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Theological Foundations for the Focus

An attempt will also be made to provide some coverage to recent explorations of others into the implications of Internet tools for the theological community.

Other religious links

What (and how) is linked together

Internet for Christians

Christian Cyberspace Companion

First Church of Cyberspace

Community in Cyberspace?

This is the crucial question in many discussions about online activity. The question for us is this: Are we expecting too much. In many cases, probably so. Is it realistic to hope? The answer to that question is no easier than with many other societal problems. The answer for the Christian should usually be "Yes, there is always hope." For me, it is a crucial element in a Christian theology.

Wherever people meet, with whatever portion of their personhood (here I am thinking of the cases in which we meet face to face with someone when we are not really "present" to them. Are we really "all there" in those cases, anymore than we are absent physically when we "encounter" someone online. Is there an "I-thou" encounter online?

Mission Groups?

For me, ever since my first encounters with the theology of church community communicated by the style of the Church of the Savior, and then again in encountering the "Accountable Discipleship" ideas within Methodist history as reported by the David Lowes Watson book.

Finding connection on isolated nights

Biblical items

1. Babel
2. Connection; Power in numbers; Body concept; gifts
3. Swords into plowshares
4. Greet one another; never forsake the assembly;
5. How do we sing the Lord's song in a Foreign Land?
6. Col 1:17 "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together"
1. I actually heard someone try to explain that this was talking about gravity, and that Jesus is like some "connection" that keeps everything together. I rather see it is the "foundation" to community; a needed adhesive to keep the world's people together and seek out how to best live together.

The Bible in a Book

Can the word be captured in print?

Time saving devices and "sacrifice"

Some decisions of the past are rendered irrelevant by convenience items today

Technologies that have arrived, mostly in this century, most always followed the development path of being specialty items used largely for business and initially unaffordable to most individuals. The telephone followed this path, and when it finally came into home usage, many users reserved its use to emergency, special occasion, and to arrange for getting important business done.

Move from technical, "practical use" to increasingly personal and leisure in computing and previous media

Television initially carried a lot of news, and early programs were "ported over" from radio. It took a while for the medium to develop its own unique content and grow up a subculture within it that represented some kind of "shared experience" within American society. As this happened , more people began to give up more "social" gatherings for the intake of television content.

VCRS allowed us to time shift and thus made it possible to see an anticipated show AND participate in some other events and experience them both. But the VCR also built a new source of content to be consumed by the public: the video featuring movies that many had missed or not been able to afford to see at the theater when it was initially released. So there was more to "stay home and do".

Now the same accusations of "distraction" from relationships has been leveled at the Computer Communication phenomenon. Neil Postman, Clifford Stoll, and others are sounding warnings that this new source of communication is driving us further from community. As I have explored in this study, I tend to feel that it has moved us closer to interaction again. With most entertainment media, we are passive recipients. With Computer Mediated Communication, we are once again interacting with other beings. If they have no bodies, at least they are representatives of a body; a person.

Haves vs Have nots

Very few of the voices extolling the virtues of the online revolution give much consideration to the issue of who has this access to the world that promises to give a voice to all and change the face of education and democracy. In Road Warriors, Burnstein and Kline give a more focused look at the socioeconomic issues at the heart of the Information Highway.

The WIRED World

I qualify the concept by calling it "the Wired World" because I want to recognize that the entire world is not accessible via computer. There remain the issues of access.