Independent study has its ebbs and flows. Some days I feel like I’ve hit a great evolutionary step, like there’s been an “A ha!” moment and I’ve found some new direction. Other days the pile of books to read gets higher and higher, and every book, article, or piece of information just raises more questions and no answers. It seems like that day has lasted since the middle of July, and the sun won’t set on it for the rest of the year.
I’ve been entertaining this question quite a lot lately, and I wonder if there might be some of you out there to contribute:
What are the big issues for religion online?
That is, what are some of the big impacts that we foresee online communication is going to make on religion, and in particular, organised religion? I have a couple of suggestions:
Issue 1: Risk and trust
I heard a story about a youth leader who would offer a bible study every Sunday evening, and the following day would read a MySpace blog of a member of his youth group about what she thought of the bible study. MySpace offers this youth group member a trusted place to view the opinions she feels she can’t share in the youth group.
Similarly, “emerging church” bloggers are finding a trusted “centre” in cyberspace to air their views on contemporary Christianity where in the offline world they feel on the “margins”.
I see an issue here in the shifting of the “centre”, or creating a new “centre”. How powerful will the new discourses shared on the Internet affect the traditional centres of religious discourse?
Issue 2: Glocal religious community
CMC is offering a global network of people to interact and share a common religious identity. At the same time there is a trend to recognise the local, the “tribal” aspect of our personal religious identity and mission. To be at once global and local is to place less emphasis on the regional, denominational, and national. What impact will this have on traditional structures of religious institutions, where the emphasis is on the denominational, and power resides over the region, state, province and nation?
These are two issues that I can think of. If you can think of others, please comment or email me about them, or place them on your own blog and ping me. Please also tell me what you think of these issues I’ve put up here.
