Forgive me blogosphere, I have sinned. It’s been 3 weeks since my last post.

Real life gets in the way of blogging, just as blogging gets in the way of real life. It’s a balancing act and honestly I needed time to refocus after all the Beth Moore attention this past week.

Anyway…………………………some acclaim came our way while I was gone.

We won the Distinguished Young Alumni Award from my alma mater Boston University School of Theology. Woohoo!

I say “we” because I wouldn’t write for no one to read, to speak into a void where nothing would respond. If it wasn’t for the comments and feedback from my readership, the posts would be boring and out-of-sync with the world around me. If you notice, often I refer to HackingChristianity as “we” not “I” because of the symbiotic relationship we have. And it was heavily the work on this blog and my work on social media that led to this award.

So thank you! And congratulations! But from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

So you can share in the experience, at the Seminary I had two speaking engagements. I’ve published below both speeches so you can read through them. There’s some personal stuff that I haven’t shared publically on the blog so you may be enriched by reading it.

The first is a panel discussion called “three challenges for the next decade.” Each panelist was to choose three challenges in our next decade and describe them. I chose:

1. How to be an incarnational church in the digital age.
2. How to be the church in a world that is fully customizable and without dissonance. (Concise discussion of the echo chamber that I write about a lot)
3. How to develop a broader understanding of what it means to be United in the UMC.

The second is a Constructive Theology Class discussion where I was brought in to talk about doing theological reflection in blog form. I have three suggestions for blogging:

1. Write about your passion, someone else has it too.
2. Digital interactions absolutely have real-world ramifications.
3. Respond to your context and it will respond to you.

Enjoy!

And…thanks. continue reading..

Last week my spouse became a stereotype: driving a Prius with reusable shopping bags filled with arugula in the trunk…and listening to NPR. Sigh. But the story she heard fit right into discussions here at HX about the echo-chamber.

NPR reported on the advent of religious search engines: specially-coded search engines that only return results that fit into a particular religion’s framework. This would enable strict religious adherents to use technology that normally returns all search options instead return only search results that match their religious beliefs.

According to Michael Gartenberg, a partner at technology research firm Altimeter Group, these religiously centered search engines are bringing new users to the Web.

“You have an emerging generation and emerging culture that wants to take advantage of technology … search engines and the things that they provide but at the same point, be true to their heritage … and not stray from their belief system,” he says.

But not everyone has been supportive of the idea. Some people call it censorship. SeekFind’s Houdmann disagrees.

“In a sense, I guess kind of what SeekFind does is a form of censorship, but I would more describe it as selective inclusion,” he says.

The articles and commentaries focus on how these conservative web sites return “Marxism” as a top result with a search for Democrats.  (For the record, SeekFind and Jewogle don’t have “Hacking Christianity” indexed, while I’mHalal returns my website/Facebook accounts in their entirety. Clearly Islam loves this site more than rigid Judeo-Christianity).

But what caught my eye was the following exchange:

Some who oppose such search engines argue that allowing people to only access material that they already agree with will lead to an intolerant society. But Gartenberg says he does not see it that way.

“It’s no more censorship than if I find something on television that I find offensive to me and I could change the channel,” he says.

Whereas search engines are often thought to be horizontal and thus broad, customized search engines are vertical in that they delve into one slice and return results that fit that slice. Clearly, even a United Methodist pastor’s blog is excluded from such results and thus the search engine is not my slice of the world. Fine. Live and let live.

However, we’ve talked about the fears of search engines returning customized results before here (Google and the Echo Chamber). But while that was based on recommendations and web patterns, this is a dictated top-down exclusion of dissonance and questionable content.  As I wrote before on the echo-chamber:

When our news media is customized to reflect our monoculture, when our neighborhoods are chosen to reflect our monoculture, and when our gatherings speak only to those who share our culture, then how will we know that the world is changing?  And more dangerously, if by hearing the same culture reflected back at us, we may become more radical and thus more hostile to the world around us.

While the concept is great for strict adherents to be able to branch out into technology, cutting out the real world strikes me as a retreat from the world rather than an engagement of it. While there are certain times in a religious adherents’ life that are bettered by isolation and individual growth, narrowing the field of one’s curiousity and desire for strict information is a retreat from the world rather than an engagement of it. It is Pharisaic in that it demands purity of curiosity not just purity of choice. If one is never confronted with the choice to click “abstinance” rather than other search engine results on “sex”, then how can they learn from that experience?

Clearly such an argument is a slippery slope to a “Christ of Culture” where pastors ought to do drugs to better understand the choices addicts make. But on a more level plain, such an argument is not far-fetched in a world where we can customize our lives to the nth degree.

I wonder how many generations it will take until the human psyche can no longer handle dissonance, social groups can no longer navigate conflict.

I wonder if it is with no small irony (given its history of squashing dissent) that the Church, with its Bible full of holes and contradiction, may ironically be the last redoubt of dissonance where disagreement is modeled and dissonance is cherished for its catalytic effect on discipleship and personal growth. In such a doomsday scenario, there’s no place for customized narrowly vertical search engines.

Thoughts?

[Image: Apple Computer's famous ad breaking through the 1984 drones with a woman with a hammer]

In our pluralistic world, one of the efforts of atheist/freethinking people is to advertise on buses and billboards. It is then a test for how the religious communities respond.  Do they respond with hostility and incredulity at the “offensive” billboards? Or do they respond with grace and hospitality to the efforts of one group among others?

In Fayetteville, Arkansas, there’s an interesting twist to this phenomenon…well, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Yep, the NWA Coalition of Reason has their billboard on the same one as a United Methodist Church.  And apparently it wasn’t planned out that way.

So how did the two groups respond?

“That was a complete coincidence. We didn’t know that until we went and took a picture of the sign and said. Oh, we had no idea,” said [co-founder of Fayetteville Free Thinkers Darrel] Henschell.

And neither Henschell, nor the church’s pastor thinks it’s a bad thing.

“That could be a metaphor for how secular people and church minded people can co-exist peacefully in our society,” Henschell said.

“The first reaction is it breaks my heart,” said CUMC Senior Pastor Carness Vaughan. “But on second thought, any opportunity to get people thinking about God is a good thing.”

Over and over at HX we talk about the Echo-Chamber: how to introduce dissonance into a person’s customized lifestyle.  I think we have an example right here of an unintentionally effective means to do that.  Are people’s faith going to be shattered by seeing a billboard? Not likely. But will a conversation start about faith? Much more likely.  It becomes an easy conversation starter in workplaces and schools and homes about faith, and I hope people take advantage of the opportunity.  I applaud the hospitable reaction of the UMC and the CoR to see this as a conversation starter and not dueling billboards.

Thoughts?

I’m really not interested in partisan political discussion, but blogger Andrew Sullivan has an observation that I want to post here for discussion on its parallels in the church.  He writes about former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin joining Fox News:

In my view, we’re seeing the fusion of a political party with a media company. It’s like a state-run TV that only runs pro-GOP stories. Think of the TV in Iran and you’ll get the fuller picture.

And by sealing off Fox viewers from any other news source, and feeding propaganda 24 hours a day, and having a monopoly of the base, FNC is more powerful than the RNC in determining Republican politics.

Andrew Sullivan, The FNC-RNC Merger

In Sullivan’s view, the Fox News’ approach of assimilate and dominate is unhealthy to the elected leadership of an ideology in that it replaces the elected leadership of the RNC with Fox News corporate-chosen agenda.  Regardless of whether the results are as Sullivan outlines, the approach of Fox News seems to be this embrace of the echo-chamber:

1. Rail against the “liberal media” so that you only watch the one network (theirs) 
2. Promote a one-sided viewpoint that may fudge the lines of fact
3. Recruit and exhibit a monopoly of voices in their ideology.

It strikes me that I’ve seen this approach in churches as well.

1. Rail against other churches and/or ideologies in the town/area so that parishioners treat their statements or actions with suspicion.
2. Promote perceptions and beliefs that are counter to the facts but helpful to the pastoral/leaders’ message
3. Allow in only voices that complement the pastors’ or leaderships’ messages

I think this is a natural tendency to exclude, assimilate, and dominate a particular area of influence…it is certainly the most effective!  But in doing so we are not critiquing the most dangerous aspect: the echo-chamber that reduces Christian compassion and stunts Christian expression!  Indeed the churches that most often use these tactics are ones that spawn replicas of themselves rather than partner with local expressions of their faith, which further extends the echo-chamber to new areas.

I admit that I don’t invite in Beth Moore bible studies or Pat Robertson content into my parish.  But I do engage their sentiments and theologies in sermons and interactive bible studies.  I get uneasy when the choir sings songs that promote pre-dispensationalism or when the lector prays to “Father God” but I don’t dictate that such things are anathema or seek to insulate people from those ideologies.

Engagement with dissonance is preferable to insulation.  The worst thing you can do for a growing child is put them in a medically-pure bubble where they do not build up immunity to disease.  I fear such chambers that we create in our churches are free of dissonance and full of self-fulfilling statements that are harmful to Christian witness and personal growth.  If you build your whole life around freedom from dissonance or challenge, then how can Christ (who challenges and offers dissonance) be made real?

This is a problem, from my perspective.  I just don’t know what to do about it.  Thoughts?

On a morning errand, I had NPR on and heard a story about the fragmentation of the media and how it fragments culture.  Since HX was founded on examining the Echo Chamber, of how we self-select our own media, communities, and world in order to avoid dissonance, it was very interesting:

Over the past decade, the number of television channels has more than doubled. There’s Lifetime for women, Spike for men, the Syfy channel, Comedy Central, yadda yadda yadda.
Add on YouTube and Facebook, Twitter and FunnyOrDie, and there’s just a lot more stuff to keep track of than there was in the days when there were three main TV networks.
For better or worse, the likelihood of another Seinfeld gets smaller with each new source of content. And that, alongside similarly fragmenting landscapes in news, politics and culture, has social scientists worried.
“In history, as far as we can tell, there have never been cultures or societies in which there weren’t a very large set of shared ideas — norms, values, stories” and so on, says [Stanford University communications professor Clifford] Nass. “We’ve just never seen that before.”

Will “Get What You Want” Lead to a Culture Gap, NPR 12/29/2009

One social scientist in the NPR segment comments:

“For better or for worse, when we did have 60 million people watching any one networks’ nightly news program, that meant that 60 million people had to receive the same information and make up their minds about it and be in dialogue with one another about it.”

I know I tend to lean towards the negative aspects of the echo-chamber, but I’m glad for the loss of monoculture.   Being dictated one medium or message is dead…good riddance.  Such monopolies are dangerous and, even if they have journalistic integrity, are not helpful in an increasingly suspicious society. 

We will never go back.  Instead we will choose what we watch and learn and experience.  There’s hope for this brave new world here:

As the monoculture fragments, social-media platforms and other wired and unwired communities are creating new kinds of connections — connections that are building bridges between people in ways that watching Seinfeld never could.

Yes, they are building bridges and in those connective moments, one wonders where the Church (in its diverse forms) will fit in.  The truth I believe is that the Church is adaptive and multi-faceted.  Some variations will die, some traditions will not survive…maybe even traditions we find meaning in.  But the Church will continue, and it’s our happy task to continue to seek out what role we play in society.

So for 2010, be assured that HX will continue to expose the dying archetypes of Church as bad.hacks, and will continue to examine how society’s shifts will create niche opportunities for the Church…and plenty of Star Wars will be had.

Welcome to our brave new fragmented world.  May the fragments in your life be put together in a coherant whole that brings meaning to your life.

It is unfortunate when I pick up a book that looks interesting and realize it is totally not written with me in mind.  The Diversity Culture by Matthew Raley is that kind of book which is written to evangelicals who find themselves increasingly feeling isolated and incommunicable to the diversity of contemporary society.  Given that (a) I do not identify with evangelical culture, and (b) I have many avenues into contemporary society, then this was not the book written for me.

However, it was a book written ABOUT me, in a sense.   From the words of the back cover: a new culture of “spiritual openness, moral flexibility, and social diversity” is what the author writes about.  Though I am Christian, I am clearly immersed in that kind of culture and as such I must contend with some of the claims in the book of which I disagree with.  I decide on a daily basis what eternal “tenets” of Christianity I am gonna bend or seek to integrate better in my ever-changing relationship with the culture around me.  Raley helps me feel “examined” in a helpful way in three movements he makes in the book.

First, Raley talks about the practical way that contemporary society tries to navigate cultural differences.  Raley identifies this as “street postmodernism” where there’s no rhyme or reason to people’s beliefs: they just follow what gives them meaning and keeps them from getting hurt.  This was a helpful analysis of the cafeteria-style culture that Christians are called to be relevant to.  Further, Raley calls out evangelicals who call this culture simply “relativism” ie. people who assert there is no Truth.  In actuality, Raley states that they know there is a truth, there is right and wrong, but they don’t have a method to integrate eternal Christian truths into lifestyles full of change and rapid escalation.  Again, I don’t identify as evangelical, but this was a breath of fresh air that Raley “got” a key understanding of this culture.

Second, Raley talks about crucibles, or understanding that people have negative experiences in which they are formed into the people they are today with strong understandings of some truth.   This truth is not always positive about Christianity!  The evangelical’s typical response has been either reject-correct (reject the conclusions they found) or accept-affirm (accept the conclusions and agree with them).  Raley seeks a third path which seems to be compassionate engagement which both affirms truth but challenges assumption from a position of weakness.  A power-narrative this isn’t.  I found Raley’s compassionate response and affirmation of people’s crucibles to be an interesting illustration of how typical evangelical engagement of culture is off-base but not fatally flawed.

Finally, Raley shares a prejudice with me (well, his may be simply good analytics while mine is clearly a prejudice) against mega-churches.  He helpfully articulates why mega-churches are successful: they offer everything to everyone via market segmentation.  In my town, if you are young working class you probably attend X church, if you are older upper class you attend Y church, etc.  Demographics seek out similar demographics, perhaps.  But mega-churches are able to offer young adult ministries, seeker services, elder outreach, all the various “storefronts” that make people feel a part of the church, even though it is huge.

Raley’s critique, however, is that such “variety of demographic storefronts” feeds the personal autonomy more than collective discipleship.  If you can choose the inputs and the segment of the church life that you want to participate in, then you don’t have to stretch as a person.  As Raley says, “the body of Christ has become a customizeable package offered by an industry.”  As I write often on this blog, the echo-chamber is present in mega-churches simply because of the choice of the worshippers to only attend and pay attention to what is relevant to them and ignore the rest.  It’s a helpful critique from the “inside” that I appreciated.

In short, if you are evangelical, The Diversity Culture would be a good read.  If you are a non-evangelical-identified pastor, it is an interesting read.  If you are part of the cafeteria culture…then you might not get much out of the book but it could help with gentle correction of wayward evangelicals who seek you out in less-than-helpful fashion that Raley critiques as well.

Thoughts?

In an email conversation, a reader pointed me towards Mark Batterson, who writes about technology being a trojan horse that allows the Gospel to reach new people and get past their defenses that cause people to run and scream when anything “religious” comes their way.  From Mark:

Here’s a thought: technology is a Trojan Horse.

Blogs and podcasts are Trojan horses that get behind the impregnable defense mechanisms that keep people out of church. Why? Because they are non-threatening. Blog visitors can remain “anonymous” as long as they want to or need to. Podcast listeners can download Theaterchurch.com and check us out while they work out or hang out or commute to work.

My emailer asked if Mark and I were onto two sides of the same coin with my hacks which attempt to open up the Christian system on one side and Mark’s idea of Trojan horses slipping past defenses on another.

Great question.  I would have to read more stuff about where Mark is going with Trojan horses, but they are remarkably similar.  The difference is nitpicky…we are simply writing from two different systems.

ChurchMarketingSucks defines what Mark means by Trojan Horse:

Trojan horse (n.)
Etymology: The idea appears to have originated with Mark Batterson and has been communicated by him on numerous occasions.
Definition: A method used to bypass the innate and learned defenses of individuals, specifically in regards to their tendency to use defense mechanisms when faced by the local church.
Examples: Servant evangelism, more comfortable locations for services, use of familiar technology or creating a welcoming atmosphere.

Thus, Mark’s focus is on beating through the defenses of prejudgments that see church as boring, unhip, and a bit scary to interact with. The tool (be it technology or a book) allows Mark to circumvent those prejudgments to get the message across.  By “conquering” the prejudgment, a Trojan allows Christianity to be seen in a new way.

In comparison, hacks (as explored here on HX) are changes in the makeup of Christian systems.  They are focused not on others’ perceptions but on how Christianity as a system becomes more open and accessible.  I feel like hacks are less about marketing and more about systemic change, one action or event at a time.

For instance, lets look at the Bible Illuminated from both these perspectives.

• From Mark’s perspective, it is a Trojan Horse.  It takes an object that people would usually not pick up (a bible) and turns it into a magazine which people would pick up.  People’s prejudgments are circumvented and they are exposed to the Gospel in a way they wouldn’t have normally.
• From HX’s perspective, it is a bible.hack.  It takes a part of the system (a bible) and pairs it with contemporary form (magazine) and content (internet phenomena of mash-ups).  Bibles, which have been relegated to hardbound books or ridiculous biblezines, is found in a new form which transforms what Christians AND non-Christians alike think about the Bible.  

Ultimately, I think we are both saying the same thing, but using different metaphors.  Mark uses a military analogy, whereas I use a nerd analogy.  I think the nitpicky difference is that trojan horses are focused on non-Christians, while hacks are focused on the Christian system itself.  By opening the Christian system, both disenfranchised Christians and non-theists can see Christianity in a new light…and it doesn’t take a gimmick or marketing technique to do it!  They are both components of the same whole and both useful to radically hack Christianity.

So, dear anonymous reader, there’s your answer.  Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

As readers here at HX know, the Echo Chamber is the box we build for ourselves in our customizable world where we watch news shows or read internet sites where the “angle” of the writing agrees with us.  We are reinforcing our ideologies by reading websites that speak to those ideologies. 

Why is this a problem?  In this Echo-Chamber, it is very difficult for people to get dissonant messages into our lifestyle.  It is very difficult for Christians to get their message of the love of God to people whose lifestyle is a closed system.  If there was any one aspect of people’s lifestyles that you could say “yeah, that’s what Hacking Christianity talks about,” it’s probably this concept.

Alas, Google has two features now that encourage this type of lifestyle:

1. SearchWiki.  You may see this already, the “up” arrows after posts.   While this is allegedly an algorhythm to allow Google to know if you “found what you searched for” it also leads to preference given to particular sites that reinforce your worldview.  If you search for “Barack Obama” and give an “up” vote to a Fox News clip, then the likelihood of a fox news result being returned for you later gets an uptick.   
2. Even more chamber-ish is Preferred Sites.  This is when you see a result from a website you like, then you can click this and get more results from that website.  Again, you are more likely to get search results, even on mundane topics, from websites that appeal to your ideology or lifestyle.

While both of these have practical uses, I’m hesitant in the narrowing of search options by giving preference to those sites that agree with “us.”

Thoughts?  Are custom search engines limiting our searches or ensuring that “we get what we search for?”  And what are the responses of Christian web ministries when their websites get less hits because people self-select “Saddleback” or “CrossWalk” and drive up their narrow viewpoints on the search lists?

Discuss.  Oh, and if anyone wants to make HX to their preferred site, be my guest.  I have no shame.

There are essentially two types of church denominational systems: connectionalism and congregationalism.

In connectional systems (United Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Catholic, etc):

• pastors are assigned to churches
• churches are accountable to meta-church agencies and boards
• church buildings and property are owned by the meta-church (the denomination) and held in trust by the local congregation.

In congregational systems (United Church of Christ, Southern Baptist, etc) or individual congregational churches:

• Pastors are selected by the local congregation.
• churches are accountable only to their own rules and regulations (which is not terrible, look at the excellent structure in place when Ted Haggard was removed from his church)
• local congregations own the church building and property.

While both are legitimate ways of doing church, Connectionalism has taken some hits in the last month, especially to our sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church.

First, the schizmatic churches in the Episcopal Church have wrested ownership of the church property (you know…the ones that the denomination owns and the local congregation holds in trust) from the denomination.  In other words, they have taken from the denomination that which for its entire existance has been considered to be the denominations.  There have been isolated incidents of this previously, but this is a major change in denominational understandings and in understandings of local churches holding property “in trust” not “owning it themselves.”  It’s a terrible step, in my opinion.

Second, even though much hoopla has come up of the rival Episcopal denomination that is emerging, there is not much hope for denominationalism as a whole.  ReligionLink.org reports:

At a time when denominations are floundering — even the Southern Baptist Convention is losing members — the formation of another denominational-like structure runs counter to all the congregational trends of the past 40 years. Study after study — the latest by Mark Chaves of Duke University — confirms that increasing numbers of churches choose not to affiliate with any denomination.

Further on this point, the article collected the responses of why congregations want to dis-affiliate from the denominations.  Let’s look at these from a HX.net perspective:

• Leaders of these churches don’t want to get caught up in politics. It tends to drive away newcomers.
• Translation:  Leaders of those churches have not succeeded in changing the denominational structures or policies in ways that are agreeable.  So they want to take their ball and go home where they can play in their own sandpit. Instead of continuing the conversation, they opt to leave for their own echo-chambers where their perspective is shared and reinforced, not challenged.
• They’ve dropped many of the trappings of the Anglican Communion, such as vestments and formal Anglican titles (rector, vestry, senior warden, etc.) 
• Translation:   They have moved away from a sense of unity and common purpose/history with their brethern and sought to remake their local congregation in their own image, not reflective of the denomination.  Impossible?  You’d be surprised how many anti-denominational sermons and actions I’ve witnessed in the denominational churches I’ve worked with.
• They’re used to giving away money for specific projects and are unlikely to welcome a superstructure that demands monetary commitments.
• Translation:   At least in the United Methodist Church, people want to stop paying mission shares (apportionments) because part of it pays for the General Board of Church and Society which is at the cutting edge of promoting social justice and thus has to take controversial stances in the name of promoting human rights.  They want their money to go to only like-minded projects…again, the echo-chamber.
• They’d rather avoid fresh battles over the role of women or the use of the Book of Common Prayer.
• Translation:  There’s a fresh wind of the spirit blowing through denominational structures, and they want to shut the door.

At Hacking Christianity, we are fascinated and disturbed by the ecclesial echo-chamber, or the ways in which we customize our lifestyle to avoid dissonant messages and reinforce our beliefs. It is my firm belief that this trend towards anti-connectionalism is another facet of the echo-chamber: entire churches becoming like-minded that they disaffiliate from the meta-church.

Hacking Christianity takes an anti-authoritarian viewpoint on most things.  That’s our own bias, admittedly so.  Connectionalism has its flaws and we expose them here.  But the structure and the spirit of connectional churches helps keep us talking to one another, keeps us appointing different pastors to churches to get them to grow, moving pastors when they become cults of personality, and, basically, keeping the conversation going.  Otherwise, connectional churches risk falling into echo-churches (ooo, that’s a nice new term).

Your turn:

• Thoughts on connectionalism?  Are you familiar with connectional or congregational churches?
• If you are congregational, in what ways do congregational churches keep from becoming cults of personality or a like-minded echo-chamber?
• Other thoughts?

Welcome to our visitors and comments are welcome!

Here’s a quote that I would like to be seen in a HackingChristianity view, not in the political view it represents.  This is a challenge, but the point being made is beyond partisanship, even though it is pointed at a particular party.

Ready?  This is Oliver Willis commenting on the lack of racial diversity at the Republican National Convention.

If your message is targeted to one monoculture, and your noise machine largely run by that monoculture, you have no way of knowing how out of touch you are. Most Republican pols and conservatives simply have no true gauge for when they’re speaking in an exclusionary manner…The Republicans, even more than in the past, have decided to get their monochromatic base motivated to the exclusion of everyone else.

This speaks directly of the echo-chamber that we talk about here.  When our news media is customized to reflect our monoculture, when our neighborhoods are chosen to reflect our monoculture, and when our gatherings speak only to those who share our culture, then how will we know that the world is changing?  And more dangerously, if by hearing the same culture reflected back at us, we may become more radical and thus more hostile to the world around us.

For us to be relevant in an ever-changing world, it’s time to move out of our comfort zones and into areas where we don’t agree with everyone.  Because if not, we may end up looking like a homogenous Christian society that has burned every bridge around us and just wants to be left alone.