Religious Reality TV?

Reality TV or Religious Education? CNN had this story of a Malaysian TV Talent show that has young contestants competing to become a Muslim Imam. At stake is a job, a paid pilgrimage to Mecca, and a scholarship to travel to Saudi Arabia for study.

I'm not sure what to make of it. It is educational in that the show explores what it means to be an Imam. I might be inclined to watch a show like that simply out of curiosity; is being an Imam similar to being a priest, pastor or rabbi, or is it something different? Yes, I know that they are they are different religions, I meant the general job description. What about the use of popular television? Does it cheapen the call to ministry? Or is it clever marketing? How would I feel about "So you think you can preach" or "Baptists have Talent"?

I know what I think, what about you? A good idea or three strikes?

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Making Community

I recently bought a copy of Heidi Campbell's new book When Religion Meets New Media. I've just started reading it, but have also gone back to some of her earlier writings. A writer's ideas develop over time, and I find it helps me understand their ideas if I can "go back" and join them on their journey.

I'm re-reading "The Question of Christian Community Online: The Case of the 'Artist World Network.'" I've blogged about Virtual Church before, but this article describes more generally online religious communities. In her earlier research, she identified six key markers of online religious community: space for personal relationships; ability to give and receive support; they value members; intimate communication within the group; strong connection for members; and shared faith.

The debate rages on whether one can have real community online; I think most people who have been part of virtual communities would argue that they can be as authentic as offline communities. Perhaps the crux of the problem is the lack of authentic communities on or offline. Regrettably, this includes many churches where membership requires only token attendance and support. Building community takes time and effort, and grows organically from the participants. Campbell wrote: "...it was the people not the [discussion] boards' creator who 'makes up the community.'" (p. 265) This is important for offline church leaders to notice as well; they can't create community. They can provide a safe space where community can grow, but it is the members who grow community. Another observation Campbell made was that sometimes the community that forms is very different from the community the administrators imagined. This can be scary for leaders, online or offline.

Is authentic community important enough to take the risk?

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Christ in the Cloud?

Many Christians find the practice of daily devotional reading important for their spiritual development. Since 1956 an evangelical Christian ministry Radio Bible Class has produced a little booklet called "Our Daily Bread" that includes a daily Bible reading and related inspirational thought. Other popular devotional booklets are "The Upper Room" (1935) and the Roman Catholic publication "The Word Among Us" (1981). There have been "Daily Breads" around our house since I was a child, and they remain a helpful tool for worship and reflection.

Media has changed, and I was interested to see that these ministries have enthusiastically adopted new media to communicate their message. You can still get "Our Daily Bread" in booklet form, but also as a streaming audio, podcast, mobile download, RSS or Twitter Feed.

What caught my attention was the tag cloud built of descriptive terms (tags) associated with each devotional and "weighted" based of popularity of that tag. Like the tag list I have on my blog except theirs is much cooler. These tags are actually assigned by the author, and as such aren't really "social tags" where the readers, not the author, decides what the devotional is "about" and tags it accordingly.

It is interesting to see the very different tags in this floating cloud. I was wondering how the tags would be different if I tagged the devotionals or if you did. I was looking at the tags for the devotional on October 22, 2009; I would have chosen some of them, but others seemed too abstract or theological. Who are they for? Faith is very personal; I would think that the tags would tell you as much about me as they likely would about the devotionals. Maybe I'll need to suggest social tagging to the folks at "Our Daily Bread."

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What I Learned-ed 3: What are you saying?

I wanted to tell you about a paper by Cameron Hoffman and Sarah Polkinghorne. The session was entitled “Discourse identity and practice: analyzing librarians’ conversations about information literacy and the social web.”

They analyzed posts to the email list ILI-L (an email discussion list for Information Literacy Instruction Librarians). The idea behind the study was that by examining how we talk about something we can often identify the assumptions and motivations behind the text. Hoffman and Polkinghorne considered what instruction librarians said about the use of the social web (Facebook, MySpace, Youtube etc.) in information literacy instruction.

I wasn’t surprised by their results, though I am certainly concerned. Although librarians are adopting social software for instruction, their concerns, as expressed on the list, aren't always about pedagogy; rather it was often about control. First, librarian posters frequently portrayed their clients as consumers not learners, and then themselves as service providers. (Wait a second, isn’t this list about teaching? Why does it suddenly sound like marketing?)

Hoffman and Polkinghorne then identified four themes in this discourse:

• Tips, tricks and techniques – Librarians weren’t really interested in pedagogy (learning theory and practice). They wanted tips on “making them listen” etc.
  
• Moral language – Wikedpedia is pure evil, we are gatekeepers to the good.
• Anxiety – There is a lot of anxiety around social web and instruction, and the future role of librarians.
• Sensitivity to new technologies – We think we need to be masters of the social web. (I guess the joke is on librarians: no one masters the social web.)

I’m over simplifying their research, but what I began to ask "is it really about the social web or is it whether librarians know how to teach?" Are wikis a tool in your teacher kit or is that the sum of your game? If you don’t understand teaching, then the gimmicks will only take you so far. But if you understand learners and learning, and when the social web can be engaged to foster learning, then you really have little to fear.

We need to talk about this more...

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