theo|digital

Shane Hipps is a Mennonite pastor who I noticed wrote a book a couple years ago entitled The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. I borrowed it and skimmed but never really read it, and now I’m realizing I’m gonna have to catch up, since Shane is starting to get some voice on these issues in the evangelical Christian leadership world.  I’d love to meet him and chat it up some time, since this is one my primary areas of interest.

Because so much of media ecology is simply unawareness, I had hoped another a fellow watcher of communications as culture would cultivate an imaginative view on ideas like “virtual community.” But here Shane makes it clear that he views online interaction as entertainment (“enjoy it, but don’t call it community, because it isn’t”).  This was somewhat disappointing to me (and not unusual, see my first post on this )

Scot McKnight posted a response at both Our of Ur and at Jesus Creed that asked Shane to consider the Jesus Creed community, a blog that does have a remarkable level a participation (both in volume and quality) compared to (most?) other blogs that often function as more soapbox than dialogue.

Over 40 commentors have contributed some amazing thoughts to this thread: Dan (4) points out that he doesn’t know Scot McKnight, and comes because the community is useful.  Makes sense to me.  I think utility is clearly a reason we both approach and stay in offline communities as well.  Eric (9) calls Jesus Creed a better community than any church he’s been part of in 20 years.  He cites questions and disagreement as key draws.  And these are clearly crucial in offline community as well!  Show me a community without conflict and I’ll show you “shallow.”  Chris E. notes that Scot’s experience is remarkably different than others because of his central role.  As a campus pastor at the center of a vibrant church for a number of years, I eventually realized myself that my experience was also remarkably different to those who knew only a few people in our church, or hung “near the edges.”  There really are positions and vantage points in communities that vary the experience.  Matt S. (14) sets up a thought experiment that makes me hopeful for deeper thinking on this, and Pat B (38) is wise to the net when (s?)he notes that blogs don’t have a natural format for extended conversation.

All this to say:  with not too much thought, we find a great deal of similarity between “virtual” community and “physical” community.

Next post (hopefully coming soon):  more on why I think Marshall McLuhan would argue with Shane Hipps four point analysis on virtual community.

The other day, two of my seminary buddies were talking about Facebook. We all check it regularly, me especially as a brain-break between droning academic essays.

And a the tone of the conversation turned a way that I’ve heard often from Christians as they talk about Facebook. In it’s mild form, it’s expressed an embarrassment to admit that we spend a lot of time online. “I should totally spend more time with real people, huh?” In it’s strong, dogmatic form, it emerges as a theological diatribe against “fake community” and it’s distinct threat to the real community of the Church.

I’ve heard this over and over.

While I believe this is common wisdom, especially among pastors I’ve spoken with, I think it misses the mark. There’s much more here. So I’d like to start reflecting on Facebook, using both communication media and theology as conversation partners.

The Boston Globe produced a quick series of interviews called “the end of alone.” By buddy Ty sent it to me to open the discussion.

You”ll prolly have a better view from here than I will, standing in front of the capital steps with 200,000 others (and 4 million others on the Mall). Thought they’ve warned that cell coverage could be spotty, I’ll be trying to live Tweet there on the right –>

So if you Google for reviews on The Submarine’s second album, you don’t even get the one I wrote (maybe if you kept up, but I only looked for five pages). And it’s all because of this Apple ad:
So this is my post where I strut and say that I was way ahead of everyone being all cool—I wrote my review this past summer, giving these super-poppy kids the thumbs up. Hardly shook up the world.  But hey it’s my blog, so I gotta work the cred any chance I get. 

Anyway, here’s what I said then (for Innocent Words):

The Submarines
Honeysuckle Weeks
(Nettwerk Records)

Hip-SoCal-popsters are all over The Submarines, the Weepies-like, boy-girl duo that showed up via (sigh:) Grey’s Anatomy and had done the NPR interview and released an iTunes exclusive cut before most 20-somethings could get an intelligent blog post sketched up in draft.

The sound is Fiest meets Postal Service with a touch more cheese, which is what you’d expect from a love-struck couple that produced their first album by breaking up and simultaneously penning songs about it. Back together, their second effort Honeysuckle Weeks proves that John Dragonetti knows his programming—his beat loops and square-wave tones (beep! boop!) provide the arcade layer and fun, while Blake Hazard (she’s the girl) slips the in the poppy charm. Though both sing, Hazard’s vocals dominate the tracks with cute-smart lyrics about a relationship that went bad for a time but is happily back on course. Occasionally gag-able (Every day I wake up ~I chose love ~ I chose light) , but not infrequently insightful (maybe we’re strong, but maybe, maybe we’re wrong), the pop duo finds the hook buried in every song and charts it with las, ahs, and the occasional underwater glockenspiel.

While I could do without a few of the extra claps, the couple is enigmatic (she’s the great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald) and have an electronic whiz-kid thing that’s tightly produced and even Beatles-aware. Toss in a few more socially conscious themes (“You, Me, and the Bourgeois” dogs plastic bottles and sweatshop clothing) and The Submarines dive deep enough for a second play.

It’s rumored that Steve Jobs hand-picks all the Apple songs for their commercials.  I’d like to pick on him for that, but I were in his position, I’m sufficiently self-inflated about my own music taste that I probably would too.  (although on Honeysuckle Weeks, I gotta say track 5—”The Wake Up Song” is even better than “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie”).

When I was originally on my grad school and then seminary search, I was hugely attracted to Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. Already familiar with their President Dan Allender, the way MGHS framed their approach to theological education through a Deep Beauty view of the world called to me like family I hadn’t yet known.

But in the end, though I struggled, I wound up dismissing them because they did not yet have the accreditation I needed to keep the door open for PhD work. But I still like to keep tabs on them now and then.  Check out this great promo video on loving your neighbor.

mhgs what no. 2 from blaine hogan on Vimeo.
(I don’t know who Blaine Hogan is, but I have noticed that it looks like he just recently moved over to my neck of the woods to work for Willow)

I still have this funny hope that’ll I’ll find some connection with MHGS people. It’s been a rather different experience here at NPTS… as an artist I sense I’ve shelved an entire side of me.  The social tone and space is warm, but encourages a traditionalism more akin to the Thanksgiving silk flowers on your parents table than the open mic, silver and expectant in the upstairs part of the gallery. The portraits in the halls are of elderly Swedes (none of whom I know about).  Culture is recognized here, but as something “other?”—something to be studied (vs. created). Sometimes it is perhaps presented in contradictory ways. My communicating the faith class made attempts, but at the end of the day had a superficial, contrived approach (to its defense–it’s focus was personal evangelism). My theology class and others have had a incredibly dim view of beauty in the face of sin. I haven’t had a class with missiologist Paul DeNeui (I typically find the missiologists the most insightful on culture in general). But I suspect that none of our classes embody expression that is detailed, creative, playful, and revelatory. I haven’t seen professors here that think this way. (Nor at TEDS, where I’ve taken some additional courses).  Honestly, I think there are only a few classmates here that would naturally fit in a MHGS-lensed world.  Only a few of us who want to talk about life as art, indie music, and discover truth while tracing a twilight skyline.

Which again is hardly to discount the things I like very much at North Park. Just to wonder again at how I’m a “different person” here than I might be elsewhere.

Before I recently wrote a review of Kasey Chamber’s newest album Rattlin’ Bones, I didn’t know a lot about her, except of her few more popular songs in the US.  The country singer is a down-home Australian (really) whose pop-country is enough off the mainstream to like her.  I can’t post my review cause it hasn’t been published yet, but I’ve gotta note her video of her 2004 single Pony, which I can’t stop watching.  Chambers bats happy, expressive eyes to be simultaneously five years old and all grown up.  The video makes the song.

There’s something about Kasey here that makes me think “little sister”—which makes me think of my fake little sister Heidi (something about her facial expressions) and my real little sister Erika (who is hardly a country fan, but I think will like this anyway).

This has me laughing so hard I was tearing up. Can’t believe how well Tina Fey picked up Sarah Palin. Gotta wonder if anyone on the current cast could have done as well. Still, I think SNL’s got some juice to it. Plus, I love nerdy political humor.

Brian McLaren and Catholic theologian Lisa Cahill are among those featured in this new ad introduced by evangelical “left” group Matthew 25. I’m pretty cynical about advertising trying to promote authentic messages in the first place, so that doesn’t help me along. But I’m sympathetic to the message. Overall, I think I’m reserving judgment.

The following is a new ad from the McCain campaign. It feels like movie trailer, and not-so-subtly teases Barak Obama’s fame, a message they’ve been working on for several weeks. But the interesting part of the ad is that I’m pretty sure it’s a veiled communication to Left Behind-reading Christians, who are looking for an anti-Christ, like villain like Nicolae Carpathia. It’s the kind of things that would be understood by conservative evangelicals, but wouldn’t mean as much to other viewers, and I’m guessing that’s intentional.

The part that disturbs me most about “antichrist” language used by some Christians is not just how it doesn’t seem to be supported in scripture (the only references are in 1 John 2, where John clearly defines anyone who denies Christ is God as, as the word suggests, an “anti-Christ”), but how it calls into suspician things of God like increased world justice and world peace.

Welp, now having searched, I now realize this was new in the theology blogging world last week, but I just last night happened to stop to watch the The Colbert Report (silent “t”) and was surprised to hear that his guest was biblical scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright.The interview itself was typical of Stephen Colbert:  the only promise to guests is that they get the picture of their book on-screen:  no expectation that they’ll be able to get a rational sentence out without Stephen jumping in with comments about Republican heroes.  But Wright did rather well, able to hit the one main point that he’s been hitting for a little while now:  that a Christian conception of heaven as the soul floating off to another place is not Biblical.  Instead, Wright emphasized that the final stage after this creation is the “new heavens and new earth.”  (transcript by Jake Bouma)It’s a point that originally heard from J.R. Woodward, and have further heard from Wright and others, and one I’m fairly certain I’ve come to agree with, in my slow progress to de-spiritualize everything (which has the ironic effect of making “everything spirtual.”).   Essentially I mean that in all aspects of my theology, I’m less seeing the “world” and the “body” and the “flesh” as the opposition to the Christian life I once caught in language from pastors all over.  I still believe sin has damaged and tainted these, but that their re-making is the wonder of the Kingdom both now and later.

NT Wright:…the Middle Ages is when it started to go wrong. If you go back to the very early church, yes, resurrection was the standard doctrine. I’m not saying anything radically new that wasn’t in the New Testament in the early church. In the Middle Ages there’s a lot of stuff [that] comes from the Greek philosophers — people like Plato — which says that actually you have a soul and the soul ends up going off.. and so you don’t need a body anymore.

NT Wright: Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean the whole point about this is that most Christians have this vague idea of going to heaven. It’s something that may happen to you –Stephen Colbert: — No, mine’s very specific. You get a harp, and I’ll have a mint julip, and I’ll ask Ronald Reagan questions.

  (Again thanks to Jake Bouma for his transcript)