fishers, surfers and casters

Okay, I’m not sure if it can actually be called a rule of etiquette for emerging church bloggers, but it’s something I’ve noticed (with some delight) is a practice among bloggers. The use of some profanity, images of “the buddy Christ”, jokes such as “What Would Jesus Brew?” all show a slight irreverence in their talk about religion. I think this practice represents a few principles for emerging church bloggers:

• A desire to include in the conversation those who don’t go to church, and are even anti-church
• A belief that pious behaviour and Christian behaviour are not the same
• A belief that secular culture has much to say about Christian belief and practice

A couple of posts back I talked about the quest for authenticity in religious identity for emerging church bloggers, in an online environment where old etiquette rules have been removed, yet where new ones are surfacing. One of the most obvious communicative practices I have come across in my study of emerging church bloggers is what I call “the downplay”.

In line with stereotypes of the larger emerging church movement, bloggers I’ve studies are nearly all professional/student and have some degree of university education. Most have a theological qualification and some formal ministry training. Yet bloggers devalue their own training and education in conversations (though not those of others) to the point of self-deprecation. They do it a variety of ways:

1. Labelling their own opinions and propositions in posts and comments as “rants”, “random thoughts” or “musings”. These labels also appear as the titles of categories and tags, and titles or in subtitles of blogs themselves.

2. Using words and expressions such as “IMHO” (in my honest/humble opinion), “Not that I’m an expert but”, “I reckon” and “Just what I’m thinking about at the moment”.

3. If they do make a claim to some knowledge or expertise about a subject, it is based on claims of experience in church life or ministry, rather than education.

I think this etiquette practice represents two ideological stances. It firstly stands for the emerging church’s distaste for hierarchy. Though emerging church bloggers do not deny the benefits of good theological training, or are less than grateful for the opportunity to enter higher study, they do not want to set themselves apart from those without it. Secondly, it shows an interest in the private over the public. While posts and conversations may be centred around public issues, and bloggers recognise a public audience, they prefer a personal perspective. For them, any reference to qualifications represents a formal and public image, that masks a more private or inner perspective.

Update: As Rob mentioned in his comment below, emerging church bloggers are not the only bloggers who recognise this etiquette. Before Facebook and Myspace, blogs were a popular social networking tool for teenagers, and Bortree (2005) has noted in her study of such bloggers that ingratiation to others in teenagers’ network involved some suppplication, including downplaying their “coolness” in comparison to other people. Among these bloggers it was cool to think you weren’t cool.

I’m not sure if the same is true today, but in the early nineties when I was studying in Italy, I could walk into most restaurants and find next to some menu items (pizza in particular) an emblem containing the letters DOC. Standing for d’origine controllata (of authorised origin), the emblem is a certificate that the method used in preparing, say, a margherita pizza, is the same as was used to make the dish that Queen Margaret ordered. DOC indicates that the recipe, or wine, or other produce, is authentic. The customer is called to trust that the item to be consumed is authentic, as DOC certification is only given after inspection by a government official. The item is authentic in that it is true to its claims to history and to authority.

According to Marshall (2007), authenticity is a value of modernity that is tied to others such as individualism and personal freedom (p. 105). In late modernity, authenticity is also valued against perceptions of public life as a performance, of fractured and fragmented identities, and of weakening and corruptible power structures in social institutions.

The emerging church movement holds authenticity as a prime value. The whole notion of being “missional” is wrapped in ideals of “being true” to both faith foundations, and to the cultural environment. Emerging churches strip away symbolic practices that are seen to have lost their authenticity – robes, processions, lengthy prayers and litanies – and experiment with new practices that are more true to everyday living and thinking.

Symbolic practices are often the focus of discussion in the emerging church blogosphere: what stays in, what is taken out, by what are they replaced. Bloggers find online a forum to express their concern that modern religious life does not reflect what is “inside them” and a place to explore and evaluate what authentic religious life looks like. For them, the blogosphere is a parliament on the DOC of Christian churches. This parliament is founded on the values associated with the Internet: a place where the etiquettes and rules of proper religious communication are lifted in favour of “getting real”.

Yet – and another hat tip to Marshall – etiquette is found in all sites of human communication, a necessity that functions to “establish the nature of a situation, it’s predictability and whether the people involved can be trusted” (p. 106). Just like the DOC emblem on a restaurant menu, we look to cues to show us that, in a social environment, we can truthfully express what is “inside us”, what is true, and that others are in fact doing the same. So while the blogosphere is perceived as a place where the old rules of etiquette are evicted, other symbolic practices have taken their place. Over the next few posts I’d like to list some, in the hopes some readers could help me think about this topic more by adding their own thoughts and criticisms:

• The downplay
• Irreverence
• The hat tip
• Thanks
• Apologies