Blogging: Subculture or mainstream?
also posted at the CENTURY Blog
Yes, blogging about blogging can be the ultimate navel-gazing, but hear me out; I mean to intrigue.
In a well-written book on cyberculture theory, Pramod K. Nayar claims that blogs “have become a folk cultural form.” So far so good. But most of Nayar’s other descriptions of blogging seem a bit dated: it’s life-writing or autobiography, it’s an online diary, it’s inherently personal, it’s subcultural. All this may have been true once, but most of the blogs I read have grown up and taken on new form and function.
Nayar grants that “blogs are perhaps no longer subcultural considering their heterogeneity, numbers, and expanding use on the World Wide Web.” But he doesn’t elaborate on developments such as
- Newspaper sites that sponsor and host bloggers (see Bruce Reyes-Chow’s connection with the San Francisco Chronicle)
- Blogs such as Time magazine’s Swampland, which is updated multiple times daily by well-known reporters with off-the-cuff thoughts and developing stories
- Networks of independent bloggers, such as the Century‘s CCblogs network, of which my blog is a member
Many pastors are now blogging on church websites, and columnists publish more formal content in print and more casual stuff on blogs (though the distinction isn’t always so clear). Blogs have grown out of their subcultural status, moving from a form of journaling or life-casting to a powerful mainstream tool for expression and dialogue.
Nayar suggests that blogs are “filling in the gaps” in public discourse. While he doesn’t elaborate, the phrase is spot on. Blogging fills the gaps that existed ten years ago between professional journalism and thoughtful personal journaling. As the gaps are filled, the distinctions are becoming less clear. Subculture has become mainstream, and a new folk cultural form evolves.
Paltry Posts and PC(USA) General Assembly Possibilities
The posts have been paltry recently, but next week everything will change. I’ll be attending the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Minneapolis and blogging for The Presbyterian Outlook.
I’ll put links to my work here. I also have a few other writing pieces that may come out next week to which I’ll link as well. So, apologies for the past week, but good things come to those who wait. Also, for you non PC(USA) people, sorry for a week of very Presbyterian posts. I’ll make it up to you at some point.
But if you are connected to or interested in the PC(USA) General Assembly: What would you like to see covered by the Presbyterian Outlook blogger? What should I consider, discuss, debate, relate, rehash or refry?
Update: see my first (and pre-GA) post at the Outlook website here.
Hot to the Presses
My pastoral position is, officially, a 3/4 time position so I have been filling the other quarter or so of my working life at a large retail store that sells outdoor-inspired clothing in the Grand Forks mall (I still work there for about another week, so I can’t name the store on the blog).
For various reasons — e.g. scheduling, flexibility, personnel, life-suck — I have resigned from that position and intend/hope/am-crazy-to-think that I can make up the small amount of income writing. I’ve done a fair amount of writing for a 27 year-old, (see tab called “Writing” above), and up until now I’ve really enjoyed it. Now, I’m interested to see how I enjoyable I find writing when approached with more intentionality and consistency.
I’ve got a few projects lined up for the next six weeks or so, but keep me in mind if you have — or know of — any writing gigs that need gigging.
I just don’t know how more formal writing elsewhere will affect this here blog. I’ve kept it going for nearly three years, and with me in three very different places (intern/student/pastor and Scotland/Georgia/North Dakota). I’ve managed to pop out 417 posts, receive 168,000 hits, and almost 1500 comments. I really enjoy blogging, even when I can’t find the write out my ideas. It helps me look at the world through another lens. And though I will say I’ve felt overly tame and stodgy in my posts since I entered the call search process and received this call, the blog gives me a good outlet for reflection (even if most of my post’s comments occur on facebook these days rather than this wordpress blog).
So, world, there’s the update on my personal life and finances. If you have any brilliant words of advice, advise. If not, you still don’t need to call me “writer” just yet. “Adam” works plenty fine.
Would Jesus Twitter?
I’ve been in several conversations and meetings lately about technology, social-networking, blogs, and, well, PR. No, “PR” is probably not the best descriptor because these folks are interested not just in public perception, but in how they can best use existing technologies to connect people and ideas for the betterment of all — if that’s what PR is, my apologies. I love to think and talk about such things, but I’m also aware that my English and Religion degrees only go so far in equipping me for the conversation. Here’s what I’ve been thinking, though.
My generation is connected to each other in ways unseen twenty years ago. For example, Megan and I had coffee with some good friends a few weeks ago. It was a great hour and a half, and I look forward to getting together again soon. But I probably won’t see them for a few more weeks. Yesterday, though, I saw they uploaded pictures of a new dog and asked for name suggestions via a facebook status. I added my two cents and by doing so, checked in with them and shared in their fun news. Somehow, via a facebook interaction or two, our friendship is strengthened, or at least positively continued, through a few clicks on facebook. I could give plenty of other examples, or even list friends who I feel fairly close to and been conversing with for over a year, but who I met through the blog and have never met in person. After spending a year abroad and now returning to Decatur with some friends having moved away, I’m particularly aware of how technology has enhanced friendships in ways unavailable before.
Networks such as facebook, and facts like youth these days are spending more time online and less time watching TV, are changing our culture pretty darn quickly. Remember when PalmPilots were all the rage and tablet laptops were the next big thing? Remember when our children just hung out at friends’ houses rather than setting up “playdates?”
So I wonder how the church needs to change in such a world, and I wonder how Christians can best live into the web 2.0 world and beyond.
Sure there’s plenty of cautious questions to ask: are online encounters cutting down on in-person ones? How do we follow an incarnate savior in a virtual world? Are the tech gaps between generations alienating our most seasoned members? And many more.
I just signed up for Twitter (@ajc123) as I’m definitely of the “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it school of technology.” Day one is going fine after I figured out how to reply to people (they should put the shortcuts in the welcome email).
In seminary I’ll often hear stuff like, God’s great movements always begin on the margins of society or, be suspicious wherever there is empire for the resounding message of the Bible is against empire and for God’s subversive acts. So I wonder, is new technology the margins, the periphery, or just empire?
If it’s the margins, should we be starting up new church developments in Second Life? If it’s empire, should we even email?
I’m not sure, but I do know that the resistance I hear to much technological change sounds an awful lot like the resistance I hear to good and right changes in the church: but we’ve never done it that way before. The resistance sounds an awful lot like fear of change rather than excitement for new possibilities for living-out the gospel.
I’m not sure if I’ll like Twitter. I’m not sure how long I’ll blog. But I’ll end with a story I heard last week. A friend of mine was at a church service in Atlanta where she met a visitor. After welcoming the visitor, she asked how she heard about the congregation. The visitor said she was surfing the web angry about crappy old hymns and not wanting to have anything to do with the church. She googled and found my blog where she found the presbymergent.org link. She followed that and ended up visiting an emergent congregation in Atlanta.
I have no idea who this visitor was. Never met her. Probably never will. It goes to show, though, that Holy Spirit has no qualms about moving online. Maybe we shouldn’t either.
Blogging the Academy
Over the past few days I’ve been writing several longish papers for class. After a year in the church in Scotland, for a change it’s actually nice to think of a narrow thesis and carefully argued paper. I tend to over-research for papers, as I was reminded yesterday when I checked out 10 books for a 4-5 pager. But writing papers this year with the blog in the back of my mind, I’ve been struck with how blogging is very similar to the work of the academy. In fact, it’s the work of the academy in super-speed.
So this week for my post-exilic class, we read an article with millions of footnotes that was basically two Old Testament profs arguing over back and forth over some essentials of reading Nehemiah. I won’t bore you with the details, but what struck me is how long such arguments take. Say one of them publishes something in 2000, which took her a year to research and write. Then another prof gets around to reading it in 2001, considers replying, and does so during a 2002 sabbatical. This article is submitted to journals, and eventually accepted for publishing late in 2003–if she’s lucky. So for one back-and-forth to occur it could take four+ years.
And I was thinking that footnotes function in lots of ways like links in blogs. Both show where one got one’s idea and where to go for more info.
The advantage of blog posts rather than academic articles, however, is that they are available to more people. Such arguments are instantly public, and allow for instant commenting. Sure, this comes with its disadvantages–sometimes reasoned thought takes a while–but it’s an open dialog. Academic journal articles take forever to publish, and, eh-hem, how many people are actually involved in the discussion? But I get a ton of hits to my blog from random google searches, or from other blogs, or mistaken searches for the wrestler Adam Copeland, folks who end up jumping in on conversations new to them. Blogs are the academic journals for the masses.
Another advantage? Blogs offer great procrastination options while writing papers, and the possibility of writing crappy posts like this.
image by lusi
UPDATE: Tony Jones musings in related matters here.
CC Blogs
As my sidebar indicates, I’m a member of the blog network hosted by The Christian Century. Honestly, I was pretty fortunate to have been chosen as such a novice blogger a few months ago, but I’ve tried to keep up with the hot shots and really appreciated the fellowship of the network–especially reading others’ work.
The CC Blogs network, along with other sorts of religion-related blogs I read, has really broadened my perspective this year. It’s sort of strange, but while on yearlong internship in Scotland, I feel like my knowledge and understanding of the American church has been greatly strengthened due to my blog reading.
I read more evangelical blogs (with enormous subscription rates) like Cerulean Sanctum. I stay up with Shuck and Jive, who’s, well, more liberal. From pastors in Iowa to private support blogs of seminary students, blogging–or rather, reading blogs–has led me to better understand the diversity of the church, and how I fit in it.
Gorden Atkinson, aka Real Live Preacher, runs the CC Blog site, and just launched a vastly new and improved look. Click on the icon below to check it out.
Blogging in a Flat World
Flat world.
I don’t have online access to the Oxford English Dictionary anymore so I can’t look up when the term first came into use, but NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman has certainly made it popular. Flat world.
The basic idea: recent changes in our economic structure, many brought on by technology, have made the world playing field flat. Friedman uses the term in economics, primarily, but it has come to describe how technology makes us all feel closer and affect each other more easily and clearly.
Here are three blog-related stories about my experience of the world’s flatness.
First, a post that’s received my second highest traffic, Coping with the (Clergy) Collar was found by the person whose letter I quoted in the post.
A few weeks after I quoted the Scottish minister, Michael S. Goss, I received an email from Rev. Goss himself. He had found himself through a search engine and was complimentary of my approach, but it was a little strange “speaking” personally to someone who before was only a name in a magazine. It served as a good reminder that everything we post online can be read by anyone, even and especially those about whom we write.
Second, a few months ago I was lazily reading through a random blog I’d found of a Presbyterian pastor from ____ . The post included criticism of what the pastor perceived to be lacking standards of PC(USA) (yes, I read those blogs too). Specifically, the pastor opined at the faith statements of candidates seeking ordination in her Presbytery, calling them not sufficiently orthodox, and going so far so to name what specific questions this pastor planned to ask the candidates at the Presbytery meeting.
A fan of the flat world, it took me a minute to find the Presbytery docket online and read the faith statements. It turned out that I had the contact info for one of the candidates who I promptly alerted as to the pastor’s planned antagonistic questions. Suffice it to say: the heads-up was greatly appreciated.
Third, I’ve happened upon several blogs of other American assistant ministers in Scotland, or other newish Scottish pastors.
- A Postcard from Troon Old, by a Princeton Seminary Assistant in Troon (20 mins away).
- Radical Seminarian, by another PTS Assistant in Cumnock (45 mins away).
- Rumors of Angels, by a Church of Scotland student in a similar situation nearby.
In the big picture of flat world experiences these are probably not particularly significant. After blogging for three months, however, I do see them as noteworthy; good reminders of the power for ministry that the web can provide. Flat world, indeed.
Connect Online
