Tweeting in Church
Technology and churches are still big news! The Sunday Times had a front page article called, “Our Father, Lead Us to Tweet, And Forgive the Trespassers.”
Months ago, I blogged about the Trinity Church tweeting the Stations of the Cross. I thought it was the only interesting use of the technology other than for PR folks. Turns out it had some glitches. See, the issue with Twitter is that it’s interactive, and people started tweeting back (and not things like “Amen.”) The church took it in stride and were at least pleased these interactors were paying attention.
This article is the latest in an evidently growing number of articles about religious institutions and technology. (See post below on CyberSynagague.) The uptick has occurred because these institutions are now having to deal with Web 2.0. Do we use Facebook? We’ve signed up for Twitter, but now what? (Which is what everyone else is say too, no?)
The difference for religious institutions broadly is that much of the benefit they provide, particularly these days, is community and fellowship–something that is in direct contradiction to the isolation of digital technology. Individual faiths also have specific issues, such as Muslims’ concerns with being watched by antiterrorist investigators and Catholics’ concerns with message control.
What has happened, though, is what happened with marketing–one by one, each group finds some way to use the technology to further their needs.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I’m not sure I’d say digital technology is always isolating. Facebook and Twitter in particular seem to be addressing that issue.
I know we interact with many of our actual friends through Facebook and Twitter–from our church to our community theater group to my family. These relationships are going much deeper than they used to go because of thoughtful discussions (and also fun, silly discussions) that we have through these new tools.
Personally, though, I’m still taking Clay Shirky to heart. He suggested we wouldn’t figure this stuff out for at least fifty years. So we have a lot of work ahead of us.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Hi, Marcus.
It appears you are using these virtual technologies in conjunction with and to supplement real, offline relationships. In that case, these can be very helpful. Harold Rheingold wrote years ago that online communities were most successful when they had a offline component, and I think what we’re seeing today is that the reverse is also true.
Not necessarily the social networks, but certainly computer usage generally can be isolating. But even these can be too. In my research, someone from one of the kids’ TV networks told me a story about two boys who were playing together. One went home to get on the computer. She asked the boy who stayed behind, “why?” He said, “so we can talk.”
I don’t know if that’s the world we’re moving into but mediating communication is certainly taking up more and more space in our human interactions.