theo|digital

It’s confirmed, I’ve definitely got some beefs with Dr. Schuchardt. But his scriptural redux here is even more clever than the first. Laughed out loud.

If you like, go back and watch the entire video, and you’ll notice he quotes the very mentor I thought he was likely to be following—Neil Postman—who is the father of the school of media ecology that tends to focus on the negative effects of media.

His negativity I think colors the quality of his analysis. For instance, trying to speak against mediated communication, he draws three rules for ministry from Jesus:
1. You have to be there
2. You have to speak in as un-mediated a manner as possible
3. You have to do the work of the gospel

Regarding the New Testament: for starters, what of the centurion’s daughter—healed in the absence of presence being a model of faith! Or Paul’s epistles to the churches? Are we to think that his ministry impact was diluted by the scribes, scrolls, and messangers? Hopefully not—Christianity is actually based on a doctrine of mediation: revelation in Scripture.

Further, are we intended to look at the examples of mediation in a pre-modern, craft literate society and these are normative for today? In this case, cars are no longer appropriate for ministry, I’d think.

I suggest that it is rhetoric without substance to say that God has not spoken to someone via e-mail or a TV screen, therefore God does prefer digital media. With things like Facebook only about 4 years old, aren’t we jumping the gun a little (the printed book has had 500 years, the manuscript about 3,000). But this wouldn’t be my biggest concern. It would be that Dr. Schuchardt might consider an audible voice of God would be considered unmediated (God doesn’t have vocal chords: sound waves and air are most certainly God communicating through something else), but further that “direct” communication from God is privileged over mediated communication. This is true of some more extreme versions of Pentecostalism, but I don’t think fits standard, for instance, Protestant language which would see the Word and Sacraments as the primary realities of God’s communication and action. Both real, but both mediated by the stuff of humanity and creation.

In yet another instance towards Facebook being the new Google, they held a VOTE this week to determine their terms of service. This makes perfect sense in the participatory media landscape, though traditional lawyers have thus far kept it from happening on other sites, where the terms are dictated. Interactive contracts (written by Wiki?) have to be a thing in the future…

Today, the Facebook site governance vote ended after a week in which you were able to voice your opinions as to which documents should serve as the foundation for governing the site. On behalf of everyone at Facebook, I’d like to thank all of you who participated by voting and the users and experts who earlier commented on the proposed documents.

The final results are now being reviewed by an outside auditor, but the preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of users who voted chose the proposed documents – the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities – over the existing Terms of Use. More than 600,000 users participated in the vote.  More

The 600,000 participants is a small percentage of the 200 million registered Facebookers, but they (and I) would be optimistic that this number would change once people got familiar with the idea.

Sorta funny redux of the verse. I just discovered Read Schuchardt today, who turns out to be a Media Ecology prof (phd NYU) here in Chicagoland at Wheaton. This a few of his other comments on this lecture weren’t bad, but I have a feeling that Schuchardt is a bit of a Christian kermudgen on media experience more a la Neil Postman than Marshall McLuhan, so I’m not sure we’d be best buddies. I’m a little more of an optimist.

This is funny to me at this point, and definitely almost counts a nerd joke in the stuff I’m studying.  Two things that might help it be better  1)  Marshall McLuhan, one of the founders of media ecology, died in 1980, and 2)  He released a book in 1967 The Medium is the Massage which was a play on his quote, “the medium is the message” that was laid out in a print photo collage that foreshadowed internet media…

The remix is by Jamie O’Neil, who seems to have some great forthcoming work on the remix as epistemology, which I think I’ll want to read for my thesis. This is one of the categories I haven’t thought as much on… trying to stay closer to “information” than “media” – though after convergence, I don’t know who I’m kidding, but I gotta stay sane somehow.

“Printed books are slow. It takes a lot of time to read a book or to find information in libraries of books. Printed books are narrow. The “bandwidth” of the printed page contains no sound, no motion, and no easy way to connect to other books. Printed books are solo performances. They project the statements of an individual or small collaborative group and create a mental feedback loop confined in most cases to the reader’s mind alone.

Our traditional schools, built for the industrial age, are bound to printed books. They reward most those who can decode and learn in this confinement. Schools will change only when the curriculum no longer shows up on the loading dock but shows up over wired and through the air, when it can be updated every day and can be customized by the user.”

Gary Rowe, creator of CNN Newsroom, in an essay entitled “Publishing Words and Images:  Schools and Learning in the Millennial Shift,” From One Medium to Another: Basic Issues for Communicating the Scriptures in New Media.

If you know me, you know Over the Rhine is one of my favorite bands.  Not the least because they write like being human depends on rich description and late night adjectives (maybe it does).   Checking e-mail here in the early afternoon felt a little bit less to-do list ish because Linford sent an e-mail that warmed up gmail enough to make me want to share parts of what he wrote:
(the photo of Linford is when they played here in Chicago on 5 Nov 08)

His PS was great:

I haven’t yet been able to look at the study by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang due to be published by the National Academy of Sciences, but CNN is reporting that a new cognitive study shows that streams of rapid fire information decrease the ability for humans to form morally appropriate emotional responses.

“For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and refection,” said Immordio-Yang.
She said the study raises questions about the emotional cost, particularly for young people, of heavy reliance on a torrent of news snippets delivered via TV and online feeds such as Twitter.

The study apparantly used volunteers responding to real-life situations that were designed to evoke compassion, admiration, etc.  Apparantly some emotions are slower-forming than others, psychologically speaking.

I’m curious how the situations were constructed, and I’ll look forward to being able to read the actual study (I had trouble locating it online, so I’m assuming it’s not out yet?).  For instance, it seems as if 140 character bursts could be discontiguous (and therefore not allowing for emotions) such as:

or could construct a single narrative (which reminds me of the way you Tweet an event), like

With rising action, it seems like there’s a lot more potential for emotional formation.

Further questions:  what is the burst rate?  I only tweet about once a day…  maybe less.  And if tweet streams are received with multiple people, isn’t the discontinutiy more due to the number of people talking rather than the rapid fire rate?

I’ve heard about this from several places already: twspassionplay is the Twitter feed for Trinity Wall Street, an Episcopal church in New York who added twitter updates to their three hour passion play on Good Friday.  About 2,000 people followed online.

via @Mary_Mother_Of: They sealed his tomb at dusk. The stone stands between us, and I can’t leave. I am an old woman now, lost in the dark.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @romanguard1: I’ve got dibs on his robe, but if you guys want to cast lots for the rest of his clothes I’m cool with that.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @Mary_Mother_Of: I saw the water and the blood. I want to scream with him: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @JosephArimathea: is sleepwalking through this. I cut the tomb, bought the linen, hold his body—and he’s gone.about 22 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @Pontius_Pilate: They want this done by nightfall. I sent my soldiers to break the dead men’s legs. Are my hands clean of this?about 23 hours ago from GroupTweet

    

via @ServingGirl: Darkness and earthquake. I heard the curtain in the temple was torn in two. I wonder…about 23 hours ago from GroupTweet

Some not-to-in-depth observations:

• Narrative:  maintained characters, plot.  A level removed from setting, but no more than a reader’s theater that places parts as read on a black stage with isolated stools.  In true postmodern form, it picks up and depends on knowledge of the narrative, using only isolated memes.
• Global:  nicely makes real the idea that the worldwide Church is all celebrating Good Friday at the same time.  Live comments from California to Murcia, Spain.
• Human:  sometimes the form underscores the extended human emotion.  The terse, 140 character phrase I think makes Mary’s “I am an old woman now, lost in the dark” statement even more powerful.

To speak of “contextual theology” today typically calls to mind one of two possible approaches to theology and culture, distinguishable by both their roots and their intention. In fact, though they share the same label, they’re not often found in the same seminary walls.

Evangelical seminaries are likely to locate the discussion in the missiology department, where examination of culture has an evangelical impetus. With roots in the successes and failures in the nineteenth century Western missionary societies, these approaches are primarily praxilogical, discussing custom and ritual and global cultures. Anthropology and sociology are engaged for their descriptive powers, and synthesizing theologians like Paul Hiebert and Steven Bevans are referenced, in an effort to understand the incarnation and communication of the gospel especially in non-western environment.

Mainline seminaries, on the other hand, are likely visit contextual theologies as an invited critique on the Western hegemony of the academy. The approach is postmodern and plural, and builds on the foundational stones of liberation, feminist, and black theologies, citing Gustavo Gutierrez, Mary Daly, and James Cone. In intention, these voices are studied to rectify a missing voice to marginalized people groups, a segment that is destined to continue its expansion even beyond Womanist theology, minjung theology, Queer theology, Carribean theology, etc.

Each approach maintains some suspicion of the other, not least because of their perceived (and not without cause) position as liberal or evangelical approaches. But both share in common a marginalization in the standard theology classroom. The implicit assumption? The accepted stream of Western theology is neutral, generic, and context free. Of course, nobody wants to say this explicitly, but that course titles allow “Feminist theologies” or “African Christologies” but not “European Reformed Theologies” or “Germanic Pre-Modern Doctrine” underscores the point. The Frankfort school’s Herbert Marcuse helpfully speaks of “repressive tolerance” to describe a hegemonic system that allows minority views with open arms, but in treating them as such uses them as evidence to reinforce the dominant view. And Dutch Catholic Frans Wijsen reinforces that even today contextual theologies are treated like “exotic fruits to supplement their traditional Western theological dishes.”

If these two approaches were to have more than just casual interaction, one might imagine they’d band together on a protest march with slogan posters held high: “All theologies are contextual theologies!”