Ordination on the go? There’s an app for that!

Ever wondered what it would be like to become ordained as a priest, rabbi or imam?

If you have an iPhone, you could be just a few screen swipes away from finding out.

That’s because Tony Jones, theologian-in-residence at Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has developed an application, or “app,” that allows iPhone users to experience mock ordinations in more than two dozen faiths.  Solomon’s Porch is a Christian ministry that began as a local church and today calls itself a “holistic, Christian, missionary, community.”

The app, called Ordain Thyself, doesn’t confer any legitimate religious credentials to its users, but it does allow iPhone owners to see what they would look like wearing the religious garb of different clerics, and read a brief and humorous overview of various world religions.

Jones, himself an ordained minister, decided to create the app partly to combat what he sees as an inability of faith leaders to laugh about themselves and their religions.

“Religion is serious business to be sure,” Jones told CNN’s Belief Blog. “But it could use a little stand up comedy to lighten us up.”

Jones, who is also the author of “The Church Is Flat: The Relational Ecclesiology of the Emerging Church Movement,” says on the whole reaction to the app has been positive, but the technology is not without its critics.

One woman, a Lutheran minister, accused Jones of belittling the ordination process, which often requires years of hard work and religious study.

Jones, who attended a seminary for three years leading up to his own ordination, dismisses such criticisms.

He points out that while ordination can be an onerous process in many faiths, others allow practitioners to become ordained online with minimal effort and a small fee.

“Ordination, in a lot of ways, is in the eye of the beholders,” Jones adds.

Jones and his team also respond to their critics on the app’s website, telling users whose religious sensibilities are offended to “find an app that can deliver you a better sense of humor.”

The app is advertised as an entertainment product, but Jones hopes users will learn more about the world’s religions when they play around with it, a goal Johnnie Moore finds dubious.

“That’s a little stretch,” Moore, a vice president of Liberty University, told the Belief Blog, adding that the app contributes in many ways to the stereotyping of belief systems.

“I kind of wish that all of this effort had been put into something a little more educational,” Moore added, saying that Americans could really benefit from efforts to better understand world religions.

Yet despite his criticisms, Moore, who is an outspoken advocate of using technology and social media to reach out to people of faith, sees the app as “interesting for its purpose,” so long as it continues to advertise itself as an entertainment product.

“The contribution of this app and others like it is that they start a conversation, and that’s always valuable,” he says.

Ordain thyself allows users to explore 28 positions of leadership in many of the world’s largest religions, as well as several less common ones.

The app even explores several pop-culture faiths, such as the Klingon religion from “Star Trek,” the “Dudeist” faith inspired by the film “The Big Lebowski” and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which was created by atheist Bobby Henderson in 2005.

Source: CNN's, Belief Blog

Amazon smart phone rumors: we could see a 'Kindle Phone' in 2012

An Amazon smart phone -- call it the Kindle Phone -- might be more than a rumor.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Amazon's component suppliers are testing a phone with a screen somewhere between 4 and 5 inches, citing those ubiquitous "people familiar with the situation." Add this to last November's rumor that Amazon would release a handset in the fourth quarter of 2012, and a separate Bloomberg report last week that Amazon was working on a phone with Foxconn (Apple's supplier for iPhones and iPads), and it's hard not to wonder if we might see a Kindle Phone within the next year.

It wouldn't be entirely out of character for Amazon to make a move for the smart phone market. The company dominated e-reader sales for years with the original Kindle before moving into tablets last year with the Kindle Fire. Amazon might see a handset as a logical hardware step. Research firms estimatethat Amazon sells both the Kindle and the Kindle Fire at a loss; the company makes up the difference because the devices make it easy for users to buy digital media from Amazon's store. The customer base it's built while following that model could give it an edge if it decides to release a phone.

Chris DeVore, a Seattle-based analyst, even suggested that Amazon could attract customers with a free handset, including unlimited voice and data. (DeVore isn't claiming any special insight, so take his prediction with more grains of salt than usual.) The catch, he cautions, would be that the "free" phone would serve ads and otherwise push owners to make more Amazon purchases -- for example, maybe they'd have to sign up for two years of Amazon Prime -- but it would be affordable for customers and profitable for Amazon, at least over the long term. Plus, such a move would put pressure on Apple and Google, the two biggest players in the mobile phone arena.

The trick for Amazon, of course, would be navigating tricky negotiations with carrier companies, not to mention working out the details of making a handset compatible with global technical standards. Complicating things further is the fact that the iPhone and current Android smart phones have a pretty commanding slice of the market; a Kindle Phone would have to conquer territory that's already fairly well-established.

One thing's almost certain: we'll be seeing some new hardware from Amazon, of one kind or another, before too long. Its popular 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet is now 7 months old, and the China Times reported last week that a new version is already in production. Amazon needs to stay ahead of Google, whose Nexus 7 tablet, released last month, offers a higher-resolution screen and significantly improved specs for the same price as the Kindle Fire.

Source: Christian Science Monitor