CL8530 | Gospel and Cultures

Please pray for Myanmar

As you read "Obama urges Myanmar to release Aung Sang Suu Kyi" at CNN and the process of Suu Kyi's court trial in Irrawaddy.org, please pray for Myanmar. 

Thank

Hrang

Journal, May 11, 2009

Our presenter took up the mantle of setting the table for conversation around Joylon Mitchell’s book entitled Media Violence and Christian Ethics. Mitchell details how violence is transmitted and instead of remaining passive, wonders how Christians can actively and constructively engage this material. Here, Mitchell wants to imagine audiences as moral agents. Throughout, Mitchell seems to dialogue with three conversational partners: Johann Baptist Metz, Walter Wink, and Rene Girard. Through conversation, Mitchell interacts with dangerous memory, the power of so-called redemptive violence, mimetic desire and the scapegoating mechanism of Girard. We talked about how violence is embedded in the spectacular and used, reused, and recycled while practices for peace often go unnoticed. Media becomes restricted by what it chooses to notice and the kind of reality that it brings to bear.         

 

The first respondent wondered why Mitchell did not deal directly with violence and how it functioned politically in scripture. At this point, we began to weave some threads with the Christian story. How is the violence in scripture mediated? We spent some time talking about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, especially noting the flogging scene. We found it curious that a Catholic lay person (Gibson) framed this movie in a particular way and how it was welcomed and largely celebrated by the more evangelical crowd. Interestingly, how media in this instance, became a platform of commonality between two diverse religious groups. It is important to note how fluid the images, values, and religious beliefs are within the media. It is reminiscent of Kathryn Tanner’s argument that Christian identity is marked by searching for an identity. The movie also prompted became the foil for a discussion of torture and the Christian faith. Is there a correlation between one’s religious fervor in relation to torture?  

 

From a media perspective, we might understand the images, values, and beliefs that are transmitted a particular kind of noticed theology. Technology becomes a concrete way of sharing what is noticed. Here, Christians can enter creatively and expand and critique the conversation from their particular perspective of violence. We might ask: What do we choose to notice and transmit in regards to the reality that we want to scaffold? How do we interpret and seek to transform violence through embodied ritual? What does our liturgy convey, and moreover, how might media create spontaneous, overlapping circles of consensus? Finally, as we draw to the end of the semester, we wondered, “How does the missional church think about media culture?”      

Missio Inter Gentes, William Burrows

This could provide some guiding lines to the conversation. 

http://www.acu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/92530/Intercultural_formation_for_mission.pdf

Thanks,

Harvey

Journalist May 4

Journalist Report-May 4-Scharer and Hilberath

Susan Tjornehoj

Our class began with a litany containing basketballs and baseballs, slingshots, five loaves and two fish, nails, and God’s hands, with reference to their power and their value. But mention of Mark McGwire and Pete Sampras, even Michael Jordan in the litany caused some to reflect on how long this piece had been in circulation. After the journalist presented his reflections our conversation continued with a probe of digital culture in current events. For example, both the presence of a google flu map and wiki-flu have had a significant impact on the reporting and charting of H1N1/swine flu. This led to the class reading an article by Mark Taylor entitled “Doctors of Miseducation.” Another class member caused a disruption and inserted a reflection by Clay Shirkey into the discussion making the argument that we are living in a time of “filter failure,” not information overload.

The presenter, Medhat Yowkem, shared his appreciation for the book The Practice of Communicative Theology: An Introduction to a New Theological Culture by M. Scharer and B. Jochen Hilberath. He felt that the authors brought together many of the strands of this class, especially the discussion of contextual theology and civil society. We then traveled via video clip to Yowkem’s hometown in Egypt where a young man was killed in a clash between Muslims and Christians just last fall. For six months, the village was suspended between a culture of revenge and honor. The family of the victim refused the comfort of the village and stood poised for revenge. With government/military troops providing order, leaders from the Muslim and Christian communities met and worked toward reconciliation. In April, video cameras and cameras documented burial shrouds carried by religious leaders through the streets and comfort tent in a form of public theology. On the sacred texts of the two faiths, the father of the victim could declare that finally his son was really dead and the village was released from the tension of the past months. Was this an example of communicative theology? Was this village in Egypt, its careful deliberation, an example of Theme-centered Investigation (TCI)?

The first respondent wondered who controls communication in communicative theology. He was concerned that TCI seemed to be a church-centered method. It also did not bridge the gap between academic and everyday theology, researchers and research objects. In response to the case study by the presenter, he wondered who controlled the process, what was the role of the leaders, and who had power.

The second respondent noted that the day’s presentation really had two massive texts—one was the case study/story/video and the other, the text on communicative theology. How do we bring these two texts together? He also observed that the authors of the book chose to move away from the idea of reconciliation as not complex enough, as closing off conversation. He also wondered if they really were church-centered.

Some other thoughts: What do the authors mean by globe? If a community uses TCI, what difference will it make? The case study IS an example of communicative theology and TCI since it worked at the border, with the I and the We. What about the process of reconciliation and the government’s role? Missio inter gentes…

Clay Shirky Re: Mark C. Taylor Op-Ed

What I do think is potentially quite interesting is all of the work on filtering that says a big part of the value of information is actually downstream from its production. I would like to be reading or talking about what my friends are reading or talking about, or my colleagues are reading or talking about, or my competitors are reading or talking about. And this rise of social filtering—there’s an interesting phenomenon in the university world, where the number of papers jointly published by two or more researchers working in different institutions is on the rise. And it’s on the rise because it’s very… sitting at your desk, it’s almost easier to figure out, “Who else [in the world] is working on what I’m working on?” than to figure out, “What are my colleagues down the hall working on that isn’t like what I’m working on?” And that idea of information weakening the walls of the institution seems to me to be really beneficial for cross-disciplinary work. I mean, I think the fact that many of the people doing behavioral economics are psychologists is indicative of the kind of cross-disciplinary work we can potentially hope for in the future. So, I think that one of the ways to get around this filter failure problem is—you know, I refuse to use the term ‘information overload’ for obvious reasons—is to start deploying these social filters that assume that at least part of why I want to read or look at something is to be able to have valuable thoughts or conversations in tandem with other people.

And I think that when we start to see those kinds of conversational groups form in the kind of salon culture, particularly in university communities, we will see a potential transformation not of just whole academic institutions but also individual disciplines, where the econo-physics people, the behavioral economics people, and the neo-classical economics people are all now having a conversation that cannot be resolved with reference to only one of those three disciplines. And that potential for saying, “You know what, we’re going to give up on any idea that one can have read the ‘relevant literature’ now,” because a lot of that was just artificial barriers around the filter. And, instead, we’re going to say, “I’m reading the literature that’s keeping the conversation I’m having kind of the most interesting it can be.” That seems to me a potential way out of the current filter failure problem.

- Clay Shirky, Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/overload/interview_with_clay_shirky_par_1.php

Journal Report

Journal   April 27, 2009

 

Even though it’s relative, I would feel that prof. Simpson looks like ‘an analog teacher’ (in Korean culture, TEACHER stands next to God in line!) and prof. Hess seems to be a digital teacher (We would say that lord, teacher and father are all-in-one! Maybe this is a kind of ‘peer interaction and collaboration’—as Mark said (p.2)—to construct harmonious civil society and educational polity. Just like Trinity!). This means that this class was planned to learn how to make a harmony between philosophy and phenomenon, ideal and reality and the inside of life and the outside of life, I think. Though I would stand on idealistic position, it seems that I have to buy a book which is ‘Engaging Technology in Theological Education: All That We Can’t Leave Behind (Communication, Culture & Theology) by prof. Hess and learn realistic something from it.   

We started the class reminding of CIQ and previous discussion. While seeing Harvey’s presentation, everyone was full of admiration for his ability of summary of 500 pages’ book. He insisted that we are in ‘a battle in the domain of law and policy, over the shape of the social settlement that will emerge around the digital computation and communications revolution.’ With a diagnosis about our Sitz im Leben, he raised a question, ‘Where does the church appear in all this?’ He also asked an important question:  ‘The networked public sphere is indeed the Third Place?’ In particular, he tried to let us reckon the relationship between third place as networked public sphere and church, congregational leadership, and CML at that time.

In this thick academic book, Benkler offers a comprehensive catalog of flashpoints in the conflict between old and new information creators. His book captures an important set of developments – how new information technologies make it easier for individuals to collaborate in producing cultural content, knowledge, and other information goods. It draws links across apparently disparate subject areas to present a theory of how these technologies are reshaping opportunities for social action.

Mark’s paper as a first respondent showed an insightful comment that ‘Benkler is noting the possibility of a fundamental shift in how the various aspects of societal life are negotiated and managed’ (p.1). He also indicated that Benkler views the emergence of a networked world as enabling a “new practical individual freedom” (p.2). However, he wondered about “sin and the amplifying affect of a world so immediately available and connected. While the possibilities for collaboration and justice are certainly enhanced, so are possibilities not as attractive…Benkler is an effective apologist for this new emerging world, and his understandings of freedom and autonomy have a certain rosy irresistibility” (p.5).

Jason as a second respondent tried to construct a form with three categories: Clarification, Curiosities and Critiques. As I recall—I missed recording of class—several colleagues said about Critiques. He also shows the analysis about ‘Internet Users in the World by Geographic Regions’ and ‘World Internet Penetration Rates by Geographic Regions.’ What’s interesting is that the World Internet Penetration Rates of North America are the highest in the world but its rate is lower than Asia in the case of ‘Internet Users.’ He also introduced www.feautor.com as a free, multilingual, and open space to share religious resources and www.copyrightsolver.com for helping one become fully copyright compliant through online administration, consultation and education.

 

 

 

Wealth of Networks wiki

Better later than never? Here's a great wiki built up around Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks.

Social networking and "third places"

With the brief flurry of discussion around "third places" yesterday, I thought some of you might be interested in this paper on "social networking, the 'third place' and the evolution of communication."

Journal Report

April 20, 2009

As I carefully observed the candle light lit every week as a sign of God’s presence in our class, I felt something different this week. It does not remain the same as it was before. The shape has been changed. It gets shorter and smaller, but no surprise, its energy to give light to the class remains the same. The candle reminds us not only the confidence of God’s presence, but also teaches us the meaning of Christian life, a life that gives light and life to others. Moreover, its shortness also reminds us the fact that we are closing toward the end of this semester, ringing a warning bell into our ears to get ready for our final papers.   

            We started our class with a prayer followed by a short reflection from the previous discussion. While everyone was trying to recall the previous discussion, Prof. Simpson invited us to have a conversation on the subject ‘Gospel and Cultures’ in the coming week, after the class. Jason’s question about how to make balance between gospel (exegetically explained by Prof. Simpson) and “culture all the way down” (argued by John in the first class) somehow relates with this week readings. How does the gospel make sense in the midst of techno-media culture? What does it look like doing an internet-based ministry in the American context? How effective is using internet in ministry and academic fields? In responding to these questions and other related issues, Jason gave a complicated but excellent presentation based on Fine et al’s Rebooting America and Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. Though some of us seemed to have a hard time to engage in the discussion about the media-related issues, the way Jason presented his paper drew attention from the class, especially his YouTube video presentation was excellent.

Jason’s questions, based on his video clip, on the importance of academic writing relates to congregational leadership. “What makes writing ‘good’? How writing (using internet) relates with congregational leadership?” Though some of us might have some doubt whether using internet relates with missional leadership, his “today’smeet.com” proved the fact that the twenty first century missional leaders must be familiar with internet media culture. “Today’smeet.com” was a real revolution of technology that can change the nature of our class. Nevertheless, there are legitimate questions raised by the second respondent, such as: How can church mission be organized by this technological power? What is the place of Gospel in this new technology era/world? What is the role of the church in this new technology era? There would always be two distinct concepts as Prof. Mary described referring to Elull and Shirky’s negative and open/positive view toward technology. We cannot deny the fact that “technology has a great impact/influence in the internet society; the church has no escape from this context.” However, the issue of how to define ‘community’ in this individualistic-technology era still seems to be in question.

R2P

Woop! I paste the same article from Irrawaddy. Please read Crisis in Burma from R2P website. Thanks.