By Jake Johnson
Cultural Implications – White-Hot Consumerism
In the last post I discussed the unknown effects of the Internet on our mental and communal health and why I thought proceeding with caution was a wise choice when it came to wholesale embracing virtual church. You can read that here.
Here I want to briefly explore some of the cultural implications of the online medium.
Let us not forget that there are many vested interests in the propagation of the Internet as a normative part of our lives – many of which I’m sure are not concerned with our mental or communal health.
For all his railing against Western cultural influences, I find it interesting that Doug Estes somehow neglects to acknowledge that the Internet is quite possibly the ultimate Colonial tool, spreading the Western materialistic and consumerist mentality to the masses of the world in the name of democratization of information (which I actually consider the anarchy of information – but that’s for another day), and that online church is primarily a Western phenomenon.
Consider for a moment the implications of the Internet. Much of our ministry training has been centered on fighting post-modernism. I’ve argued that post-modernism, if it isn’t already dead, is on its last legs. Replacing it is what I’ve proposed as Digitalism. Whereas post-modernism was the subjection of truth to culture, Digitalism is the subjection of truth to the individual.
In a post-modern world, there was still some semblance of universal truth, granted it was solely within the realm of culture. But the reality was that you were still held accountable to the truth by those whom you interacted with within your culture. The reality of day-to-day interactions necessitated that people would call you on your crap and bring you in line with cultural truth. Why? Because whether you liked it or not, you were forced to be exposed to people of varying opinions, and more often than not, the majority opinion – public truth – was still upheld, and you were expected to adhere to it.
In the world of Digitalism, we are increasingly no longer forced to interact with those who disagree with us. Through our various Internet interactions, especially our social media platforms, we can easily delete (or ignore) friends from our lives who would dare to question our version of reality – our personal truth. For the Digitalists, the ego is supreme. Truth is derived completely from within, all reality is subjected to personal taste, preference, and experience – and most importantly, only those who carry the same truth, or who are willing to not question that truth, are sought out to become part of community. Digitalists are creating worlds within worlds. Worlds that are not bounded geographically, but instead ideologically.
Practically, this is an escalation of our already Western predisposition to consumerism and individualism. I’ve labeled it white-hot consumerism.
In a church context this means someone may choose to be part of an online church rather than a local church because they like the preaching, it feeds them spiritually, or some other personal reason. Of course, this is not a new problem, and, as Doug points out, mega-churches often result in the anonymity that allows for the same behavior. But that is not a valid argument for online church; it’s an argument for reforming the way we approach mega-church ecclesiology.
In the end, the problem is an individualistic pursuit to consume church rather than enter in to community in the local church.
Online church simply accelerates this problem. At least when people used to church hop, they had to do so within their communities. Eventually, if they church hopped enough, they’d start running into people they knew – and who, more importantly, knew them (and their church hopping ways).
Now people can attend a church thousands of miles away without ever being involved in a localized community that has the concerns and ministry needs of that person’s local community at the forefront of its mind.
What is more, we can now begin to colonize the world through our Western online churches, supplanting local congregations in foreign locales or foregoing the hard work of planting local congregations that can more effectively meet the needs of the local community and contextualize the gospel to the local culture.
We are on the way to creating a worldwide phenomenon of Christian consumerism through a medium that is one of the most individualistic and consumerist communications environments ever created.
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See: In Defense of Physical Community – Part 1
Parts 3 & 4.
Jake is the Communications Director at Praxis Church in Tempe, Arizona, and a freelance writer and editor. He enjoys long walks in the park, glorious sunsets, romantic poetry, and snarky bios that make people wonder if he’s serious. He’s also trying by God’s grace to be a good dad and great husband. He blogs at www.thejakers.com.
Tags: culture, leadership, technology
And yet here you are, using the internet to reach out to the masses with what you believe to be true. It seems ironic.
Hi Laura,
First off, I’m not trying to reach the masses. This blog has a reader demographic that is made up of many ministry leaders who are struggling to process these issues. In doing so, I’m using this medium to engage in that conversation. I’m engaging a specific audience, though there will be people who come across the conversation that were not part of the target audience.
Second, the internet is useful, especially in terms of evangelism, and I affirm that in later posts in this series. No one here is proposing to stop using the Internet in a ministry context. The discussion here is focused very specifically on using the Internet in the context of Virtual Churches and as the sole meeting place for a group of believers. That is a very different context than discussing ideas on a blog targeted to a specific audience.
[...] http://www.rethinkmission.org/church/in-defense-of-physical-community-part-two/ [...]
Love it! Love it! Love it!
Very well thought out, thank you. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Jake – I really appreciate your distinction here between post-modernism & Digitalism… truth subjected to culture and truth subjected to the individual.
Good stuff.
[...] last post discussed the cultural implications of the Internet as a communications medium, and proposed that [...]
[...] The Cultural Implications of the Internet [...]
I am really enjoying your writing style and looking forward to checking out your church’s website. I wanted to ask a few questions here.
1. What are some examples of churches that are online only and nave no physical community?
2. Do you equate the terms “postmodernism” and “relativism”?
3. You say of the church in the Digitalism age that only those who carry the same truth, or who are willing to not question that truth, are sought out to become part of community. That is exactly what I see wrong with much of the “modernist” Christian communities, like the one I grew up in. I see the “postmodern” Christian community as being more open to hearing the views of other people and more open to questions and doubts, especially questions about faith and doubts about God. While I do “unfollow” people with annoying tweets, I have intentionally followed people who I know are from different religious backgrounds and will be tweeting their religious views. I think a lot of top 100 largest and fastest growing churches are very modernist in their approaches, especially their approach to authority and truth.
While I guess I dont agree with some of your definitions and assessments of the problem, I do think that online Christian communities that have no physical interaction or desire to do so are absurd…but then again, I am an extrovert so of course I would think that.
Hi Garrett,
Thanks for your kind words. In response to your questions.
1. There are no churches as of yet that I know of that are purely online as the only expression of their meeting. Though I do know of the top of my head that Flamingo Road, LifeChurch.tv both have Internet campuses that are purely online in addition to other physical campuses. Additionally, LifeChurch.tv has a Second Life campus, which you can read about here: http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2007/03/12/lifechurchtv-has-a-second-life-church-campus/
2. Not entirely sure what the aim of this question is, but I would say that relativism is a strong component of postmodernism, though I know that many postmoderns are more akin to saying there is absolute truth, but that we can’t absolutely know it since all truth is run through the filter of culture.
3. I don’t say that of the church in digitalsim age. I say that of people in general whether in church or not. It is not postmodern to have doubts and questions – after all, David did so all through out the Psalms. Still, David affirmed God’s sovereignty and the truth of the scriptures despite that. I’d venture to say that what is postmodern is to idolize those doubts and questions and make them as important or more important than the Gospel which often has answers that we simply don’t like or find culturally acceptable.
I’d be curious to hear what constitutes an annoying tweet to you that would cause you to unfollow someone. Do you follow people who are fundamentalists and not more open to hearing from other people in order to hear their point of view?
Thanks again, and all the best.
Hey man. Thanks for the response! Ummm…an annoying tweeter…someone who is shamelessly self promoting in all of his/her tweets…like someone who just recently published a book and that is ALL she talks about or a guy who thinks he is really witty in his tweets and every tweet is some kind of audition to be a writer for Letterman or something. I do follow some people who have much more “traditional” Christian views than I do but I follow them because I am friends with them, not because I want to specifically want to hear their views on God. Do you have any fundies you would recommend I follow? BTW, looked at the Praxis website last night and what I have seen looks GREAT!
Garrett – Got it. Sorry don’t know any fundies to follow that you probably don’t know.
Thanks for the props on the website. We’re currently working on a new one that will be much more user friendly and geared towards new visitors.
Best!