Archbishop election

The first round of archbishop election in Finnish Lutheran Church will take place today and the issue that has mostly been dividing the candidates has been same sex marriage and whether church weddings should be allowed for heterosexual couples.

Yesterdays Conservative Laestadian newspaper Päivämies (17.2.2010) also dealt this topic in its editorial. In it homosexuality was seen as a temptation which we should resist. However his resistance has lately become harder and harder as a result of our high living standards – humanity is a threat to the Word of God. As Eve came to conclusion that it’s ok to eat the apple we have after all this discussing come to conclusion that homosexuality is not against Gods will.

The editorial states that the future leader of the Lutheran Church in Finland should boldly stick what the Bible says even though this would leave him alone. This how our “common church” would have a solid foundation and we would avoid the disintegration that is often considered a threat to the Lutheran Church.

This discussion is of course a part of a bigger discourse which has been taking place in other countries too and in the end I’m sure you can find grounds for both views from the Bible.

-Mari

Wordclouds of the Bible

Gene Veith posts an excellent link:

You must see Sixty-Six Clouds, which gives wordclouds (computerized breakdowns of word frequency with the most used words given in proportionally larger fonts) for each book of the Bible.

Here is the Psalms:

Here is Luke:

Here is Romans:

What I am wondering is how can one use wordclouds as a research tool? Not only scripture, I mean, but any text really. This is a form of discourse analysis, I suppose, and seems more useful than a good number of discourse analyses I have read up to this date.

(Via Cranach: The Blog of Veith.)

Mika