Sam, thanks so much for posting this. Alan Jacobs is imho one of the most gifted Anglican writers out there. You’ll find in his blog also pays considerable attention to the problems of technology.
This is an angle that probably deserves more attention in Anglican circles. How have our assumptions regarding technology, and behavior formation resulting from use of various forms of technology, influenced our discourse as Anglicans?
Also: how do our presuppositions about technology, and habits gained from technology, tend to reinforce certain enlightenment presuppositions regarding an autonomous subject and its world?
You will find that Jacobs covers authors usually avoided by Christians who are more prominent in non-Christian academia - I see he’s lately referred to Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology. E.g., Shane Hipps wrote the book Flickering Pixels a year or two ago on the subject of internet technology which received quite a lot of attention in Christian circles - I haven’t read this book yet, but it seemed to mostly pick up on just a few of the insights of Marshall McCluhan - rather than ploughing into the more difficult, but much more challenging realm of Heidegger, the Marxists, etc. etc.. We’d want to cover Derrida on writing and Walter Benjamin and some other Frankfurter Schule people if we really wanted to do this properly. Instead we tend to latch onto little sound-bytey tidbits like McCluhan and then meander a while with various personal embroiderings and “real life stories” etc. etc. (a revisionist is likely at this point to make some remark about “Evangelicals” - which very likely would be true - but from all I read coming from TEC land, I can assure you that the habit is just as entrenched there as amongst Evangelicals, though usually with different sources for the soundbytes).
This will sound like it’s coming out of way-left-field, but it does seem to me: the current group of TEC loyalists seems to be much further removed from the Marxist critiques of technology than either the Catholic or Reformed strains of Anglicans (with those identifying with American Evangelicalism being closer in missing the boat here). There seems to be a longing for religion as “fact” - not in the sense of “true, solid” - but “fact” as something which can be made immediately relevant no matter what one’s commitments and affinities are - you can have Jesus “just as you are” and be happy in being affirmed “just as you are.” In TEC, it’s the creation of a kind of Jesus ideology which should immediately be appealing to anyone interested in social justice, irrespective of creed, commitments, habits. In evangelicalism, it tends to be a glossing over of important theological reflections which are a part of those things which we beleive, with a desire to “cut to the chase” and just bring everything to the cross. In both cases, there is something rather revoltingly “modular” about it - i.e., it becomes a kind of a “part” which can be “fit” onto anything, anywhere in a “plug and play” fashion. “Just do this ... and it will work.” +KJS was quite right in telling us the danger of the “just say this prayer” mentality. Catholicism is the most resistant to this type of thinking.
We hear similar words these days from evangelicals and sources closer to the TEC loyalist camp. I.e., Bishop Spong tells us, “the Resurrection needs to be accessible to everyone.” In order to make it thus “accessible,” he re-invents it so it is no longer an event or something involving recognition and belief - but something else (it ends up getting rather incohate, there is a lot of hand-waving ... I daren’t try to sum up what it becomes, and I’m not sure there really is an idea here which is capable of being summed up, it is probably best left as “Spong’s substitution for the resurrection”). Evangelicals also strongly emphasize the “for everyone” (much more so than Catholics and Calvinists). Though I strongly believe that Jesus is for everyone - I think it’s also important to point out: not everyone will immediately understand what He did, nor do we need to feel under pressure to present the atonement, or the resurrection, in terms which are more likely to be immediately accepted by those that hear. Rather, in dealing with our interlocutors, we need to take on the much more arduous task of understanding “where they are,” what light God has already given their understanding, and seeing how we can move from that point, gradually, shedding light on the gospel, and removing intellectual obstacles which stand in the way of faith (while, of course, being vessels of God’s love, and involved in incarnate ministry).
In the last few decades, there was a time that it was popular for American Evangelicals to speak of “world views.” This is in itself is healthy - it points to a larger context, and that we may need to develop a shared language and understanding of certain things, in the process of proclaiming God’s word - as Paul did on Mars Hill. I’m afraid though that this caved in to other American Evangelical tendencies ... it became a bit trite, it involved power-point-like presentations of “World view A” and “World view B” and of course ... “this is what a Christian world view needs to look like” (with tendencies to smuggle in our own political and other proclivities). Such an over-cooked, reified version of “world views” is hardly convincing, and I’m not surprised that talk of “world views” seems to have lost popularity amongst Evangelicals - Evangelicals wanted to get into the talk, presumably hoping they would be “moved by the spirit,” but without doing the hard work of reading and thinking - and a lot of empty talk on the matter ended in everyone getting bored or assuming it had already been talked-out.
An advantage being brought up in a more “liberal” ideology - including many who will find themselves in more “liberal” TEC churches - is one is more likely to have affinity for the critique of the enlightenment autonomous subject. I.e., “we don’t all just make ourselves - we’re a society, we’re in this together, and that has a profound impact upon what we feel and even what we think.” In societies with racist tendencies, people are likely to harbor attitudes and thoughts which have little to do with “reality.” And, when we are being honest, it’s difficult to hold up western society - even in areas rather vehemently against racism - as an ethical Shangri-La. There are problems we all share, and they are very deeply rooted, in manners which are frequently invisible to us; it’s the very nature of living in any kind of society with its implicit presuppositions and manners of life. This, of course, opens the door to understanding the (dare I say “cosmic,” as Spong has popularized this word?) cosmic nature of sin - deeply enrooted, beyond our perception, controlling our public actions and even private thoughts.
Of course, one must also understand how we recognize Christ as individuals - this may be more difficult for one who comes from a more “liberal” background. But for one who comes from a more “libertarian” type background - one is confronted with the challenge of recognition of any kind of hamartia other than government (and other groups) stifling individual initiative. Evangelicals often lean toward libertarianism, since they believe governments and pressure groups are more likely to inhibit the proclamation of the Gospel than help it. But the associated attitudes of libertarianism can, in the long term, have a devastating effect on, not only the cause of the gospel, but also the social fabric. Atlas Shrugged was found by the American Library of Congress to have been the second most influential book in a 1997 study. I have no doubt that Evangelical political attitudes were a major contributing factor to this book’s success.
This, I must admit, is a considerable meandering from Alan Jacobs’s original point regarding a nasty and brutish blogging world. I suppose twitter-like technology tends to encourage us to flock toward groups whose sound-bytes we understand and can appreciate, and feel implicit affirmations in seeing ourselves as amongst the “good guys” who support whatever cause it is being championed - and thus we become atomistic individuals within rather atomized little groups - things which parishes and dioceses are supposed, in theory, to avoid in our diversity as the body of Christ, but for which the internet, unrooted from any concrete community, provides ample encouragement.
I have a great appreciation for this place - it encourages dialogue and discursive reflection above one-liner pot shots. This is a habit which our Communion needs desperately; it is also a habit which must be nurtured, and is far from “natural” - especially in conditions like our own, and in times like today.
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