“God Speaks to Me Through the App” : A Digital Ethnographic Study of Religious Practices Through the YouVersion Bible App

Abstract: The present thesis analyses the online religious practices of Christians through the mobile app YouVersion Bible. Particularly, it explores the ways in which Christians interact with sacred texts online and the phenomenon of a digital Bible. It is argued that the digital form of communication among Christians and the practice of reading the Bible online can undermine once fixed interpretations of the Holy Scripture, turning religious apps into persuasive technologies. An argument proposing that it is impossible to have a sacred text in cyberspace is confronted by an ever-increasing practice of using a Bible app instead of a physical book in churches and at home and affective sharing that happens online during digital religious practices. Moreover, publishers themselves have begun to augment the Bible with multi-media resources, arguing that this will help the user achieve a deeper and more frequent engagement with the text.  To explore and analyse the religious practices through the YouVersion Bible, a digital ethnographic methodology was applied that included YouVersion app observations, interviews, and qualitative surveys. Throughout the paper, it draws on theoretical concepts of technological affordance, emotions in religion, and affect theories in connection to religious practices and embodied experience amplified by the app.  While the purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the YouVersion Bible app, its design, and features, on religious practices, examining ways in which Christians interact with sacred texts online, adopt or resist them, the main finding of this thesis became the conclusion that religious apps can have an appealing, engaging and affective design with a variety of technological affordances, but it does not automatically make them persuasive technologies as stated by several contemporary scholars.