Bibles for indigenous peoples

The newspaper Dagen has today an interesting article about the Bible in China (http://www.dagen.se/dagen/Article.aspx?ID=154957. China, as you may know, prints today more Bibles than any other country (Amity Press has capacity to produce 1 million Bibles a month), but then there is an enormous need with that much people.
Dagen mentions also this: "China has 55 officially recognised minorities. Bibles in their languages has had low priority. Those who want to have permission to translate and publish them, must wait long periods of time when authorities make decisions." I am sure that this is so, but things are moving even there. When I was in Yunnan a few years ago, the province with most minorities (25 of those 55) I did see that many are still without Bible, but also that work was going on in eight languages at that time. I met some translator groups and they are doing a good job. And the Church has a vision for those minorities, educating pastors and translating with the restricted means they have, which I can lack sometimes in the West. (I know that things are not always the same all over this vast country of course). We may have other kinds of hindrances than the Chinese, but fact is, that most European minority languages are without Bible translation today - so do we do so much better than China? Europe has around 220 spoken languages (not counting immigrant languages) according to Wycliffe. Only 48 of them have a whole Bible, another 13 the NT and another number have only small portions. Even in Sweden a complete Bible is lacking for the Sámi languages. North Sámi is going to have one in a few years. But Lule Sámi has only a NT and for South Sámi portions are being translated. So we have still much to do in our own part of the world as well. And how is the situation in North America? Australia?

Back to China. We might be able to help with those minority translations, and we already do. The West has been supporting with finances and in other ways. But, important to see, we might also be able to learn from them. How a church can focus on minority work with rather small means for example. By opening up for the language and the culture. we have to do that more. We can be inspired by others, all around the world. It ismportant to have the Bible in the language of the heart. No matter whether that language is spoken by millions or only by a small community.

The Swedes and the Bible.

A new survey among 1000 Swedes has been conducted in January. The results are in many newspapers today. About 32% said that the Bible has importance for their views on ethical and moral issues. For the majority it has not. Only about 10% of the people reads the Bible once a month, a figure which has been about the same during the last few years.

One question in the survey was: Is there any sripture that has had big influence on your ethics and moral views? The Bible was mentioned here by 20%, second largest was the UN Declaration on Human Rights (4%). Other religious documents had very small percentages, eg the Quran 1%. There were also people mentioning as diverse documents as greek filosofers, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, Anne Franks Diary, etc.

But most remarkably, 62% of the people said that no document at all had such an influence on them. This is a high figure and one can wonder what this on the long term is going to mean for ethical and moral views in the country. With no written document at all as a guidance ethical and moral views risk to become rather floating and and changing under unclear influences. One could speculate that a situation like this would make it easier for certain groups, propagating for values contradictory to what most people still view as good, to find a growing ground. Further one could speculate that, no external guidance in form of any document being of relevance, the own winning could become the measuring stick for what is good and evil. Of course all this is speculative, but still, this figure of 62% might be a warning bell.

For the Christian community in Sweden it must be a challenge to give the Bible a greater relevance in Swedish society. Indeed, interest for religion seems to be growing. God is discussed in the media more than some years ago.