A Twitter Theology
A Twitter skeptic and a Twitter user (the former of whom we’ll call “Skeptic,” the latter a “Tweep” ) sit drinking delicious locally-brewed adult beverages. The Skeptic asks the Tweep, “I think Twitter is a bunch of hooey. You’re on Twitter all the time, explain to me why I shouldn’t write it off as completely tangential to the Church.”
The Tweep responds, “No problem. In fact, I’ll take you one step further and explain how Twitter helps me understand the Church and live more faithfully, but first, you have to help me out. Can you explain to me what you understand “the Church” to be in the first place?”
Skeptic: No problem, the Church, as you surely know is the “body of Christ” as we find described often in the New Testament. Some form of this phrase is in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Hebrews. By using the “body of Christ” phrase, I don’t think Paul means the Church is Christ’s body in a literal sense. Rather, he was using the metaphor of a body to explain the connections in the Church. Of course, that’s not all, scripture also refers to the Church as the people of God, as the new creation, and lots of other images, actually.
Tweep: Ok, sounds good so far. But, what does that mean? Or to put it another way: how do you tend to think about the Church? I mean, do you think “body” when you think “Church” or what?
Skeptic [taking a sip of bubbly beverage]: Hmmm, let’s see. First, I guess, using the Church as the body of Christ image, I think of people (like you and me) as the body, and Christ as the head of the body. Part of that has to do with connection between people, I suppose. Of course, it’s not just you and me who are connected, but all believers. Connection in the Church is pretty awesome, actually: understanding that the grace in Christ makes us one with another, even and especially those with whom we disagree. Of course, we don’t make the connections real, God does it, but through the power of the Spirit we can get a glimpse at how we are connected in Christ.
But other than people, (or more specifically than people) when I think of the Church, I also think of people’s God-given gifts. Through the Spirit, people are bound together and gifted with different abilities and ways to serve God (I’m thinking of 1 Corinthians 12, I suppose).
Tweep: Let me stop you there for a second. Nice, yeah. You’re getting at how the Body of Christ, the Church, is not in one physical location. In fact, one of the main points in this type of theology is that the Church is not stuck in one place or associated with one building, but is where the people are. Jesus said, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there with them.” But then there’s this timeless sense as well, right? I mean, the Church isn’t just what exists in 2010, right?
Skeptic: Totally, good point. Martin Luther talked about the church militant and the church triumphant to distinguish between saints presently alive serving God on earth and those who have died. But believers both alive and dead are part of the church. It gets into that timeless nature of belief, that we are connected, by faith, to believers in every time and place. And, more recent theologians have even emphasized the fact that the Spirit can and does move outside the Church as well.
But enough about the Church, what does this all have to do with Twitter?
Tweep: Right, ok, good point. Here it goes: thinking of the Twitter community really helps me visualize thinking about the Church. First, there’s these weird connections all over the place through the power of this crazy-ether-cyberspace-thing that I don’t understand but trust to work (most of the time, at least). For instance, on Twitter I follow people I’ve never met and probably never will meet. I don’t know what they look like beyond their little profile picture. I don’t know their story, but I know something of them because of Twitter. And that something, that connection, helps me appreciate them and causes me to consider life more fully.
Take @jameskimlcop. I follow James on Twitter. His info says he’s a pastor in Washington state, but I’ve never met the guy. But I have prayed for him. I’ve rejoiced with him and mourned with him, reflected with him and been enriched by his contributions through his tweets. Is he the pastor to whom I’d go if I had a life crisis? No, but I do put out prayer requests on Twitter and feel supported by that community.
And, not unlike Paul speaks of the many gifts of the Spirit, Twitter helps me to hear and appreciate and consider the multitude of God-given gifts (a much wider range than I’d know of or enjoy without Twitter).
Skeptic: Ok, but I mean, that’s not the Church, that’s Twitter. You’re not saying the Twitter community is the body of Christ are you?
Tweep: No I’m not, but I’m saying the Twitter community is one way — and a very helpful and cool way — of experiencing, showing, and living out those connections of our Church-connected theology.
And it works with the time thing, too. Sure, Twitter works within our cultural notions of time, but watching a Twitter feed also reminds me that not everyone is in my time zone or life stage or weather patterns. It may seem elementary, but for me, see a tweet from a friend in South Africa going to a warm beach at Christmas right below a tweet from someone in Idaho digging out from a snow storm reminds me that my life is not the center of the world. And, because the Twitter stream flows at all times and all places even when I don’t check on it, it’s a helpful push to think beyond myself. Watching my Twitter feed gives me what some have called a “peripheral awareness.” And this awareness of others, for me as a religious and spiritual person, strengthens and deepens my faith journey.
Skeptic: Dude, you’re starting to sound a little too new-agey for me. I mean, you don’t believe in Twitter do you? Sounds like it’s become an idol in your life.
Tweep: No way, man. I think of it this way. We don’t actually believe in the Church in the first place. Or maybe a better way of putting it is saying, “In the Church, I believe.” The point is that we believe in God, and we do that while in the Church.
Same thing applies to Twitter, I guess. I don’t believe in Twitter, no way. But, while I’m in the Twitter community, I believe in God.
Skeptic: Ok, that makes sense. Glad you didn’t go off the deep end on me here. Sure, I mean, there’s some similarities between a theological conception of Church and Twitter, but it still doesn’t exactly redeem it for me. Is that all you got?
Tweep: Well there’s this big theologian guy Dan Migliore who’s written about different models of the Church and several of them apply really well to Twitter too. Migliore talks about the Church as an “intimate community of the Spirit” — Twitter can totally be majorly intimate in its connections. Also, Migliore says the church is a “herald of good news” — Twitter is all over sharing news and information, and a lot more is good than you’d think. And Migliore also says the mystery of the church can’t ever be described in one image or model (that’s part of the reason the Bible has so many different images for Church). So, I guess I’m saying, for me at least, Twitter is one more model or image that helps me understand the Church. If you don’t buy it, fine, but I think the Spirit can work online just as well as it can old school.
Skeptic: No doubt about that, at least. Thanks for the chat, I’ll think on it some more, that’s for sure. Maybe you can ask your Twitter friends to pray for me.
Tweep: Will do, and better yet, I’ll write up this conversation and put in on Twitter, so we’ll get some feedback from the Church, I mean, the Twitter community. 
Will you drink to that?
Skeptic: Bottoms up!
image by Marc Smith
This is an “urgent message”?
Also posted at the CENTURY Blog &
Last week, the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis endorsed the Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota—well, not really, but it only takes a little reading between the lines to draw that conclusion.
If you’re Catholic and you live in the Twin Cities area, you’ve received or will soon receive a DVD explaining the church’s teaching on traditional marriage and supporting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Didn’t get one? Try your neighbor—they sent 400,000.
Until now, the question of gay marriage has drawn very little attention in Minnesota this election cycle. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Independent Party nominees both support it, while the Republican nominee supports an amendment banning it. But this year in Minnesota, as around the country, same-sex marriage is largely a fringe issue due to more pressing concerns. Minnesota projects a six billion dollar deficit in the coming fiscal biennial. That’s six billion dollars.
According to Archbishop John Nienstedt, an anonymous donor gave the funds for the DVDs. Nienstedt doesn’t know their cost. The DVD label says, “View now for an urgent message.” But in a long interview with Minnesota Public Radio, the archbishop refused to accept the notion that the DVD is overtly political.
I’m a pastor. I understand the difference between preaching about a political issue and advocating for a specific candidate. I get that it’s a thin line sometimes.
What infuriates me here is that the DVD addresses, of all things, same-sex marriage—not teacher layoffs or cuts to local government aid. Not the unemployment rate or the thousands of children living in poverty. Not the six-billion-dollar deficit. Apparently these issues don’t deserve a single DVD, let alone 400,000 copies.
Many Twin Cities-area Catholics have joined social-media campaigns to send the DVDs back unopened. Eric Celeste suggests putting them in the offering plate. Maybe that’s a campaign Archbishop Nienstedt can speak to clearly.
image by abcdz2000
A New Century of Blogging
The Christian Century has been gracious enough to partner with me on several projects over the years, in the early days accepting A Wee Blether in the CC Blog network and more recently printing essays of mine in the magazine. Today they’ve rolled out a spanking new and very pretty website — huge changes done well. Now at the user-friendly ChristianCentury.org, you can not only read the best take on the mainline church, theology, Christian living, and society around, but you can also access archives (which I’m totally pumped about).
For several weeks, I’ll be regularly contributing to the CENTURY Blog, cross-posting here along the way. Feel free to comment on either site (at least, that’s the plan for now). I’m not quite sure how our partnership will affect the content of A Wee Blether, but I may be more churchy or pastoral at times and perhaps comment more often on recent news and cultural events. No matter what, however, I want to be sure to keep my voice, however underdeveloped it might be. And, I’ll pop up some posts here (of personal or local interest) that won’t fly at the CENTURY Blog. As always, let me know along the way how things are going. So, stay tuned as a new adventure begins…
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from the CENTURY BLOG: From Other to Friend
Amy Frykholm posted yesterday about Muhammad Musri, the Muslim leader who met with Terry Jones and helped defuse last week’s Qur’an-burning situation. If more Christians and Muslims knew one another personally, the whole furor may not have occurred in the first place.
It’s a lot harder to adopt anti-Islam rhetoric when your family doctor is Muslim, or your daughter’s college roommate is Muslim, or your congregation has worked with a mosque to build a Habitat for Humanity house. Many of the troubling statements I’ve read in recent weeks—and heard in my pastoral ministry—would never have been said if folks simply got to know their Muslim neighbors. Conversations about Islam could shift from a focus on the unknown other to one on knowing one another better.
Recently, I’ve heard of many Christian pastors participating in interfaith services, posting supportive statements regarding Islam to their Web sites and teaching Sunday School sessions on Islam. NPR recently ran a great piece on “bridging the Christian-Muslim divide.” This is all positive and helpful, good steps on the journey from fear to understanding. But nothing beats personal relationships.
Have relationships or experiences with Muslims affected you personally? How can Christians promote positive relationships with our Muslim neighbors? How can churches help connect congregants to those of other faiths?
Meme: My Faith, My Tattoo
Background information: Adam J. Copeland is a pastor conducting informal research for some Christian youth curriculum addressing tattoos. Adam’s also taking a grad school class on cyberculture. This meme combines these interests, and hopefully will help him thoughtfully consider getting a tattoo himself. So, please, pass on the meme below….
In a few sentences, respond to the questions below — respond on your blog, on this blog, on Facebook, wherever. When you’re done, share, tag a few friends, and pass on the questions. If you post this somewhere else, keep the title, “Meme: My faith, my tattoo” for easy searching. For background on what the heck a “meme” is, see this article.
My Faith, My Tattoo Meme:
1. Describe your tattoo(s):
2. What made you want that tattoo(s)?
3. How did your faith influence your tattoo, indirectly or directly?
4. What’s the relationship between your tattoo and your broader understanding of your body?
5. Was it worth it…do you have regrets?
6. What funny story has happened because of your tattoo?
7. How did your tattoo change your faith (and if not, why not)?
For background on how this meme started, see Adam Copeland’s blog at http://adamjcopeland.com
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Here are some inks to those who have already participated in the My Faith, My Tattoo meme via their blogs. Also, in the comments of this post several others have answered as well:
- Abby at extraordinary
- the gospel according to mark
- Bruce Reyes-Chow
- Heather at all we know is falling
- emmy at insert post-modern title here
- Adam at pomomusings
- Kendra Kinnison
- Steph at tales from the bathroom stall
- Ania Read ponders here
- mihee kim-kort
- more links goes here…
Consuming media justly
Do wise comments spoken years ago ever keep you thinking even now? It must have been about 2004 that I heard Marva Dawn explain why she doesn’t read newspapers or stay up-to-date on current events. (Marva Dawn, by the way, is an incredibly gifted theologian and teacher who can blow you away with her orthodoxy in one sentence and her crazy-out-there ideas in the next.) Anyway, Dawn’s comment has stuck with me and still bothers me today, especially when I get sucked into the 24/7 news cycle and media-driven ridiculousness that feeds our culture of instant gratification. What’s the best way to consume news?
Dawn’s point, if I remember correctly, was that our moral imperative (for her, most definitely the Christian imperative) is for us to work for justice and peace at all times. Getting hung up on each day’s top stories and media ratings games pushes us off course. We get stuck in the trees of the hour’s headlines and miss the forest of God’s goodness, justice, holiness, and peace.
She wouldn’t have put it this way, but Dawn was speaking in favor of a TIME magazine print edition way of living as opposed to a Drudge Report approach. The TIME dead tree edition comes out weekly and has a more penetrating and expansive view of news — partly due to higher word counts, partly due to the timeliness of the news. But if you go to TIME’s blogs, or the Drudge Report, you get many updates each day on both the minutiae and the detritus of the hour. (Or you could use the analogy of The New Yorker vs. Huffington Post, or Harper’s vs. USA Today Online, take your pick.)
Each week, I read hundreds of blog posts, dozens of NY Times articles, check in at CNN.com scores of time. For local news I read the Grand Forks Herald and Kittson County Enterprise. Most weeks I’ll also read Newsweek, Time, The Presbyterian Outlook, and The Christian Century. Of course, I’ll keep up on current events through Twitter links and RSS feeds. Oh, and then there’s the hours of NPR listening and a few other podcasts thrown in to boot. And so I wonder, how do my media choices affect my view of the world?
Part of me wants to experiment and, for a week or two, try to avoid anything current events related. I might not get bogged down each week in articles or issues that are more adiaphora than anything. I wouldn’t hear reports of Apple’s iPod event in real time, nor would I read dozens of perspectives on the Ground Zero Mosque (that isn’t a mosque or at ground zero, by the way). But, on the other hand, I do think all the little articles add up to a fuller picture of the world. Sure, I may read some details about how Sen. Murkowski lost the Alaska Republican primary that really don’t matter, but I might also get a glimpse of the sentiments that are driving the Minnesotans and North Dakotans with whom I interact on a daily basis.
Either way you live, though, Dawn’s larger point is the most important. Do you seek justice and love in all your interactions and in all world affairs? For Marva Dawn, it’s easier for her to do this faithfully without reading the daily newspaper. I don’t know if she would grant that it could be, for me, easier to be faithful while keeping up on current events. My takeaway is this: whether one reads TIME dead tree edition or checks RSS news feeds hourly, the lens with which you read and live in the world is key. Do you live with a lens for social justice or do you live with a lens for social stories gone wild?
image by Gerhard Höllisch
GA BLOG: Wrap Up & Pack Up
(This post will go up soon on The Outlook website, but I’m traveling so can’t link there immediately. Feel free to read and comment here, but also check out all the awesome General Assembly coverage over at The Presbyterian Outlook.)
And Friday night, at the General Assembly, the commissioners were tired, the energy level was low, and the most controversial items had already been considered. So, first a few funny recollections from the week:
- The Stated Clerk, Gradye Parson, has a suave-looking John Calvin bobble-head on his desk. I covet.
- Moderator Cynthia Bolbach’s fun sense of humor kept the assembly in good spirits throughout the week. Perhaps her best crack cams during the moderator election when she, and elder said, “Ministers going on tangents…who knew?”
- The chairs in the assembly hall, when scooted back or forth, sound like vuvuzelas. It’s hilarious.
More seriously, my read of the assembly is that it was a perfectly fine one, one that wrestled with tough issues conscientiously and sought the Spirit in its work. Many hugely important changes are proposed to the PC(USA) constitution, including the addition of the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions.
But, as I prepare to go back home, I’m also struck with a questioning sense about whether this formal, costly, somewhat unwieldy church structure is the most faithful way of conducting business at a national level. At 27, I’m too young to be a hardened cynic, but many times this week I thought, after a beautiful policy statement or theological document passed the assembly, “How much did we spend per word to make that document? And, how many Presbyterians – let alone others – will ever read it?” When I closed my eyes and listened to debate on the plenary floor, I wondered how much —really, how little— the basic way we govern ourselves has changed in fifty years. … Continue Reading
What? My phone has an off button!
I’m not a huge multi-tasker, but my skills for doing one thing at a time are slipping fast.
Though I don’t tend to talk on the phone, chat online, listen to the radio, etc. at one time — mostly because I’m just not very good at it — I find my attention span shortening. I read for shorter spells. I check emails or facebook when I might be writing. I tend to value responding to an email quickly more than working hard while my inbox fills.
I am not alone. The solution, many are saying, it to get an iPad. Their clean interface and lack of ability to do more than one thing at once forces users to focus on one task. Just read. Just email. Just tweet rather than doing all at once.
I find the iPad solution wishful thinking, wishful both because, sure, I’d love an iPad and because of the certainty that the technology will allow multitasking in the future.
As I ponder this trend, I recall students who claim they “studied for four hours straight” but whose studying was constantly interrupted by text messages and phone calls. In truth, they studied maybe 3 hours total, and never more than 15 minutes consecutively.
This is all quite problematic, because every technology that interrupts my tasks has an easy way to be turned off. I can leave Twitter alone. I can close my email program. I can silence my phone and leave it in another room. The world would go on, I’m sure. And I, likely, would be more productive.
But it’s very hard to turn off. Extremely difficult. I’m of two minds about the reason for that. Either, I can’t turn off because of the alluring (even sinful) human tendency to be led away from what’s best for ourselves and the world. Call it pride, sin, stupidity, lack-of-focus, whatever but it certainly could be that simple: I should turn off and its just a poor decision, a moral misjudgment when I don’t. Or, perhaps I can’t turn off because of what those peeps and tweets and emails mean: human connection. Maybe what’s keeping me away from the “quit” button is that I don’t want to quit people and the connections made through technology.
Quit Facebook Day was supposed to occur recently. If you didn’t hear about it don’t feel bad. You didn’t miss much. It was a flop. Perhaps that’s because in a world where we long for human connections, quitting facebook would feel like dumping one’s friends, family, and community. People didn’t quit because ultimately they love what facebook does for them: connect them one to another.
Sure, it’s not as easy as that. Virtual connections are a bit different than others. Fine. But, at the end of the day, I think virtual communities are a net positive and that’s part of the reason they are so hard to turn off, even for an hour.
What do you think? How do you turn off your technological connections for a time? Surely I am not alone.
image by Jakub Krechowicz
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