fishers, surfers and casters

I presented at Monash University’s Religious Communication conference on Thursday. It was basically a mash-up of a few recent blog posts. It seemed to go down a treat. Raised some interesting questions and conversations around the study of religious web sites and their users and participants. Here is the set of slides that I used. If you want to know more, just ask.

Disclaimer: Okay, so I’m going to start talking a lot about a religion that isn’t mine. I hope that by reading you will see that I respect this faith, and consider its members kith and kin to Christians, cousins that have been distant too long. If there’s anything you read here that you disagree with, please comment and let me know where I may be mistaken.

Malcolm X was a separationist until he went to Mecca. Life had taught him that American blacks and whites could not live in harmony, and that freedom could only come from the usurping of power from one race to the other. Anything better would be a pipe dream, a fairy tale. Then he went to Mecca. On his return, he announced that living together as siblings rather than enemies is possible, because he had seen it. Anything better is not only possible; it is actual, it is living and it is present.

We who only ever get superficial glimpses of this holy city, in stories and pictures that flood Western media to either glamorise or demonise, but always make alien and unknowable, could describe Mecca as a virtual reality. Engaging all senses in ritual and spectacle, entrants lose themselves in the mass, immersed in a spirit of communion. Yet while many abide there, few reside there. It is an city out of time, both eternal and momentary, a cittá invisibile, a quantum place. Politics and commerce cram themselves into its doorways, and sometimes creep in, but are always thwarted. Even the temporal self is relinquished. Individuals shed themselves of the clothes and adornments of ordinary life, so that there are no wives or pop-stars, kings or doctors. They let the place write on them with white linen, rubbing out their everyday identity.

Recent conversations with some Muslim friends give me the impression that the converse is true. Mecca is not the virtual reality; Earth is. In Mosques as in homes and offices at designated prayer moments, Muslims turn their bodies in Mecca’s direction, and turn their bodies into nodes in the network of Islam. For Muslims, daily living is but an emanation, a projected image, of the true life that is found far away in space and time. The Hajj, a pillar of Islam and a directive for all in the faith, means pilgrimage. It is notable that Muslims are asked that, at least once in their lives, to not be in Mecca, but go there. While the experience of being in the holy city may transform the individual, what is important for the faith is the leaving their home and returning, so that the world may be transformed.

I will not be so arrogant and simple as to say that Cyberspace is to the spiritual Cyborg as Mecca is to the Muslim. I will say that both Cyborgs and Muslims have something to teach us about our virtual/actual dichotomy. Two bloggers in my study said to me:

[Blogging] provides new opportunities but at the end of the day it’s still not the same level of community. But it helps us keep in touch. For example, these guys are far more significant for me in my Christian life than people in my local church. [...] I wouldn’t survive in a local church without connections like this. Talking with these guys every other night sort of helps you survive [...] it’s one thing being marginalised, it’s another thing to be able to talk about it over the net.

I actually need one foot in both or else I don’t survive.

It seems the Cyborg identifies her/his situation as on the edge of both real world and online community life. Neither are complete. The spirituality of the Cyborg is not named by their residence in Cyberspace, but in the pilgrimage to and from it, in an endeavour to both be transformed and reform the communities and relationships in daily living.

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.

In my thesis I present a model of discursive analysis of identity, that is built on the sociocultural linguistic theory of identity and interaction developed by Bucholtz and Hall (2005). Their theory is based on the premise that identity is not static, and ill-defined by social categories, but is rather emergent, i.e. comes out of, and moves around, contexts of interaction. The formation of identity is the setting of oneself in relation to others. For Bucholtz and Hall, it is a discursive project, a system of naming connections to and disconnections from ourselves.

In this system of relationality three levels of naming are identified. The first is the level of text: naming beliefs and values that are in common with others, or are distinct from others. They may include shared stories and experiences. The second is the level of speaker, which is mainly identification of some common ground with other people. This may include the fact they are in similar spaces, or follow similar discursive practices. And the third is the level of structure: naming the sources of authority or institutions that create connections.

Applying this model to my survey of emerging church bloggers, I’ve identified three levels of tension in their quest to discern a common religious identity. I can only name them as tensions. Blogging interaction is not constrained by formalised membership process or adherence to any fixed set of principles or ethics. Bloggers bring diverse and unique experiences to the conversation, and listen to a variety of distinct and unequal voices from both within and without the study sample. What remain are assertions of comparisons and contrasts contained in reflections of religious experiences, conversations with readers and responses to other bloggers.

Orthodoxy-heresy tension

As I’m writing this post I find that Pete Rollins’ new book is called The orthodox heretic, showing this tension is well known in the emerging church conversation. In the face of Christian institutional practices and doctrines, bloggers express a sense of marginalisation. Popular movies illustrate religious life more than a Sunday sermon or contemporary worship music. Conversations with prisoners, atheists, and those rejected by their congregations offer more inspiration for theological reflection than local church programs. So bloggers welcome the term heretic, describing one who embraces doubt when religious truths clash with apparent facts, and reject doctrine and piety that debilitate themselves and others from living faithfully.

Yet, when meeting religious pluralism and secular humanism, bloggers hear the call to assert some Christian fundamental beliefs. These include the story of the resurrection and the image of the Triune God. It appears not an project of evangelism, or of reasserting a Christianity within the culture of bloggers’ experience, but more an endeavour to locate a common point of difference from other faiths, from which solidarity may be sought. For bloggers orthodoxy is based on an understanding of the Christian witness at the emergence of the apostolic writings, a period recalled (whether factually or mythically) as pluralistic in culture and religion, where Empire values clashed with Judaic nostalgia and bureaucracy, and where Christianity was subversive and counter-cultural. Parallels between this period and the entrance of postmodernism in contemporary culture are acknowledged.

Inclusion-exclusion tension

“If you come, you’re in” appears to be a popular emerging church axiom. There appears no condition of entry into the conversation, no ritual or marker by which one can claim membership in the group. A similar impression my be drawn from the sample of bloggers. In interaction with commenters, bloggers welcome responses from and conversations with non-Christians and anti-Christians, and are reluctant to filter comments from spammers and flamers. In cross-blog associations, bloggers are opposed to using symbolic objects that connect them with a definable group (e.g. “friend of emergent” logos), and are reluctant to adopt the term “emerging church” in self-description (though some like the term “missional”). The network of links made from one blogger to another shows the sample is more a collection of small groups, based on conversations about particular ideas, or offline connections, than a cohesive group. So while tags and searches may identify their sites as emerging church blogs, bloggers generally consider themselves on the edge, or outside, of any sense of emerging church community, or reject the notion that there is one.

It is easier for bloggers to set themselves against certain descriptions of religious identity than alongside them. They are not “churched”. They are not “mega-church”. Yet even these notions are up for debate. Some bloggers attend Hillsong events, and some talk favourably of traditional congregation-based ministry. Blogging allows members of the sample to present a identity that sits within a fluid and expanding network of connections, rather than a static group. Bloggers are able to “remain on the edge” of discursive endeavours to define and locate them.

The tension of words

Members of the sample have used the blogosphere as a space to reassess terms such as liberal, postmodern, Baptist, emerging, evangelical, traditional, Protestant and missional. In this space, bloggers endeavour to remove themselves from the institutional structures that define these terms and create borders and distinctions. Bloggers do share, however, a certain level of formal education, and have access to academic resources that allow them to engage in theological discourse. Writing is highly valued among the bloggers in the sample, and the opinions of many are drawn from the same range of published works. Bloggers point to a library of books from which an emerging church theology and missiology may be sourced.

Bloggers are keenly aware that academic discourse excludes voices from the emerging church conversation, and that those bloggers who can engage in it are given greater authority than others. They try to bring other forms of information to attention of readers, such as other websites, music and art, and the sites of less-know bloggers. Yet, since it’s easier to reproduce words than other media in a blog, the blogosphere tends to favour writing. Bloggers that are considered good writers are by-and-large given more attention, and those that can offer well-versed criticisms of other writings can attract comments and links.

For bloggers in the sample, religious identity is not fixed, but emerges out of tensions that are exposed and played out in interaction with commenters and through hyperlink-based networks with other bloggers. Bloggers find their place, not in the resolution of the tensions, but in the act of identifying and engaging them.