The Brick Testament
 For years, the Reverend Brendan Powell Smith has labored at translating the great tales of the Good Book into pictorials told with LEGOs. In the beginning, his thought bubbles quoted from The New Jerusalem translation of the Bible. Now, because even the Lord must consider copyrights, they speak in a mix culled from public-domain versions. But always, his bearded religious characters have gestured, bellowed, and knelt with full biblical bravado (and bright Danish coloring).
We got in touch with the Reverend to find out how citizens of the Web have responded to his plastic parables, which biblical moment is hardest to depict in LEGO form, and what other sites he likes: We know you get mail from all kinds of religious groups—and reactions run the gamut from requests to use the tales to anger. Has any of it surprised you? Judging from the thousands of e-mails I've received, reactions do indeed run the gamut. But it should be noted that the positive reactions outnumber the negative by about 99-to-1, whether they're from devout ministers or hardcore atheists. Most surprising has been how popular The Brick Testament has become among religious groups wanting to use it in an instructional setting. Requests are now pouring in at the rate of several per day from across the globe. To give you a random sample, in the past 24 hours I got permission requests from churches in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Albuquerque, NM. As for the negative reactions, they are invariably from people who are upset that children might be harmed by seeing LEGO depictions of the Bible's occasional sex scenes. I suppose by now this shouldn't surprise me, but I still can't get my mind around the fact that while I get these sorts of e-mails every so often, not a single person has ever written to express worry that the Bible's far, far more prevalent scenes of extreme violence and cruelty might have a negative effect on kids. What has been the hardest biblical moment to convey? An early challenge was to figure out how to crucify a LEGO Jesus because LEGO people's arms only go up-and-down and not out to the sides. The solution was to detach the messiah's arms from their sockets and plant them into the cross itself, using friction to hold the rest of his body in place. Another challenge has been to portray motion using only still photos. When Samson collapses the pillars of the Philistine temple, you want it to look appropriately dramatic. And the Bible's epic amounts of violence always look better when things seem to be frozen in the middle of an action. Of course, giant buildings can be tough. If possible, I'll create them at a smaller scale in the distance, like the Temple of Jerusalem in this scene. Other times you just have to go ahead and build big, time-consuming structures that only ever get shown in one illustration. What are some of your other favorite sites? I do actually have other interests besides LEGO and the Bible, so maybe I should mention a few other websites to back-up that claim. I've very into music (listening and recording my own) and lately have been finding music blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear a good way fill my voracious appetite for new music. And as a former college comic strip artist, I appreciate the better webcomics out there. Everybody already knows about Toothpaste for Dinner and Penny Arcade, so I'll give a shoutout to xkcd and the newspaper comics commentary at The Comics Curmudgeon. Another Picks alum! Thanks, Reverend—and keep the bricks stacking!
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