," said Juby. "I certainly wouldn't want anyone to rely on my summaries. They're definitely no substitute for reading the real thing."
So far, Juby's twitter account, "@biblesummary" has accumulated over 14,000 followers, and he's also organizing his tweets on a web page, www.biblesummary.info.
He's not the only person to turn to Twitter to share a religious message. Other Twitter accounts post passages from the Quran and from Jewish texts, and the Dalai Lama himself posts Buddhist wisdom on his account, @DalaiLama.
Juby spoke with ABC's Stephanie Sy for a Conversation on faith, the Bible, and the tough limits of 140 characters. We hope you'll watch.