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.
Technorati tags: online religion, religious blogging, emerging church
It is believed that when cyberculture studies migrated from popular magazines into more formal academic pursuits, heralded by Rheingold’s Virtual Community in 1993 and Turkle’s Life on the Screen in 1996, a celebration of online identity as decentred, multiple and fragmented was the focus. Cyberspace allows for identity play, providing “a moratorium” for people to explore online how they’d like the offline selves to become, finding intimacy without responsibility in online relationships with others, letting imagination dictate how users create online worlds, rather than rules and restrictions (see Silver, 2000 and Lövheim, 2005).
A decade or so later, as researchers move away from email groups and MUDs towards social networking sites and blogs, writers such as Kennedy argue that questions about online identity should be explored in the context of the offline lives of Internet users.
I argue that online identities are often continuous with offline selves, not reconfigured versions of subjectivities in real life; for this reason it is necessary to go beyond internet identities, to look at offline contexts of online selves, in order to comprehend virtual life fully. […] If internet identity research is to reposition itself conceptually […] then it needs to engage with and learn from ongoing debates within cultural studies which call into questions the usefulness of the context of identity. (Kennedy, 2006: 860-861)
Hine (2000) believes the question of identity must be considered within the context of meaning. Internet users create an online presence as it fulfils a need or a desire, prepares the user for the ongoing search for, or construction of, something of significance for the user, such as a meaningful connection to others, or a satisfying contribution to an online discussion or project. The fruits of these pursuits are not only for life online, but are seen to have benefits for the whole of the user’s life, both on screen and on the street.
I see in the blogs I study, despite a freedom to create any impression of themselves their imagination allows, bloggers seek to offer an authentic identity to the blogosphere. While I haven’t fully worked out what I mean by “authentic”, I will start by saying bloggers would like viewers of their sites to see them as they would see them in the “real” world, and portray an image of themselves that coheres with their understanding of themselves as religious people.
Bloggers differ in the amount and type of information about themselves they offer. Some post photographs of themselves and family members online, some list the books they’re currently reading or CDs they’re listening to, some offer email addresses and office phone numbers for contact outside the blog. Most endeavour to portray interests beyond emerging church, such as music, cooking, film, and comic books. Few shy away from telling stories about their personal lives, relationships, work and study. The online identity of any blogger is known not just in the text that appears in each post, but in the whole site’s design, including colour schemes, graphics used in the header, footer and sidebars. Hyperlinks, often ordered as lists in sidebars, also offer information about the blogger, by displaying the online world in which the blogger lives.
Some emerging church bloggers are church workers, and their sites are sponsored and supported by their churches. Yet interviews with these bloggers have revealed that the creation and maintenance of a professional identity online, while an important aspect, is not an issue of concern for them. They are willing to portray a personal side that would conflict with audience’s expectations of their role, even risk retribution, if it fosters greater personal connection with their audience.
How bloggers conduct themselves online, how they construct their online religious identities, is significantly informed by the language they use to describe cyberspace. The Internet is not a mission field to them. These bloggers are not out to save souls, or persuade Christians to join the emerging church movement. As self-professed outsiders in the traditional churches they have lived and worked in, they are looking for like-minded people who will help them grow in faith. Rather than looking for the lost, cyberspace is a place where they themselves can be saved, or at least find something meaningful on the margins of traditional church culture.
Roger Silverstone, as cited by Orgad, argues that identity play is facilitated by online communication where, though apparent distance is dissolved in cyberspace, “proper distance” is vast and insuperable.
Proper distance refers to the importance of understanding the more or less precise degree of proximity required in our mediated interrelationships if we are to create and sustain a sense of the other sufficient not just for reciprocity but for a duty of care, obligation and responsibility, as well as understanding. Proper distance preserves the other through difference as well through shared identity. (Silverstone, 2006: 47, cited in Orgad, 2007: 36)
Participants in online communities are safe to play with their own identity, act out of character, misbehave, take on completely new characters, by the fact that no one can see them. For Silverstone, members of offline communities feel safe to share authentic or fake identities based on the knowledge that the repercussions on other facets of their lives, both online and offline, will be minimal.
A community of people to connect with online is important to emerging church bloggers, yet for most bloggers virtual community is less valued than offline community. Bloggers most often seek connections with others online in order to prepare for or strengthen connections in other ways, especially face-to-face interaction. The community made through their blogs is considered significant not just for life online, but for present and future connections in other aspects of life. Thus emerging church bloggers actively endeavour to reduce “proper distance” in a variety of ways, including establishing and maintaining rules of conduct (and discouraging anonymity) in comments and discussion threads, and maintaining a regularity in blog posts.
Silverstone laments that despite the language of hospitality attributed to the Internet (such as homepage, address, visitor), sites ironically lack “a meaningful host, one who takes responsibility for the welcome” (Silverstone, 2006: 142, cited in Orgad, 2007: 38). Clearly this is not the case for participants in my survey. Emerging church bloggers create homes online where viewers are encouraged to engage meaningfully in their quest for spiritual growth. Emerging church bloggers seek connections online that will support and nurture their, often infant, communities offline, and so the identities they construct online will also be congruent with their offline lives, in the search for a way of living authentically in between the screen and the street.
Technorati tags: online religion, religious blogging, emerging church
Most offensive/clever joke ever.
I don’t know what you think, but this article almost made me puke… What’s the best way to take the depth out of the emerging church? Place it on TV.
Apparently BBC in the UK and ABC in Australia will replace Songs of Praise with this.
