02.16.09

media, community, and virtuality

Posted in culture, ekklesia, leadership, semiotics at 9:34 am by len

About two years back we gathered a large group of writers, authors and bloggers and took a crack at articulating some of the issues around virtuality in relationship to the body of Christ. That project, a self-organizing experiment, was the Wikiklesia project. The book was titled, “Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ekklesial Revolution.”

Yesterday John LaGrou sent me a link to an interview with Shane Hipps at the NPC. Shane is making an argument based on the dialogical nature of media, “we create the media then the media creates us.” To me this is an important insight, derived originally from the Canadian analyst and author Marshall McLuhan. However, what Shane does with this argument is spin off some ideas that are difficult to defend. John has his own response posted HERE.

In the interview Shane begins by drawing a stark dichotomy: virtual community is one or the other (virtual.. or community). Shane essentially makes four points against the possibility of meaningful “virtual community” and they are these:

1. shared history is critical. Without shared history there is no sense of identity and belonging

2. permanence matters – permanence is how you establish shared history

3. proximity matters – you have to be with one another to create meaningful connections

4. shared imagination of the future (sounds like “purpose” when he talks about it). He notes that this is hard to get in “real” community but often the starting point in “virtual” community.

To me its a strange argument that sounds good in theory but is itself divorced from reality.

First, the history that is more critical is the big story. When we share memory (anamnesis) and live into it together we have something much more critical than shared experiences. And the piece that really anchors this is shared practice rooted in shared memory. So when we keep the sabbath, work at justice, pray the Office, celebrate the supper etc we share identity rooted in the larger work of God in history. This is the identity that matters first. To me the larger issue in community is theological literacy. Where this sense of shared memory is lacking shared history may merely be that we attend church dinners together – we participate in the same club. It can be a very empty experience and it is one of the reasons that we look for other types of community. (But now I am realizing how loosely we use this word and that what we call community is not an expression of the biblical reality just because we use the lable or meet Shane’s criteria above).

Second, where is permanence these days? The average Canadian moves every three or four years. Permanence may be more anchored in virtuality in our day than in geography. I am able to remain in daily touch with friends in spite of where they go or where I go. Permanance (Benedictine’s “stability”) is a wonderful ideal, and it is the flip side of proximity. But I don’t see it out there in the real world so I’m not sure how we are supposed to enable this in local communities.

Third, proximity matters. It would be good to see more of this in ecclesial practice. There are a long list of reasons why we need to rediscover community that is physical and not be racing across town to meet with other church members. If we are to be seen to be a transformed people we have to find ways to embody the gospel together in the way we live our lives. As Cavanaugh, “People are usually converted to a new way of living by getting to know people who live that way and thus being able to see themselves living that way too. This is the way God’s revolution works. The church is meant to be that community of people who make salvation visible for the rest of the world. Salvation is not a property of isolated individuals, but is only made visible in mutual love.” (The Church as God’s Body Language).

Having said this, however, I can’t deny that a welcoming and hospitable community can exist in cyberspace. I have experienced it. But I would argue it needs to be supplemented by hands and feet when possible.

Finally,back to his first point, that we create media then the media re-creates us. I wish the larger church would wake up to this point. The message itself changes when the medium changes. But we have to back up and ask where current incarnations of method have taken us. How do our buildings influence our understanding of leadership and authority, and in turn our understanding of the body? How does the sermon affect these things? And then we can ask how the radical democratization of knowledge and conversation on the Internet impacts our theology today. (For example, the Whiteheads view of theological reflection as conversation).

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