How Are They Going to Market to Teenage Boys without the Use of Boobs. I Can't Wait to Find Out

Thomas Nelson, the largest publisher of Bibles in the English language, has targeted its new magazine-format Bibles to specific readers — to adolescent girls, for starters, with later versions fashioned for teenage boys, young women and men. Within three months of publication, Revolve, the complete New Testament for teenage girls, became the nation's best selling Bible.

An enhanced version, Revolve 2, could easily be mistaken for an issue of Vogue. With a trio of lovely, smiling girls on its cover, it runs more than 400 pages, weighs just more than a pound and a half and retails for $16.99. It incorporates the entire New Testament in the conversational New Century version.

The purpose of the publication is to make the word of God relevant to young people — hopefully without pandering to them — to keep the New Testament new and to make the venerable “Good News” of the Gospel up-to-date good news for young Americans. …

Advice columns focus on dealing with self-image, sex and parents. To the question of what qualities a girl should seek in a boy, editors answer: “Your guy needs to love God more than he loves you. That's the only way he can understand how to love you the right way.” The blunt response to “How far can you go sexually before you are no longer pure?” is “How much dog poop stirred into your cookie batter does it take to ruin the whole batter?”


“I'm really into skat,” the inquiring pure mind is said to have replied. “So your answer is more confusing than helpful. But go on. I'm listening.”