It’s not often I find myself recommending the Archbishop of Canterbury to journalists, but one of my minor obsessions is the changing social impact of media technology. Here’s the Archbishop, in a recent lecture, reminding us that it applies to dead tree technology too, and in making his appeal reminding us too that some tides will never flow back in:

To begin with the simplest point: before Scripture is read in private, it is heard in public. Those of us who assume that the normative image of Scripture reading is the solitary individual poring over a bound volume, one of the great icons of classical Protestantism, may need to be reminded that for most Christians throughout the ages and probably most in the world at present, the norm is listening.

Very few early or mediaeval Christians could possibly have owned a Bible; not many in the rapidly growing churches of the developing world today are likely to either. And this underlines the fact that the Church’s public use of the Bible represents the Church as defined in some important way by listening: the community when it comes together doesn’t only break bread and reflect together and intercede, it silences itself to hear something.

It represents itself in that moment as a community existing in response to a word of summons or invitation, to an act of communication that requires to be heard and answered.

The world we have lost, a world lit only by fire.