1. Emerging church bloggers in Australia:Prophets, priests and rulers in God’s virtual world Paul Emerson Teusner
2. Why ask? YouTube disgrace of Melbourne priest Web 2.0 promises: Parliament on religious symbols, practices and structures Reconstruction of religious community and participation Shift in the boundary between public and private Reshaping patterns of production, distribution and consumption of religious text (information, cultural goods, shared knowledge
3. Ask what? How do those involved in the emerging church conversation use blogging technology to construct individual and communal online religious identities?
5. Three levels of exploration Discursive tensions in identifying the emerging church Changing patterns of interaction and self-presentation Negotiating the paradoxes of religion in the blogosphere
9. Paradox 1: Cyborg What does it mean to talk of belief in, and to behave in response to, incarnational theology in a place where bloggers do not take their bodies? Cyberspace is not a place where the Cyborg goes to and returns from every once in a while, but exists permanently within his or her reach in everyday life. Cyberspace is one setting among all the others in a Cyborg’s real life where interaction occurs. All settings are virtual.
10. Paradox 2: Network Bloggers like to see themselves at the edge of bounded communities, and the emerging church online So while they seek to determine what emerging church is, they repel notions that they would speak on its behalf, or even belong to it Bloggers challenge any attempt by outsiders to define them Rather see themselves as small nodes in a larger network that is fluid and unbounded
11. Paradox 3: Authority Wish to assert that contemporary religious discourse excludes women, young people, lay people, cultural minorities Their emphasis on writing, and their values on what makes for good blogging excludes many people
12. Paradox 4: Glocal Fiercely defend themselves against global definitions of who they are Repel notions of establishing a national network Seek to be “glocal” – drawing resources from global network to work in local contexts
13. In context of wider debates Bloggers seek continuity of offline identity, in their desire to create an authentic space, and a place to explore religion as a whole Network that is more strongly connected to offline networks and communities of practice, than to idea of an emerging church blogosphere as a whole “More of the same” when it comes to promises of Web 2.0 Bloggers are aware of constraints to equal voices, but are themselves constrained by the medium
14. Conclusion Blogosphere seen as a place of safety, risk and authenticity, but an incomplete connection Blogosphere offers this through the development of online symbolic/discursive practices While old authority structures are called into question, the medium favours writing. Therefore the technorati are the literati. Emerging church bloggers represent: Debates about the culture wars of secularisation and deprivatisation The place of orthodoxy in pluralism The “left-right” dichotomy of public religion Tensions between belonging to fixed church communities and fluid religious networks and movements
Editor's Notes
Public religionInformed by Breward and Thompson that Christianity has historically been happy with secularisationTurner: liberalisation and globalisation leads to dominance of heterodox, commercial over orthodox, professional religionCasanova: deprivatisation leads to “falling into left-right dichotomy” in a culture war with secularisationPostmodern spiritualityDavis, Gunkel, Wertheim, BrasherTechnology seen as a “way out”Patterns of sociabilityCastells, GiddensChallenges idea of community as dominant site of social interaction for identity formationChallenges previous studies of online religionSocial construction of the InternetRheingold, Turkle, Hine, Kennedy, van DijckOnline discursive practicesMarshall, Lövheim, TurnerCan’t assume that Internet is devoid of etiquette & social capitalReligious identity1. Spiritual cyborg: one who connects with technology to work out truth of the matter
Point 2: though Australian emerging church created in order to distinguish it from American version
