Legitimate Theological and Sociological Exploration of Online Community

I wanted to say that I hope these arguments I am offering against the "contrarian" arguments put forth in Habits of the High-Tech Heart are not to be taken as a questioning of the credentials of Quentin Schultze,  nor the importance of the points he wishes to emphasize.  My intent is to make a defense for the alternatives to the kinds of "misuse" of technology that he identifies,  and also to suggest some of the more succinct sociological issues and effects of online interaction.  The whole Real vs Virtual Community debate,  and whether or not certain elements of "being Church" can be "incarnated" online is an area which I will always encourage exploration. 

As I have indicated before,  Quentin Schultze has provided for the Church a variety of resources for exploring values that are transmitted to us via various media.  Such questions are important for a Church which wishes to "speak the truth to power".  But we must also hear from those who are at work in the attempts to appropriate technology in the cause of helping the Church tell her story.   This is not a calling that Schultze exudes,  at least as evidenced in the emphases of this book. But my resistance to the treatment (or lack thereof) given to theologically legitmate uses of online and Web technologies comes from my fear that such consistently negative, cautionary approaches will further the phobias that many in the Church have toward online technology as "instruments of ministry".  I further want to combat the idea that "online technology" is largely "informational",   and thus implies that Church use of online technology should be limited to schedules and announcements and roadmaps to the Church building.  These kinds of approaches give rise to "Brochureware",  where we simply copy existing offline printed material to a web page.   It's time we begin to explore the "story telling" capabilities we have in this medium,  and also the ways in which we can "link" dialogue and "information" to related stories and resources for exploring other stories,  and we do this by using "databases",  which Schultze also seems to encourage us to eschew as impersonal respositories of flat, lifeless data. 

As Paul would say,  "May it never be!" (that's the dainty, cleaned up KJV translation.....the Greek actually suggests something like "Hell No!" ....a tidbit of theology courtesy of Clarence Jordan)

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:39:21 PM.