fishers, surfers and casters

Blogs are a vehicle for participants in the sample to reflect on the practices of Christians in relation to those outside the church. It is also a place to retell personal experiences of meeting others in ministry, ask questions and share knowledge.

Generally these bloggers are suspicious of programs and activities that attempt to convert people to Christianity, or attract them to come to church. For a start, having everyone come to church will not necessarily make the world a better place. Also, the motives by which the programs are implemented are under scrutiny. Bloggers question the packaging of spiritual goods for consumption and edification (and profit) of the supplier. The “God-shaped hole” rationale, which treats everybody as “needing the Gospel”, is viewed by bloggers as arrogant and judgmental. Bloggers believe there is not much good in Christianity that people haven’t found in other religions and spiritual practices. The converse is also true; history shows that Christianity has much to be held accountable for.

This is why a small number of bloggers have played with term “apologetics”. Bloggers accept that their faith is on trial by wider society, they seek to learn from others how to right previous wrongs, search for common objectives, and strive for reconciliation. In a few posts some bloggers have retold the experience of the Desert Fathers, recalling a historical period when, like this one, Christianity needed a defence. For these emerging church bloggers, the culture wars between Christendom and secularisation is over, and Christendom lost.

The primary task of Christian mission is service. This may involve offering resources to communities in need, caring for individuals who are marginalised in these communities. They wish to see themselves not as missionaries to the lost, but fellow travellers, who carry the same questions, and are willing to find answers in others. Christian mission is as much a quest for self-transformation, and renewal of the church, than it is a call to reform larger society.

These voices, then, do not use blogging to rally the troops, or convert people to their way of thinking, but as a confession that their experience of Christianity is not all they have wanted it to be, and that the world they know is not the same world their churches think it is. They call out for alternative methods of thinking and doing mission, and seek to engage non-Christians in the discussion. Perhaps there is another paradox to be noted, that in the use of new technologies these bloggers seek a return to older, even ancient, conversations.

Over the next few posts I would like to offer an overall understanding of the religious identity of the bloggers I’ve been examining, as presented not only in their posts but in their discussions with other bloggers in comment threads. These posts of mine will only be introductory; it would take too many words to include quotations from all the work in the sample, and probably make for a less interesting read. The themes I would like to introduce are: theology; mission and evangelism; church structure and authority; social commentary; and faith practices.

Bloggers in the sample seek a reconstruction of Christian theology, and this quest is ideologically driven. In considering theology, some call it “emerging”, “missional” or “postmodern”, but most refer simply to their personal beliefs, attitudes and questions. By-and-large, bloggers believe in the triune God composed of creator of the universe (though they are far from creationist), redeemer of humanity, and the Spirit who moves among us. They tend to shy away from the gender-specific terms of Father and Son, preferring simply God and Jesus or Christ. Central to their theology are the death and resurrection of Jesus, who is God incarnate.

Other doctrines are up for discussion. An all-loving God is seen as a more important concept than an all-powerful one. For this reason atonement theology is problematic; they question why God would require sacrifice. The cross makes more sense as an indication of the extreme love of God, to endure the worst of human experience, even if that takes the form of abandonment from God. Prosperity theology makes even less sense to them, and is highlighted in many posts and discussions, as it not only lacks sufficient biblical evidence, but appears in its application to serve the higher classes more than the poor. And they believe God has a preferential option for the poor.

Indeed, God has a politic. Doctrines of heaven and hell are at best unhelpful, at worst systems of control and oppression. The Kingdom is an earthly realm, breaking into this world. Jesus came not to make Christians, but to bring liberation and justice. The resurrection is symbolic testimony to the fact that God’s message is not welcome by the powerful, but will not be silenced.

While Christ is the head of the Kingdom, both here now and to come, this Kingdom is not the Christian church. The church is tasked with bringing the Gospel to the world, and ushering in the new realm, but being close to God, participating in the Kingdom, is not conditional on belonging to a church, or even being Christian. Emerging/missional theology accepts that much of God’s word and work can be found in secular culture, and some bloggers find that church culture is failing to speak the Gospel, and go so far to say it is an institution that needs to be overthrown for the Gospel’s sake. Even contemporary methods of academic theology are criticised as serving to alienate people rather than empower people to talk of God.

Bloggers do not claim that this theology is new. They draw on sources such as the Jesus movement, the works of GK Chesterton, NT Wright, CS Lewis. Their claim to being “postmodern” lies in their language of “doubt”. For postmodern theology, doubt is an essential component to faith. Blindly holding on to little truths, such as unhelpful doctrines, leads to a resistance to change and growth, and ultimately collapse. Realising that our worldviews will always and repeatedly be challenged and broken is the path of the spiritual traveller, who affirms that Jesus has been there before, and God is there now. When modern Christians appear like Roman soldiers casting dice at the crucifixion, postmodern Christians want to be like the disciples who run away, only to return to the resurrected Christ with both shame and delight.

God is a rebel. Jesus is a revolutionary. Revelation is rupture. Heaven and hell are not outside this world, but on this planet at this time. In bloggers’ theologies, dualisms are replaced with metaphors. It seems a paradox that the ethereal realm of cyberspace becomes the place to openly affirm this.

In my last post I described Scollon and Wong Scollon’s model of semiotic cycles. I think I can apply the model to create an analysis of the sample’s participation in the blogosphere. It comes from what I’ve read in bloggers’ posts and comments, and also in my interviews with some of the bloggers in the sample.

I start by outlining four phases in bloggers’ awareness of and engagement with audiences. We might add the Scollon term, interaction order, to these. Naming them as phases may be somewhat misleading, as it connotes that there is some sort of progression from phase one onward. I call them phases as there is fluidity between them. Not all bloggers have necessarily occupied all phases, though some occupy more than one, or all of them, at some point in time.

I call the first the autotelic stage, borrowing the term from Kris Cohen (2004). A number of participants interviewed mentioned how they were attracted to blogs as a way of developing or practising a writing style and regimen. In blogging they saw a tool for writing that was much like a personal diary, yet in an exposed environment the challenge of writing for the interests of others is noted. They may be aware of a number of people who read their site, yet the main motivation is for an imagined audience, publishing written work for its own sake. Articles are posted in order to get a thought, story or opinion “out there”. These articles are posted erratically if not seldom, and are self-contained (i.e. not serialised). Tags or categories may be used, if only for the use of the blogger him- or herself, to order entries as an archive. The discourses in place, such as blog titles and texts contained in side-bars, are personal, in that they are used to create a picture of the blogger.

The second is what I call the networking phase. Here the blogger is more aware of their site’s readership, and is motivated to post more regularly. The writer is likely to more explicitly encourage comments and discussion, post articles on particular issues and themes, and either alert readers to upcoming, or apologise for previous, hiatuses in blog postings. The blog’s design and its content would not only promote the blogger but his or her readership, including blog rolls, links to information about groups and organisations that he or she may be involved in. Both posts and surrounding text contains both personal and professional content, and there may be much “filter” information, i.e. lists of links to other places on the web of interest to the blogger and known readers. Bloggers are also likely to use devices to gain more information about their readership, such as the use of side-bar poll programs and comment-based voting activities.

Next is the community phase. Here blog posts illicit long strings of comments by regular known readers. The interaction order changes somewhat as commenters respond not just to blog posts, but to other comments. Bloggers are likely to compose moderation instructions, and enforce them in a variety of ways. User registration functions are likely to be in place. Posts are less likely to be personal in favour of discussion on public issues, and are more likely to be regular, and sometimes serial. Guest bloggers are a feature, for when the blogs’ owner (or owners) wants to take a break, or introduce a new discussion topic that’s best started by a known reader. The content of surrounding text and design feature less personal information in favour of creating a group identity.

This last phase is hardly discrete, as I believe all bloggers would occupy this phase at the same time as any other. Yet there is a level of interaction other than that between blogger and their known or imagined audience. The range of blogs read by those interviewed in the sample is assumed to be more expansive than the reach of the bloggers’ own work. Bloggers bring an understanding of the global emerging church network home to their readers. Yet, rather than being at its centre, bloggers are motivated to remain “at the edge” of the conversation, focussing on issues important to them: theology of mission, faith in popular culture, alternative worship practices, technology in faith practices, etc. Bloggers see their relationship with readers as a niche in the wider emerging church blogosphere, and aim more to cement it rather than expand it.

A couple of posts back I talked about Bucholtz and Hall’s model of identity in discourse. I think that, while Bucholtz and Hall offer a framework for considering how identity is asserted in the language of its user, their principles do not take into account the underlying principle of reflexivity in identity construction. Indeed, in the material to be analysed in this research project, there is a network of relationships, that constitute a site of interaction.

Scollon and Wong Scollon (2004) note that social action occurs at the intersection of three factors: the interaction order, the discourses in place, and the historical bodies of the participants involved. The authors give the name “nexus analysis” to the study of discourses at this intersection.

The interaction order describes the structure of relationships between participants in the environment in which the interaction takes place. In a classroom setting, for example, interaction is structured according to the relationship between a teacher and the students in the class. Communication in a classroom is centred around the teacher, who presents teaching material to the body of students and receives questions and comments from individual students. While there is communication between students in a classroom, through conversations in whispers and notes passed between desks, these conversations are deprivileged in contrast to the "official" communication of the teacher.

The discourses in place include not just communications between people in the interaction order, but other forms of text that exist in the environment. Continuing the example of the classroom setting, these texts may range from posters in walls through the clothing of students to the arrangement of furniture and the use of communication technologies. These discourses inform the physical shape of the interaction order, and which communications are privileged over others. For example, in a classroom where all students are facing the same direction (toward the teacher), communications between students are deprivileged below communications between teacher and student. Likewise, text written behind the teacher (on a chalkboard or projected on a screen, is considered more "official" than text on posters on other walls or written on student desks.

The historical body describes the set of assumptions, skills, values, beliefs and motivations that each participant brings to the setting of the social interaction. An example of this would be the desire for retention or promotion within the institution that drives the teacher to deliver a quality performance in the lecture theatre, while some students’ attention is dependent on their as yet unfulfilled desire to choose an appropriate major in the degree course. The term “body” as used here may be problematic, as it connotes something physical, and in the physical world we bring our physical bodies into all our interactions. It may be helpful to consider the “historical body” as something like “the body of experience” that comprise part of the context in which interactions occur.

Scollon and Wong Scollon argue that just as each of these factors impinge of the nature and design of the discourses at their intersection, they are likewise not constant. Thus there is a cycle of change as each factor interacts, which the writers name semiotic cycles. Nexus analysis, then, is the study of how each of these cycles inform and change other cycles to aggregate change in the relationships of people in a setting of interaction, and nature of communication therein.