Sherry Turkle, in what has become the standard text book for students of online identity, Life on the Screen, says that postmodernism is

characterized by such terms as “decentered,” “fluid,” “nonlinear,” and “opaque.” They contrast with modernism, the classical world-view that has dominated Western thinking since the Enlightenment. The modernist view of reality is characterized by such terms as “linear,” “logical,” “hierarchical,” and by having “depths” that can be plumbed and understood. [...] In a surprising and counter-intuitive twist, in the past decade, the mechanical engines of computers have been grounding the radically nonmechanical philosophy of postmodernism. (Turkle, 1996: 17)

The world is at the disposal of the Internet user on one flat screen. In the one instant there is never just one place where a particular idea, event or action can take place, and there is only one place. At the same moment all things are accessible and only an image of those things are accessible. Space is flattened into two dimensions, yet the user can start, end and maintain a variety of connections with others in a multitude of spaces. Users bask in the flow of information, and with the tools of blogging and folksonomies can create their own reservoirs of data for their own purposes, and redirect it to other users.

Bloggers enter cyberspace with both a sense of awe and a sense of purpose. With reverence to the majesty that is the world they have yet to discover and thanks for every new encounter with it, emerging church bloggers accept that what they know about God, the world and their place in it is byte-sized compared to the terabytes of knowledge awaiting their discovery. They embrace that their grasp of the world is only a small construction, fragile to erosion and transformation by the flow of information. In cyberspace, truth is a concept that is still seeking grounding, but cannot be pinned down by logic or explained by theory. If truth is a mountain, then the Internet will show you an infinite number of paths to its peak, and will present them all as equally valid, depending on where you’re coming from. Even belief itself interacts with experiences of unbelief. Religious identity cannot be labelled by denomination, but is always seen as “only a part of the way there”.

Emerging church bloggers, with enthusiasm and with trepidation, enter cyberspace with a view to meet the “other” with a willingness to let that encounter change their worldview, even if only a little. Denominational ties only highlight how “static” modern religious identity is. Emerging church bloggers choose fluidity over stasis, and being on the margins of religion rather than building a new centre for it.

This even makes the term “emerging church blogger” a problem they must negotiate in forming their online presence. Emerging church bloggers refuse any definition of what the emerging church is. It is at once a movement and a reaction to the movement, a conversation and a practice, a community and a collection of unconnected global diasporas, a new form of organised religion, a rejection thereof, a reclamation of ancient religion, and a redefinition of the word “religion”. But one message comes through clearly: as the emerging church seeks to define itself it ceases to be emerging; it joins the fray of traditions vying for relevance in a world where Christianity is regarded as generally irrelevant. So bloggers maintain a marginal identity, open to challenge and doubt, and actively valuing the beauty of being fledgling and uncertain.

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