Using technology/media wisely …
Bob Carlton passed on these questions for interrogating/evaluating media ...
Interrogating media
via elearnspace by gsiemens on 7/21/09
When seeking to understand media, gurus/experts like to use questions as guides. Two of the more provocative media thinkers - Postman and McLuhan offer the following to interrogate media (and technology):
In his lecture Technology and Society, Neil Postman offers the following questions for consideration:
What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
Whose problem is it?
Suppose we solve this problem decisively, what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem?
Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological innovation?
What changes in language are forced by new technologies and what is changed and forced by this new language (meanings)?
What sort of people and institutions acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?
McLuhan offered the following questions for evaluating media:
What does it extend, enhance, accelerate, intensify or enable?
When pushed beyond the limit of its potential, it will reverse what were its original characteristics; into what does it reverse?
What does it displace or obsolesce, that is, render relatively without dominant power or influence?
What does it retrieve from the past that had been formerly obsolesced?
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jimmy carter gets it right on women … and so does Jodi Mikalachki
Whatever you thought of Jimmy Carter as president, you have to respect his post-presidential work for peace, compassion, and justice. (The same goes for Bill Clinton. Have you wondered what Barack and Michelle Obama will do in the years after 2016?) Here's a report on the recent statement Carter (and others) made regarding religion-based subjugation of women ... the kind of context in which I was raised and in which many of my friends (male and female) still live. Religious communities, like human beings, need to mature ... and it's high time for a change in outlook towards women. (Not to mention many other subjects ...)
From the Associated Baptist Press article:
"This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries," he said. "The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses."
At its worst, Carter said, the belief is used to justify slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But he said discriminatory thinking is also behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why so few women hold public office in the United Kingdom and the United States.
"It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population," Carter wrote. "We need to challenge these self-serving and out-dated attitudes and practices -- as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom."
Late addition: Just read this in an email from my friend Jodi Mikalachki in Burundi, affirming Carter's comment:
President Obama has been in Africa recently, invoking the African blood that runs in his veins as a kind of charter to encourage African leaders (and Africans generally) to recognize that the fate of Africa lies in their own hands. I'm sure he is no less aware than I am that many factors outside African control also have a great impact on the continent (the world financial crisis precipitated by American greed, for instance; the continuing interference of former colonial powers in African politics and economics; the cynical indifference of individuals, corporations, and nations that continue to sell/supply arms to repressive dictators and equally destructive insurgents). But thoughtful Africans themselves are increasingly taking the line that leadership is the continent's main problem. Personally, I think the greatest impediment to the positive transformation of Africa is the deplorable status of African women and girls. Any continent that consigns half its human resources to back-breaking labor, largely unaddressed sexual violence, and many more (life-threatening) pregnancies than most of them want, is bound to fail. Nothing could do more for Africa than the steady education of girls, and I am experiencing first-hand how very difficult it is to keep them in school once they reach their teens.
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Seattle Times gets it right …
This article on the current state of the Religious Right union matches my own sense of things in my travels across the country. I've heard conservative Evangelicals say almost word for word what people quoted in this article say ... The times are changing.
Here's what former RR leader and Assemblies of God Pastor Joseph Fuiten had to say:
"I don't want the church to be viewed as oppressive, [and] as opposed to people living their lives and eking out whatever happiness they can."
He says he believes that different times call for different strategies and says that now, with the country less in sync with his traditional values, and many hurting because of the economy, people need to hear about hope, not about hell.
"God is not coercive," he said. "The idea that people ought to be free to live their life and live the way they want to — I don't object to that."
My prayer is that Christians of all sorts - Evangelical, Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Pentecostal, Orthodox, etc. - will at this time of change do three things - no, make that four:
First, we need to learn from the mistakes of the Religious Right, which were legion. That requires us to get serious about a theology of civic responsibility and the common good, which, thankfully, groups like Sojourners, Faith in Public Life, Center for Public Justice, and others are (in their various ways) eager to help us do if more of us will pay attention. It's not just the RR tactics that were amiss, and not just the strategy: on a deeper level it's the theology that undergirded the whole affair that needs to be rethought.
Second, we need to seek - prayerfully and humbly, and rooted in more seasoned theological reflection - more constructive and wise ways to invest civic energy for the common good, because the antidote to bad political engagement is not no political engagement, but rather wise and effective political engagement.
Third, we need to avoid overreacting, baptizing an agenda of the left (or center, or whatever) with the same kind of naivete that the right's agenda was previously embraced. The temptation to overreact will grow greater as the Religious Right II re-forms (as it will no doubt do), perhaps as a more extreme, fractious, reactionary, and perhaps even militant group than before.
Fourth, we need to avoid shaming those who now realize their efforts in the Religious Right were misguided. Many have told me they now feel misled and abused, both by political leaders and by their own religious leaders, are they ready to turn the page and move forward with those of us who never could stomach the RR attitude, tone, theology, or agenda in the first place. More and more are now coming to agree (as you could sense in some of the interviewees in the Seattle Times article): the Religious Right approach was disastrous ... but they don't need the rest of us to add insult to the injury they already feel with "I told you so's" and that sort of thing. Yes, we need to look back and frankly name what went wrong, and yes, we need to honestly assess the costs to Christian mission (not to mention the political process) the misadventure has inflicted upon us and the whole world. But at the same time, we need to move positively and constructively and hopefully forward.
If too many of us react to the failures of the RR with either cynicism or disillusioned apathy, we will only compound the fractures instead of heal them. There's plenty of good work for the common good waiting to be done.
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Comment on A Generous Orthodoxy …
This note is from an Anglican priest in England ...
I have just finished reading "A Generous Orthodoxy" : on the eve of the 30th anniversary of my ordination as deacon in the Church of England.. I was ordained priest the following year.
I simply want to thank you for your book: the criticisms you make of the various traditions are made in love, even if, mercifully, they are sharp and honest and challenging. Your affirmation of what is good in all these traditions is really refreshing and a great encouragement.
It strikes me, thirty years into ordained ministry in a variety of parishes, that God is so patient with us and so impatient, simultaneously! He is ever nudging, cajoling, inviting, encouraging us to be attentive to His presence and action beyond the tidy limits of our structures... to "define" is to draw a boundary round..God is beyond boundaries! Praise Him for that! Orthodoxy is in any case about "right worship"... doxa is about "glory", dogma about "teachings".
I am thrilled that God in His love and beauty and majesty encounters us in those graced moments when our only response can be worship...your book has not only prodded me intellectually, but has fed my worship. So, thank you!
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Q & R: Doctoral research …
Here's the question:
Back in 2003, I wrote my Senior Project at ??? University on the Emerging Church in the United States. Interestingly, I used Cedar Ridge, in part, as a case study to highlight ecclesial shifts happening among evangelical churches even then.
Now six years later, I am exploring thoughts on a doctoral project at ??? Theological Seminary in ???. My question for you, to use a tennis analogy, is more like a “lob shot.” My question is: Currently, what do you think most needs to be explored and examined in the Emergent Church conversation that could most benefit the Church? Put another way, if you were thinking of writing a 35 page journal article about some aspect of the Emergent Church, what would your focus be?
Thanks for any time and response you can offer to this general question.
I am grateful for the vital ministry you are carrying out in these days. As you probably well know by now, you are a strength to many of us young clergy who are living in this liminal time in Christian history.
What a great question! Response after the jump ...
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