fishers, surfers and casters

Heidi has tagged me and seven others to share eight things about me. Officially my most boring post to date.

1. My earliest memory is by sitting on the front lawn of my house in Canberra at the age of four and being approached by an older kid who I think was a neighbour. He asked me to close my eyes and open my mouth, and, being four, had no idea that this was a really stupid thing to do. It took a few days to get the taste of worm out of my mouth.

2. My first celebrity sighting was at the age of seven in a children’s bookstore. Patsy Biscoe at the time presented a kids’ show with Humphrey B Bear. Mum recalls that I was completely transfixed, with a petrified smile of awe on my face.

3. I have a big man-crush on Rhys Muldoon. I think he’s a bloody funny guy. I got quite upset when I found out he came to Shepparton to open the Play School exhibition at the art gallery and I missed it.

4. I still have all my fingers and toes. Mum and Dad are quite surprised by this given the number of times they had to rush me to the hosptial when I was a kid due to the stupid accidents I got into.

5. Last night I taught my two-year old son how to wink. I firmly believe it’s the most useful thing I’ll ever be able to teach him – one wink from those eyes and he will be able to achieve anything. Which now kinda makes me quite redundant now. Though I still have to teach him how to urinate whilst standing.

6. I have a sister who is younger than me, smarter than me, funnier than me, stronger than me, fitter than me, more sociable than me, and more in control of her own life and destiny than I’ll ever aspire to be. And she says exactly the same things about me (except about who’s younger of course).

7. I wear underwear every day.

8. I live in constant amazement at the love I receive from my daughter. I pray every day that I will become the man she believes me to be.

Okay guys, your turn now. I tag Budge, Matt, Dave, Cam, Callie, Darren, Jen and John.

This movie looks interesting. I have an annoying knack of missing movies and TV documentaries when they come out; I hope I find out when this one hits Victorian cinemas.

Sorry I had to take out the embedded film clip. It was annoying me too much.

At the GRC a couple fo weeks ago one member of the panel was interested in my defining the emerging church movement more than I could, wanted to know if there were any set of beliefs that would define the emerging church as opposed to other forms of church. I told her that any definition would seem to be the eventual end of the movement as “emerging” and its start as “emerged”.

Later I was forwarded an email by this panel member, sent to my supervisor, regarding her questions about my research, and a similar comment appeared: “Boundary issues: I think how these are negotiated is probably important to the identity of the EC participants and EC as a whole. What defines where this community ends. How do you become part of it. Are boundaries established via networked communication, or are they established offline then merely maintained on the network. etc. An example is how they treat newbies–it may reveal the groups agendas and politics.”

I’m thinking a lot about it today, and coming to the same conclusion. When it comes to the emerging church, if you come along, then you’re part of it. There aren’t many propositions or issues that people who identify with the movement are afraid of exploring, even if they’re seen as criticisms or attacks against it.

But I’m putting the question out there: what are the deal-breakers for the emerging church? Are there particular styles of worship, prayers or liturgies, Christian theological or christological propositions, ways of interpreting scripture, model or style of ministry, way of viewing the world (political or moral position), that would make the emerging church shake its head and say, “Sorry dude, but that aint us”?

Maybe I can think of some specific things:

1. Can there be a bishop in an emerging church?

2. Can a community have a problem with a woman leader or minister and still be emerging?

3. Can an emerging community have more than a thousand members?

4. Can an emerging church have investments in a for-profit business or corporation?

5. Can an emerging church have an opposition to postmodern thoughts or theories?

6. Can a fundamentalist also be emerging?

Waddayareckon?

So I put a call out to a couple of email lists I’m on to see if anyone knows of any reading about women’s presence/absence in the blogosphere, and got a generous number of responses with a load of articles, web pages, blog articles, etc on why we don’t see many women online. It was great – and made me realise just how much there is to read and how much I don’t know I need to know.

One article referred to me is what some consider a seminal piece of research into men, women and blogging, Women and Children Last, by Herring, Kouper, Scheidt and Wright. (Kouper and Scheidt organised a panel for AoIR 8 on researching blogs that I’ve been invited to join). In their 2004 study of web logs they found that the difference in number between blogs authored by males and by females was relatively small. But when they divided the study between types of blogs, the results were quite different. The types they identified were filter blogs (blogs that locate and review other web sites), knowledge blogs, or k-logs (blogs focussing on alerting audiences to new information in a variety of topics and fields, mainly technology), online journals (where authors reflect on daily life) and blogs that fit in more than one of the previous categories. Their study showed that the first two types of blogs were significantly more likely to be authored by men than women, and that the opposite is true for the third type.

Thus, given k-logs and filter blogs are more likely to be talked about in media reports (partcularly newspaper and magazine articles about “crazy new things people get up to on the Internet and with what new-fangled programs), in scholarly research articles about blogging, and by bloggers themselves, than online diaries, the blogs that get referenced, and the ones that become “A-list”, are the ones written primarily by men.

(NB: The article also talks about age as a discriminating factor, showing that filter blogs and k-logs are written not just by men but by adult men, and so the vast number of online diaries written by adolescent women are overlooked).

So the authors believe that while women participate in the blogosphere, the “discursive construction” of the blogosphere by mainstream media, academia and bloggers themselves exclude women.

I wonder if this exclusion is due in part to the presumption, or perhaps intention, of the actors in the discursive construction of the blogosphere, i.e. the journalists and academics, that their audience is male. I wonder if this statement just produced makes sense.

Moreover, I wonder if I have thrown my hat into the same ring. I am starting to believe that the reason my research sample has so few female bloggers in it is not because fewer women are blogging about emerging church stuff, but are doing it in the wrong genre. That is, while I have come aross many religious blogs written by women, their focus has been on discussion about daily religious life, rather than explicit discussions about emerging church issues. Thus they don’t present themselves in the same way as other types of emerging church blogs, as ones written by men, whose intentions to engage people in all things EC are done explicitly in their style of blogging, be it filter-type or k-log-type. I must confess I have considered including some blogs in my sample but late changed my mind for their lack of discussion about events, theories, opinions about others’ opinions etc., in favour of talking about personal experiences, emotional respones, private reflections on general theological suppositions.

So I must concede that I have unwittingly excluded women from my sample in exactly the same way as Herring, Kouper, et al predicted I would do. Not sure what I should do about this.

Any remedies come to your mind?