To a God Unknown

Social Media as the New Agora

View and print as PDF

Why Ordain a Web Edi­tor?
I knew the ques­tion was bound to come up: “Why should the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (U.S.A.) ordain you to be, of all things, an edi­tor and web designer?” And sure enough, the ques­tion came. I was stand­ing before a group of pas­tors and parish­ioners drawn from all across south­east­ern and mid Ohio. They were exam­in­ing me for ordi­na­tion. They asked me about my the­ol­ogy of bap­tism, my under­stand­ing of the rela­tion­ship of Jesus and jus­tice, what aspect in my con­fes­sion of faith was the hard­est to “con­fess,” and the like. Then, one gen­tle­man raised his hand, received the micro­phone, and said some­thing like, “We don’t usu­ally ordain edi­tors. Can you tell us how your posi­tion will be a min­istry requir­ing and deserv­ing of ordination?”

For­tu­nately, I had had a four-hour drive from Louisville, Ken­tucky, to come up with an answer to this antic­i­pated ques­tion. In fact, I had had over four months, since the time when I was first offered the posi­tion as man­ag­ing edi­tor of what later was to be known as Unbound.

___________________________________________

When Paul entered Athens, he went to the agora, the polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tual, and eco­nomic cen­ter of the city—a Greek word for mar­ket­place, much like the Latin “forum,” a thor­oughly worldly site of com­merce and debate. The church needs to rec­og­nize that the agora, the pub­lic square, of today’s world is not in D.C., Lon­don, or Bei­jing, but online. And it is a pub­lic square, we, like Paul, must enter.
___________________________________________

After all, my posi­tion is a non-traditional min­istry. I spend much of my time in an office behind a com­puter, edit­ing sub­mis­sions, design­ing posts and images for the web­site, Face­book­ing, tweet­ing, email­ing, and devel­op­ing strate­gies for web com­mu­ni­ca­tion. There aren’t too many babies pop­ping in my office to be bap­tized. Though (warn­ing: adver­tise­ment), babies are wel­come to do so—with Ses­sion approval of course.

But non-traditional or not, it is a min­istry. So, I said: I will preach the Word, but from a web­site. I will help cre­ate a com­mu­nity bound together by trust and rela­tion­ship, sent into the world to speak and do the gospel, but… from a web­site. I will do mis­sion, but my mis­sion ground shall not be Ten­nessee or Indone­sia; it will be online. I will witness—and enable oth­ers, through arti­cles and resources, to witness—to the new real­ity of our Lord and Sav­ior, Jesus Christ, and to the moral (read: jus­tice) impli­ca­tions of that new reality.

My e-ministry would not take place in a vac­uum. I would visit con­gre­ga­tions, preach, lead wor­ship, and pre­side over the Lord’s Sup­per. I would par­tic­i­pate in con­fer­ences, net­work with orga­ni­za­tions work­ing locally, visit sem­i­nar­ies and col­lege cam­puses, and build person-to-person relationships.

And I guess they found my argu­ment con­vinc­ing, because they ordained me. I hope, though, that their pri­mary rea­son for endors­ing my ordi­na­tion was not because my posi­tion would include some com­po­nents of tra­di­tional min­istry. I hope it was because they too expe­ri­enced God call­ing me (and the church) to a new form of ministry.

Ancient Agora of Athens, Photo by Jarek Tarnogórski

Paul in Athens: Re-Learning Mis­sion
It is a new world out there. The church has to adapt.

Gospel-genuine mis­sion takes its cue from the Book of Acts and Paul’s visit to Athens, Greece (Acts 17). As Luke por­trays him, Paul quotes Greek poets, points to a stone altar ded­i­cated to a god unknown, and says, I know that God and I would like to tell you about that God. We could per­haps dis­miss Paul’s actions as the prag­matic appro­pri­a­tion of a cul­ture in order to sweeten the coop­ta­tion. That is one reading.

But there is another read­ing: Paul (who, after all, was a Greek speaker and whose the­ol­ogy is influ­enced by Greek thought) had to respect and lis­ten to the Greek cul­ture, even learn from it, before seek­ing to share what he knew about God. That does not mean he agreed with every aspect of nor­ma­tive Greek cul­ture. But it does mean that those doing mis­sion must be pre­pared to learn as much about God as they are pre­pared to teach.

Nei­ther Jesus nor Paul sac­ri­fice their ethics and beliefs for some rel­a­tivism or polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. They have their gospel the­ol­ogy and they stick by it. Jesus does not let the towns­peo­ple stone the woman just because that is what they think is right. But he also does not vio­lently stop them. Instead, he inserts his body and his per­spec­tive into the action. He becomes an inter­locu­tor. He engages.

And that is pre­cisely what the church must do with this new world of social media, unfil­tered e-news, inter­ac­tiv­ity, and multimedia.

The Church Still Has Much To Offer
The church need not aban­don its prin­ci­ples and strengths. We need not turn Jesus over to some low­est denom­i­na­tor spir­i­tu­al­ity. Church is one of the few places where you can still find inter-generational com­mu­ni­ties. We prac­tice tan­gi­ble sacra­ments, offer­ing lim­i­nal spaces where human­ity and the divine con­nect. For over two thou­sand years, we have been a church for the poor and the oppressed, even when seg­ments of the church have wor­shipped wealth and unequal power. We know the value of pas­toral care, of sit­ting with the patient in the hos­pi­tal, of lis­ten­ing to the incar­cer­ated man or woman, of the per­son who just needs to hold onto you in hug for a lit­tle longer because with­out it, his or her knees would give out.

___________________________________________

The church needs to learn the poetry of this new world: its social and multi– media, its tex­ting and tweet­ing. The church needs to watch events like what unfolded in Egypt and Tunisia where orga­niz­ing on the ground (empha­siz­ing the face to face rela­tion­al­ity we hold so dear in the church) united with social media to cre­ate a rev­o­lu­tion.
___________________________________________

Chris­tian­ity offers a par­tic­u­lar vision of God—a God who does the unthink­able and dies, so that we might live—a God who pas­sion­ately loves—a God who walks among us in his­tory, liv­ing with the poor and mar­gin­al­ized of the world—a God who has estab­lished a covenant rela­tion­ship with human­ity, requir­ing us to live holy, just, and com­pas­sion­ate lives—and yet a God who inex­orably for­gives us when we fail our end of the bar­gain. We do not have to give up that God. We should not give up that God.

That God cer­tainly has not given up on us.

We should hold onto what makes us Chris­t­ian, just as the unbound voca­tion incor­po­rates tra­di­tional and essen­tial modes of min­istry (con­gre­ga­tional wor­ship, pas­toral care…). But we can­not dig our feet into the mud of old media and refuse to budge before the emerg­ing real­i­ties of this new world. If we do, we will get left behind, not only by the world, but by God.

The New Agora
The church needs to lis­ten to the new generations—young peo­ple that know all too well the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary hypocrisies of the church—young peo­ple who crave con­nec­tion, trans­for­ma­tion, and spir­i­tual vital­ity, not bor­ing trite ser­mons or oppression-complicit insti­tu­tions or church bick­er­ing or par­ents who use Sun­day School as baby-sitting. The church needs to learn the poetry of this new world: its social and multi– media, its tex­ting and tweet­ing. The church needs to watch events like what unfolded in Egypt and Tunisia where orga­niz­ing on the ground (empha­siz­ing the face to face rela­tion­al­ity we hold so dear in the church) united with social media to cre­ate a revolution.

The church needs even to remem­ber its own his­tory and the trans­for­ma­tions yielded by the then “new media” of the print­ing press and, in the 20^th cen­tury, the blend­ing of orga­nized com­mu­ni­ties and a print news­pa­per through the Catholic Worker Move­ment (with Dorothy Day and oth­ers pass­ing out the first issue in Union Square, New York City).

When Paul entered Athens, he went to the agora, the polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tual, and eco­nomic cen­ter of the city—a Greek word for mar­ket­place, much like the Latin “forum,” a thor­oughly worldly site of com­merce and debate. The church needs to rec­og­nize that the agora, the pub­lic square, of today’s world is not in D.C., Lon­don, or Beijing—or Union Square—but online. And it is a pub­lic square, we, like Paul, must enter.

Design­ing an Inter­ac­tive Jour­nal of Chris­t­ian Social Jus­tice
When we began envi­sion­ing Unbound, we set out to make it a voice much like Paul’s in the agora. The Unbound we envi­sioned would use the lan­guage and tech­niques of the emerg­ing agora of social media. It would lis­ten intently to new gen­er­a­tions of young peo­ple fed up with the church but who still believed in Jesus and justice.

It would be inter­ac­tive, plugged into Face­book and Twit­ter, and sat­u­rated with mul­ti­me­dia: videos, music, art, poetry (we even talked about slam poetry!), and pod­casts. It would enable users to cre­ate pro­files, spec­ify inter­ests and iden­ti­ties, and engage other users in real-time con­ver­sa­tions. It would empower col­lec­tive input: users could help deter­mine the themes of upcom­ing issues, sub­mit their own arti­cles and artis­tic expres­sion, and drive the cre­ative direc­tion of the jour­nal and site.

Fit­ting to the inter­ests of the agora, the mar­ket­place, we planned to launch with an issue on eco­nom­ics.

___________________________________________

Per­haps all of social media is just one big altar made out to a god unknown.
___________________________________________

But this new e-journal would not sim­ply con­form to the pat­terns and prac­tices of elec­tronic media. Rec­og­niz­ing the chal­lenges of online dis­cus­sion, so often derailed by abu­sive lan­guage and anonymity, we decided to require the cre­ation of a reg­is­tered, free account before users could make com­ments and join con­ver­sa­tions. We also set out to assem­ble a col­lec­tion of user-moderators who would help dis­cus­sions remain pro­duc­tive and respect­ful. If done right, online con­ver­sa­tion would then offer a reflec­tion of real-life con­ver­sa­tion, which is messy, com­plex, and emo­tion­ally charged, but when, in the con­text of com­mu­nity, can be account­able to eth­i­cal standards.

Rec­og­niz­ing, fur­ther­more, the super­fi­cial­ity of much online con­tent, we deter­mined to make Unbound acces­si­ble but substantive—a col­lec­tion of cre­ative, thought­ful con­tent through which read­ers could grow (intel­lec­tu­ally, spir­i­tu­ally, per­son­ally) and be inspired to take action.

Rec­og­niz­ing how self-contained the Inter­net can be, how Face­book friends can sub­sti­tute for real friends, how peo­ple can pon­tif­i­cate online on mat­ters of jus­tice with­out mak­ing a sin­gle change in their own lives, we wanted Unbound to have one leg online and another on the ground. Users could visit the site, talk with other users, read arti­cles, post videos, net­work, but then find a local action (or wor­ship ser­vice or orga­ni­za­tion) posted on the site and go, par­tic­i­pate, con­nect. Unbound itself could host a net­work of local orga­niz­ers bring­ing together com­mu­ni­ties, empow­ered to act on the site’s arti­cles and resources, while in turn dri­ving the themes of the jour­nal by report­ing “from the front.”

We, there­fore, meant Unbound, from the begin­ning, to be both a cit­i­zen and a critic of the emerg­ing agora. We are a jour­nal in-process. Our assem­bly of mod­er­a­tors and local orga­niz­ers remains in the plan­ning stage. Inter­ac­tiv­ity is still lim­ited. But since launch­ing in Octo­ber, we have pub­lished three issues and posted many blog arti­cles, action alerts, events, wor­ship and action resources, and mul­ti­me­dia. Sev­eral thou­sand peo­ple have vis­ited the site; many hun­dreds have reg­is­tered. Daily, Unbound is on Face­book and Twit­ter. In Jan­u­ary 2012, we par­tic­i­pated in an emerg­ing medium called the “twin­ter­view” in which a mod­er­a­tor and other Twit­ter accounts pose ques­tions and the inter­vie­wee (in this case, Unbound) responds, all real-time, all in 140 or fewer characters.

Like Paul in the agora, like Jesus with the woman being stoned, Unbound is work­ing to insert itself into the action of a world increasingly—for bet­ter or worse—online.

For, per­haps, all social media is just an unnamed urge for an unnamed God, a plea for con­nec­tion and pur­pose, a set of peo­ple deter­mined to be part of some­thing, any­thing, a need for an iden­tity bet­ter than the one lived out among “real” peo­ple. Per­haps all of social media is just one big altar made out to a god unknown.

And per­haps, Jesus, the Emmanuel—“God among us”—is the god they seek.

_________________________________________________________________________

Patrick David Heery, Rev., is the Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of Unbound. He staffs the Advi­sory Com­mit­tee on Social Wit­ness Pol­icy as the Asso­ciate for Social Media and Social Wit­ness. He was recently ordained as a Teach­ing Elder in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (U.S.A.) and is a grad­u­ate of Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary with a Mas­ter of Divin­ity. He has a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Eng­lish, and another in Clas­sics, from Ohio University.

Ban­ner photo by Armin Hanisch.

Back to Table of Contents