My Experience Twittering Religion

Quick Post: In the past month, I've noticed a lot on the use of media in congregations. It also happens to be a very blog-friendly topic -- visual media items can be seen, reviewed, and downloaded by readers with the links provided.

Now that I've experienced a conference where I fully immersed myself in living the "twittering stream of religion," I want to again bring up the use of Twitter in religious gatherings.

What started my thinking for today is coming across another "Twitter and Church" discussion. The website Church Marketing Sucks posted a set of links to their recent entries on the use of Twitter (the micro-blogging service) you can explore:

Image via CrunchBase

• Twittering the Sermon
  
• Church Marketing Lab on Twitter
  
• It's Twitter Time For Your Church
  
• Twitter Passion Play
  
• Top Tweeting Church Leaders
  
• Twitter at Church
  
• What Would Jesus Twitter?
  
• Share the Gospel in 140 Characters or Less
  
• wethechurch.org and Your Church
  
• Twitter for Churches

But the extent of Twitter is far more than church services.

More broadly, posts like this lead me to conclude that churches, denominations, seminaries, and para-church organizations have moved American religion decisively toward mainstreaming social media.

My experience with this at the Moltmann Conversation organized by Emergent Village is the first time I decided to dive into this Twitter stream full-force.

Conferences like the Moltmann Conversation I joined at Chicago and the earlier Earl Lectures conference at Berkeley encourage attenders to "tweet" through the sessions. Wi-Fi is available in the auditorium, and extra electrical "plugs"are spread throughout the room. This allows laptops and other portable devices like smartphones to sustain power. I used the "twubs" service found at "http://twubs.com/moltmann" and the "#" hashtag "#moltmann" available through my twitter feed.

The collective "tweets" are available to participants and displayed on a large, public screen at the front of the auditorium. Between my laptop, my phone and the screen up front, I was able to access tweets continuously. This added another dimension to capturing the mood and messages of the conference by letting participants reverberate quotes, observations, questions, insights, and online resources through a continuous live stream.

In my experience, Twitter primarily echoes significant statements made on the platform. I found the 250+ audience in Chicago to be aggressive listeners. When they hear a good statement, they capture it and reel it in with the zeal of a fly fisherman. Fellow "tweeters" will snatch that sentence -- keeping it to 140 characters -- and "tweet" it to the rest of the group. The more times the statement is posted, and the more it is RT'ed (return posted by others), the more collectively important the sentence appears to be. As the conference goes on, I read and follow others thoughts as we revisit significant statements, drawing them out of the steady flow of talk happening out front.

This forces the conference to take on an aphoristic quality. Sharp, witty statements are accentuated; paragraphs of thoughts are assumed. It's less a summary, and more an attempt to help hearers remember what happened.

In addition, people post short remarks and questions. Some will add a link that sends others to online ideas and sources. This gives a privileged view of the "mind" of other participants. What are they asking? What are they critiquing? What do they highlight? What do they ignore?

Also, some at the conference took a few pictures. Using the service "Twitpic", you can capture the view of the conference as taken by one of the participants. Here's a picture twittered from the Moltmann Conversation. Using all tweets together, we have the potential of creating a type of textual and visual archive for the event.

Because the Twitter feed is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, people unable to physically attend are able to vicariously experience some aspect of the conference by also catching the tweet-flow. While it is not a summary of the conference, those not there still derive at least some small benefit and an unusual privilege of overhearing some of the best "lines" from a very long conversation.

Finally, it's hard to ignore that "tweeting" conferences is a fascinating form of participatory marketing. Conference organizers know that while actively twittering adds value to participants and observers, it is also a benefit to the organizers to "spread the word" and broadcast the happenings of the conference in multiple directions through social networks. Thus, the power of social media to promote this and future events is realized in a distinctive way.

My experience at the conference helped me appreciate the extent to which organizers are deliberately adding "tweeting" to their events. So Twitter is interesting and important not only for worship and liturgy but also for the expansive experience of religion and collective experience.

I left considering this question: could the use of Twitter become as "normal" to Christianity as the use of hymnals?

Instant Cool: Explaining the Diffusion of "Contemporary" Church Culture

Church Marketing Sucks, a website concerned with the use of contemporary marketing techniques by church leaders, recently provided a list of great media resources for churches freely available online. Through sites like these, we have a privileged window into American religion. Why? Because understanding the circulation of these media materials gives us an alternative means for understanding the widespread diffusion of "contemporary" church culture.

Image by mufan96 via Flickr

We know contemporary churches use rented facilities. Not just movie theaters and high school auditoriums--churches are using bars and coffeehouses, community centers and warehouses, even lake shores and parking lots. How do these church leaders focus spiritual attention in these architecturally challenging sites?

Well, what's happening is that even churches who do not have specially-designed or "megachurch" aesthetics are adopting sharp media imagery to promote an exciting "vibe" that directs devotional attention and speaks to quality (and money) even when the church is just starting out.

Take a look through the free resource sites listed by Church Marketing Sucks below. Each of these congregational ministries have longtime experience producing entire suites of visual materials that compliment and accentuate message series:

• Elevation Church
  
• Lifechurch.tv
  
• Northside Christian Church
  
• Stuff I Can Use (Southeast Christian Church)
  
• The Church Box (Four Corners Community Church)
  
• CreativeMYK
  
• Muddy River Media

Clicking and exploring these sites, you get a sense of what non-high liturgy, "contemporary" churches are bringing into their services.

(For church-researcher types, these materials provide fodder for understanding seeker churches, new paradigm churches, and emerging adult spirituality.)

But, I'm writing this post to make a particular point: The availability of these materials points out an aspect of the modern diffusion of church culture. Here's what I see.

The internet is allowing more easy accessibility to media resources. Churches which have produced these materials (and are frequently asked by scores of other church leaders who literally salivate over obtaining such things) are seeing the extension of their local church ministry as giving away these resources--at zero cost.

See, churches that produce these materials are well aware of the money and time invested in the creation of media materials that have an inherent disposability to them. They'll never be used again in their church (since churches don't "repeat" sermon series). So they are happy to have them used by others and see their investment put to good use by others.

In other words, providing media resources to other churches (after they have been used in the base church) is understood to be part of the missional outreach of the congregation.Graphic materials are viewed as tools (modern, necessary, missionary tools) that can be easily adapted by like-minded ministries who are perceived to be essentially partnering with them to spread a message they already believe should be widely promoted.

Because these media items are used in many different churches across the nation (perhaps the anglophone world), and because church attenders are highly unlikely to know the materials they see were originally used somewhere else, there is an unacknowledged yet powerful diffusion of Christian visual culture -- at last a type of Christian culture.

And because we have not studied this, I speculate that the diffusion of style, ambiance, and ethos of religion embedded within these media materials is reinforcing particular boundaries of similarity and identity.

In the research literature, this is a type of "institutional isomorphism." But I won't go into all that now. It's enough to say that researchers DiMaggio and Powell* defined imitating or "Mimetic Processes" as coming from similar external conditions. In particular:

Uncertainty encourages imitation.

What does this mean for how "contemporary" church culture is widely reproduced?

Let's look at how this works. Using DiMaggio and Powell's framework, predictors of similarity (or "isomorphism") are based on premises like this:

Principle 1: The greater the centralization of resource supply, the more it will change to resemble the organizations it is dependent upon.

Application 1: There are only a few churches willing to give away these media materials, so the dependency on these few churches raises their influence as models for how to "do church."

Principle 2: The more uncertainty, the more an organization will model it's structure after successful firms.

Application 2: The means to growing new (and struggling) churches is highly uncertain, so leaders look to the successes of other, usually much larger and media-rich, churches.

Principle 3: The more ambiguous the goals, the more an organization will mimic a successful one to establish legitimacy.

Application 3: A mission statement like "Reaching our community with the gospel" is quite ambiguous, so church leaders quickly become alerted to widely accepted models of ministry and absorb their media practices.

These are not exhaustive, and certainly the principles are not directed soley toward understanding the use of media. Nevertheless, these principles provide a quick peek into the dynamics of isomorphism that can be applied.

Other important aspects are how organizational models can be diffused is through employee migration, which in the case of churches would include the movement of clergy, lay leaders, as well as members between churches. Larger churches with well-institutionalized media ministries more quickly diffuse their media-intelligent people in comparison with smaller churches which are not likely to have as extensive of media practices.

Also, organizational models are spread by consulting firms, which in the case of leaders is usually accomplished through church leader conferences. Highlighting and discussing the use of media is a common aspect of "contemporary" church conferences.

I've come a long way in this post, something I thought I'd shoot off much more quickly than I did. Here's my main point.

In short, I've come to think that the accessibility and wide-spread use of church media materials gives us an alternative pathway to grasping how the cultures of "contemporary" churches can be understood. For me, this highlights that the occurrence of "contemporary" churches are not isolated phenomena--and most of us know this.

Further, it also suggests that "contemporary" churches are more tightly networked with each other than we usually think, specifically around assisting one another to reach similar goals with similar methods. Media materials provides a tangible means to enact those networks.

*P. J. DiMaggio & W. Powell, "The iron cage revisited" institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields", American Sociological Review, 48 (1983), 147-60.

iPhone Church - Religious Media Jumps on the Digital Bandwagon (Again)

As part of their expanding digital offerings, Pastor Wayne Cordeiro explains a new service provided through the IT department of New Hope Church in Hawaii. The "iPhone devotions" borrows the iconic Apple style to communicate relevance to the digital literati.

New Hope on iPhone from Peter Thourson on Vimeo.

Even more, entire church services at New Hope can be streamed live.

It appears that New Hope Christian Fellowship, a large Foursquare Church in Hawaii, is the first to launch iPhone services on July 4th of this year. A press release indicates that "live streaming to the iPhone was one of the most requested features from church attendees" and that the live streaming capabilities of the 3.0 software allowed this to happen.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Typically, churches are years behind other organizations when it comes to technology and innovation. We have tried to reverse that trend and pioneer new ways to spread the Gospel using the most current tools available," explains New Hope's Technology and Innovations Director, Michael Sharpe. "We don't mind the long hours and stress that comes with innovating because we know that if we can come up with something useful, it can be used by other churches around the world."

You can check out their dedicated e-church site here.

Progressive Christians Cornel West, Serene Jones, Gary Dorrien on Capitalism and Democracy

Quick Post: Bill Moyers continues to have interesting conversations, this time with "Progressive Christians" Cornel West, Serene Jones, Gary Dorrien.

In the face of changed economics and persistent theological convictions, how should we think about the world?

Video and transcript are available online. You can download the video. Podcast also available.

Twittering Religion in America - Part 2

Quick post: This is my second of two posts on the use of Twitter by congregational leaders. I'll focus on the use of Twitter by individuals rather than organizations...

Image via CrunchBase

Although congregations using Twitter during worship services has gotten some media attention, the use of religion through Twitter is more than just worship "tweets."

I'll pass on talking about other organizations that use Twitter like Islamic Relief (a non-profit organization) or Islamic Crunch (focusing on activities of all sorts in the Muslim community) or Talk Islam (blogging all things Islam) -- religious organizations of all sorts are finding Twitter provides a low-cost way to raise awareness and communicate updates.

Instead, I've started following a few church leaders on my own Twitter account and notice a few, distinct uses of the service.

(Caveat: Not all leaders do this ALL the time, but I'll suggest what I see as an informal pattern.)

1. Purposeful - Some leaders consistently stay "on message" through Twitter.

Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Leonard Sweet
Erwin McManus

Here's what I mean - some leaders remain vision-focused leaders through Twitter, keeping their followers encouraged, uplifted, and focused on the values and purposes of their life. This includes leaders who post aphorisms, proverbs, quotes, and key phrases with every tweet. Look at Len Sweet's quotes and expansion of Biblical key words. See Erwin McManus's references to being "wide awake."

2. Provocative - Leaders put out questions and "what if" statements to provoke responses.

Naeem Fazal
Alex McManus

There are other leaders who want to initiate dialogue and get reactions. Using a spare 14o characters, they attempt to provoke thinking and prompt follow-up posts from other people. Naeem Fazal tweets, "Question: Do you have an irrational confidence in the faithfullness of God?" and "Is failure resolved by success or by faithfulness ?" and "Was there a time that you trusted God more than you do now ... What happened?" Alex McManus tweets, "Does talent emerge due to external factors (Gladwell, Outliers), proper practice (Coyle, Talent Code), or nature (Gallup, Strengthsfinder)?" and "What would happen if we planted gardens and designed natural sanctuaries instead of planting and building churches?"

3. Promotional - Leaders use Twitter to keep people up to date with their books, speaking engagements, blog posts, and other resources and events surrounding their ministry.

Image by barron via Flickr

Eric Bryant
Ed Stetzer

Church leaders using Twitter are often busy people who travel, speak, write, and consult to groups nearly every day. Their life is a near-constant whirl of activity, and they use Twitter to let people (both friends and "fans") know what's new with them. Eric Bryant links his blog posts to his Twitter account and regularly gives away free copies of his book. And Ed Stetzer continually developes new material which he often makes available on the internet.

4. Personal - Still other leaders talk mostly about their leisure and family activities.

Alan Hirsch
Sam Radford

Church leaders can be very open about the movies they watch, the restaurants they try, and the various happenings with their spouse and children. Reading their posts, you get a feel for the rhythm of their lives away from "the office." Alan Hirsch and Sam Radford are two who keep us informed of their sleep habits, places they visit, conversations with friends, and any "plans-of-the-moment."

5. Mixed-Use

Image via Wikipedia

Jay Bakker
Dan Kimball

While some leaders have one primary "Twitter Profile," most have mixed uses. Through a series of tweets, they broadcast vision, provoke thoughts, indicate their speaking and writing activities, and talk about their day-to-day lives -- all in a single day! Jay Bakker and Dan Kimball are faithful in providing their Twitter followers a steady stream of thoughts and activities.

These are the 5 uses of Twitter I see among church leaders today.

Any others I've missed?

Revival and Relevance in the Sticks (towns 75k or less...)

Interesting new conference -- "The Sticks" -- takes a southern and mid-western sensibility to initiating contemporary, mission-driven ministry to the small towns of the United States.

With a website complete with videos of t-shirt and wireless-mike wearing pastors, The Sticks conference is designed to inspire smaller town pastors to go for innovative ministry styled on the successful models of larger churches around the country.

The conference is an interesting example of the extent of influence from successful, evangelical megachurches in America, the pervasive use of technology in American religion, and the continued concern for attracting young adults in church ministry. Here you will find a mission-driven form of accommodation, acculturation, and experimentation in response to social change.

Stimulating ambition for churches outside Metro areas, The Sticks makes leadership philosophy and a reflection of contemporary practices accessible to smaller towns. Its stated mission --

Do you live out in the sticks? [small cities and towns of 75K or less]

Image by myoldpostcards via Flickr

Do you want to make a big impact?
Tired of small towns being left out of the conversation?

Have you bought into the lies...
'we can't do that' or 'we don't have the funds to pull that off'?

the sticks is a gathering where revival meets relevance. It is a gathering to inspire and equip pastors in small to medium towns to make a big impact for the Kingdom!

Break out sessions over two days in three different sites work through youth ministry, outrreach, the use of social networking sites, multi-site ministry, and leadership developments.

The speakers are native to each area, successful pastors who have grown vibrant ministries in these areas like Perry Noble, founding and senior pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson and Greenville, South Carolina.

Blog Interview with Gerardo Marti on Hollywood Faith

Quick post: I recently completed a radio-type interview on my recent book now available online.


I got an email a few weeks ago from my friend Alex McManus, creator of Voxtropolis and founder of the International Mentoring Network, along with Sam Radford, leader of Mosaic Sheffield, England, and consultant with Awaken Consultancy about their new venture. As you can see, these guys are busy!

Cover via Amazon

Alex and Sam were kind enough to invite me for an interview on their "blogtalk" radio program IMN Central about my new book Hollywood Faith. The program, All Things M, features about 30 minutes of conversation between Alex, Sam, and myself, and is now available online.

Alex is author of a brand new book, Making the World Human Again: The Quest to Save the Future from Religion. Sam has his own blog also.

One more thing -- Sam is organizing events for the IMN and Mosaic Alliance through Mosaic Sheffield. In particular, look for The Human Event happening in October of this year. The website gives more information on what will be a provocative, intimate, and international gathering of entrepreneurial-minded church leaders.

New Conference for New Evangelicals (and Those Who Want to Know Them)

Quick post: Another new conference is available in April in Orlando, Florida. The Exponential Conference -- the 2009 National New Church Conference -- is themed on "The Art of Movement." I try to pay attention to different conferences happening out there as a measure of church activity, and this is certainly one of the more interesting happening this year.

The list of speakers for this conference is another current "who's who" of influential evangelicals from around the country speaking to the current interests and concerns of entrepreneurial-minded church leaders. You can browse and click links to churches, organizations, book titles, and personal websites to enter this interconnected world or relationships. My friend Erwin McManus from Mosaic in Los Angeles opens the conference at the first plenary session.

The conference also hosts podcasts, and there are several available online, including:

Image by Mingo.nl via Flickr

• Alan Hirsch interview with Dave Ferguson
• Interview with Francis Chan
• Interview with Erwin McManis
• Interview with Tim Keller
• Interview with Perry Noble

Sessions from last year's 2008 conference are available also. The sessions from the "Multi-Ethnic Track" were particularly interesting to me; you may find others.

Besides seeing and meeting people 24/7, conferences like this give you an intense exposure to the perspectives and concerns among the newer generation (post-Moral Majority) evangelical leaders in America. Another key bonus is the long list of special sessions available before and during the conference. These are practical sessions that problem-solve issues in chatty, interpersonal contexts.

Take a look at this list from the conference catalog. The "preconference intensives" include:

Image via Wikipedia

• Affiliation for the Unaffiliated with Paul Williams
  
• Best Practices in Church Planting Forum with Ed Stetzer
  
• Churches that Change Communities & Society with Troy Jackson, Mary Nelson & Kirsten Strand
  
• Churches Planting Churches with Kevin Marsico and Sam Douglass
  
• Iglesias Plantando Iglesias with Oscar Chavez and Joe Rosa
  
• Coaching and Training Coaches with Bob Harrington
  
• Compassion by Design with Dave Mills
  
• Creative Communication in New Churches with Mark Batterson
• Equipping the Church Planter with a Proven Fund Raising Plan with Bill Dillon
  
• Family Ministry: Reaching Tots to Tweens with Tammy Melchien & Sommer Wisher
  
• Forming An Effective Launch Team with John Wasem
  
• How To Create a Disciple Making Movement with Jim Putman
  
• Leadership Development and Church Planting with Dave Kiamua, Nubako Selenga, Alia Tassi, George Klippenes and Larry Osborne

  Image by TechShowNetwork via Flickr

• Missional Practices with Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
  
• Multi-Site Church Planting / 7 Moves to Multi-Site with Dave Ferguson
  
• Multi-Ethnic Church Planting with Mosaix Global Network
  
• Raising Capital: Church Plants and Projects with Brad Leeper
  
• Reproducing Church Experiences with Jon Ferguson, Dave Dummitt, Eric Metcalf and Brian Zehr
  
• Seeing Your Vision of a Church Planting Movement Come True with Paul Becker & Mark Williams
  
• The Idiot's Guide to Church Planting with Vince Antonucci, John Burke, Patrick Dennis and Patrick Furgerson
  

Even with a short list like this, click to explore the values, "convictions," and buzz-words currently used around the evangelical table. The "tracks" of the conference highlight the organizational concerns of these largely independent leaders:

Pre Launch - preparing for starting a church

Post Launch - what to do once it's rolling

Reproducing Church Movements - launching other mission-driven churches

Multi-Ethnic - how to address racial and ethnic diversity

Missional Church Planting

Nuts and Bolts - over 30 sessions on hodge-podge leadership concerns

Church Planting Spouses - and how to keep your marriage in the midst of it all...

Overall, here's an interesting gathering that speaks to the current issues and concerns of some of the more interesting and vibrant developments in American Christianity.

What's a Blue Kiwi? Innovation through Social Network Software

Quick post: My interest in innovation and online social networking led me to discovering new software designed to stimulate organizational innovation.

In Europe, blueKiwi 2009 was launched last November with a bold presentation on the interaction between the web and human interaction. Working with sociological principles, the software re-thinks the interconnection of networks and the play of organizational management dynamics.

Too many of us take software design for granted. But the ingenuity of software design aligned with the understanding of human social interaction is coming into its own -- especially as social computing becomes more portable and more readily available.

Now we've all got to be schooled in how to use more than "Microsoft Word" and email. Social networking is becoming just as important as the telephone. And as organizations harness the use of these technological innovations, we will find new ways to communicate, brainstorm, share content, and "group think" in dynamic, yet-not-entirely-forseen ways.

In short, the new wave of project management and committee work will move online.


According to a post by Jon Husband, "Starting from the vantage point of the Web 2.0-savvy user, they have designed and built blueKiwi to be user-centric whilst responding to the business issues that require the building, distributing and and deploying of business-focused knowledge … the essence of social business computing, in my opinion."

Husband describes blueKiwi as "centered on the building, nourishing and sustaining of business-focused relationships - building useful knowledge and getting things done."

[M]ost collaboration systems start from the point of view of technical capabilities and do not make it easy, or overlook, the building and growing of relationships. In the past, users of collaborative platforms had to go about building their business relationships, both internally and externally, outside of the collaboration system / platform. blueKiwi2009 is first and foremost a means of building valuable and value-added relationships in the course of doing one’s work … it can enable, contain and manage all the activity in a business ecosystem.

An online "ecosystem" is exactly the right term for describing the vision of these software designers.

Here is an interesting and, to me, persuasive attempt to foster a stimulating space of content and interaction. And once businesses really get behind the building of such systems, the leaders of science, education and religion will not be far behind.

Husband continues in describing the uniqueness of blueKiwi --

[A]ll collaboration platforms offer spaces where people can connect, gather, share and exchange information. Thus far, the mainstream approach has been to offer spaces where people can connect and gather, and then share content … information about issues, problems, and areas of interest, and as people exchange and collaborate, useful knowledge is built.

bK2009 turns this upside down, or around (you choose). It is designed on the principle that the collaborative space is there for content and its distribution, and the individual user then chooses which groups she or he wishes to engage with. Thus, any individual user can be a member of the groups they have chosen to interact with. And of course it has a Twitter clone as one of its features.

What eventuates is a network of interaction around pertinent content, and thus over time an ecosystem around issues in which engagement is de facto defined by the users’ interest and willingness to engage. This then leads to the ability to watch and quantify the volume of interactions and obtain a better, and visible , understanding of the value that is being created (responsiveness, innovation, deepening understanding and so on).

In what Husband calls “natural sociology of knowledge work,” the software allows people to enter and exit any "information ecosystem" they wish. The combining of features we know through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogging -- as well as the archiving of documents and drafts -- allows a constructive yet constantly changing space of idea-generation and product-design. Husband says, "the result after several years of intense design, development and deployment is a collaborative platform that in my opinion more closely mirrors the natural sociology of knowledge work than any other platform about which I know."

Individuals can be known by the "reputation" they build for being involved in different ecosystems in addition to whatever "profile" they create to identify themselves.




The software is oriented around Metcalfe's Law of Networks "whereby the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected members of the network" even though not everyone agrees on this "law." Nevertheless, the software is based on a belief that "organizations should realize that collaboration in connected networks is the way work will be done all the time in the near future, and so organizations should seek to enroll and engage the entire organization in the use of the collaborative platform."

Image via CrunchBase

I find this fascinating. Once all of us (including tech-infatuated people like me) get over what may initially seem "complicated," "unnecessary," and "too much time to learn," I think we will find such software to be remarkably helpful.

The software here is already available on iPhone -- which means that the accessibility to working with a "portable knowledge community" from the comfort of your local cafe will surely change the way we "think" in the world.

I'll speculate and say I think we're seeing the future of the "new normal." Another decade and this will be a natural way to share ideas.

Other Articles

• blueKiwi 2009 - The Sociology of Productivity is a Core Design Principle (fastforwardblog.com)
• Nomee Is An All-In-One Social Networking Aggregator And RSS Feed (techcrunch.com)
• Author Clara Shih on the Facebook Era, and what it means for businesses (venturebeat.com)
• Chi.mp: Not Just Another Data Aggregator | Black Web 2.0 (via delicious) (blackweb20.com)
• Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric (bokardo.com)
• Yahoo Mobile: Now With New Design, Customization, and Social Features (mashable.com)
• Social Networks or Networking Socially: Picking a social networking site! (ceoworld.biz)
• Facebook's valuation and the network effect (kottke.org)
• Added Twitter To My Toolbox (thecriticalpath.info)
• Conversations as Data: We need new UI (newcommbiz.com)

Profound Religious Shifts in America (With Pictures)

Quick post: USA Today provides a concise report of a large and important survey of American religion. Interactive graphics and charts add much to this insightful article.

We all know religion is changing, now we have the pictures to prove it.

Image via Wikipedia

An article in USA Today features key findings from the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) released today. It is based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Major takeaway? Nearly all religious denominations have lost ground - often dramatic percentages - since 1990. The religious "Nones" (those indicating no particular religious affiliation) has grown.

From the article:

Image via Wikipedia

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.

• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.

The USA Today article includes some nice charts and graphs.  Also, the full report is online.

Resources on Successful Multiracial-Multiethnic Churches

Quick post - Online resource on ethnic and racial diversity in churches.


The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship still has a series of pages my research on racial and ethnic diversity in churches.

You'll find several links and lists of resources.

You can find it all here.

Essential Attitudes Helping Churches Become Diverse

From the resource pages of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, here's a page about essential attitudes that help churches become more diverse.

You can find this article and other resources here.

BBC Podcast Explores Online Faith

BBC explores online religion with a diversity of voices.


The BBC has a long commitment to exploring the full range of religion in the modern world, and this podcast explores the play of tradition and innovation by looking at religion and the internet.

Dr Robert Beckford talks to a podcasting priest, a blogging rabbi and a Mulsim imam whether on-line religion is replacing traditional practices.

He also talks to Mogg Morgan, a practising pagan, about how the internet has strengthened the worldwide pagan community.

The broadcast is available for about a week on BBC Radio 4 website.

Worship as "Letting Go"

ln writing my book Hollywood Faith, I thought a lot more about how worship "works" in churches. You can find my thoughts a worship in that book, especially about worship as a process of "letting go" (on pages 160-162).

When Calvin College invited me out to guest lecture about my research at the time, I ended up talking about it there. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship added a page on this in their resource section.

You can read the article on worship at the institute's website.

At the website, you can also hear the complete talk on innovation and racial diversity in churches I gave at Calvin.

Meet the De-Cons, A Support Group for Atheists and Those Losing Their Religion

This week, I shared part of a story on one woman's de-conversion. Today, I'm sharing with you a website that provides support for "de-cons" and solicits de-conversion stories to put on their site. Who are these de-converts?

At De-Conversion.com, you'll find a community for skeptics and former Christians.

Its a place for "de-cons" to gather together.

We know very little about de-conversion, so sites like this give us an opportunity to form questions and create some guesses. Who are "de-converts" and what is the process of losing one's religion? This site invites a bit of speculation.

De-Cons Describe Themselves

The de-cons on this site self-describe themselves as formerly committed, "active" Christians. On one list, they write, "We were the 20% that did 80% of what needed to be done." While commenting on various aspects of atheism and non-belief, they comment on their own experiences in posts like

• You might be a Fundy if…
  
• Blue Like Jazz: A book for disillusioned Christian fundamentalists
  
• 33 Reasons why I left the Mormon Church
  

A link on the homepage provides lets you "Submit your De-conversion story."

An Alternative Identity to Atheist

The website provides resources, comments, and "sermons" to help recovering fundamentalists live out their non-faith. In my mind, the most important resources is that of providing an alternative identity -- away from religion while negotiating the meaning of atheism.

By changing the label "atheist" to "de-con" and talking about what this label means through comments and conversation, the site provides a means for expressing an anti-religious identity.

On first glance, the label de-con invites dialogue. Atheist seems to create antagonism, and those who have lived as Christians seem to bristle at becoming an atheist. Also, while atheism is generally defined as a lack of belief in a God, the word de-conversion is more nuanced, more specific. More than not believing in God, these are people who once believed in God fervently and have gone through a process -- often painful -- of shedding that belief.

De-Conversion is an Emotional Process

Its the expression of their emotions I find compelling. Rather than philosophical arguments, many long paragraphs describe the "fear and anguish" felt when walking away from religion. A tone of sadness mixes into the bitterness and frustration throughout their stories.

Just as the process of conversion is reinforced through relationships that affirm religious choice, so is the process of de-conversion. The site provides a form of relational connection.

Now that they've moved on, they help others make the transition. Can they alleviate the pain?

Also, part of bridging belief to non-belief is by proving alternative schemas. The site is full of them. For example, playing on Pascal's famous "wager" of belief in God, the site features the "de-conversion wager" on the bottom-right homepage with its own theistic slant of a God who rewards morality rather than blind belief.

The site began in March 2007, and it seems likely that the passion and network feeding the site will keep it a source of a very particular form of anti-religious vitality in the coming years.

Resources

The time seems right for new research on deconverts and the deconversion experience.

The only book I found reinforces that the process of de-conversion involves a form of grieving. Although you can find plenty of books of people describing their own de-conversion, perhaps the best study of deconversion was published in 1994 and titled Versions of Deconversion: Autobiography and the Loss of Faith (Studies in Religion and Culture) by John D. Barbour. It offers an insight into how people who have walked away from their religion intepret their loss.

Two journal articles from sociologist Janet Jacobs are still interesting and useful:

"Deconversion from Religious Movements: An Analysis of Charismatic Bonding and Spiritual Commitment" by Janet Jacobs
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), pp. 294-308

"The Economy of Love in Religious Commitment: The Deconversion of Women from Nontraditional Religious Movements" by Janet Jacobs
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), pp. 155-171

What do you think?

Why Young Adults Lose Their Religion

I found a great article available online describing how and why teens seem to "lose their religion" as they grow into young adults. One of the co-authors is sociologist Mark Regnerus. I mentioned his excellent book on sex and religion among teens Forbidden Fruit a few days ago in a post on teen virginity pledges.

Does College Secularize Younger Adults?

Yesterday, I wrote about a Muslim Televangelist who had lost his religion in college before re-discovering his faith. I am reminded that most people believe that going to college leads young adults to move away from religion.

But here's published research that shows those who avoid college are actually more likely to lose their religion.

Image by murplej@ne - under deconstruction via Flickr

From the introduction:

Contrary to expectations, emerging adults that avoid college exhibit the most extensive patterns of religious decline, undermining conventional wisdom about the secularizing effect of higher education. Marriage curbs religious decline, while cohabitation, nonmarital sex, drugs and alcohol use each accelerate diminished religiosity – especially religious participation – during early adulthood.

This article is easy to read and challenges our common sense assumptions.

How to Get the Essential Points from the Article

If you don't have time to read the whole article, focus on pages 1-6, and 17-20.

What do you think?

Other Online Resources

• A shorter summary of the article is also available.
• Many other essays and bibliographies available on a website on the "Religious Engagements of American Undergraduates."

Organizing Piles of Books - A New Solution?

Consider this a post-Christmas wish. With this software and the iSight camera on my MacBook as an ISBN scanner, I might be able organize my library (housed in 3 different locations) within a few hours. Could Bookpedia be in my future? Hmmmmm....

Moleskine Art

Many of us enjoy our Moleskine notebooks, handy tools with pocket, ribbon, and elastic band to keep our thoughts together.

But others are taking this little book to a whole new level - creating art. Here's one example:

When I see art like this, it reminds me how far my imagination has yet to stretch.

This is only one example. Sketches, paints, portraits, fanciful images, collages, even pop-up books -- the uses for these little sketch books is amazing.

For more images and ideas, check out these links:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/22/moleskine-art-beautiful-examples-and-talented-artists/

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/16/public-skineart-mole.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/jim-woodrings-popup-.html

http://octolan.com/moleskine/

http://www.skineart.com/

Bloggingheads: Christian Schism in the Episcopal Church - The New York Times - Video Library

Theology? Or culture war?

A brief dialogue from Christopher Wells, left, of the Living Church Foundation and Father William Franklin of the American Academy in Rome debate the schism in the Episcopal Church.

Preview "Hollywood Faith" on Google Books

Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church

Check out a preview of my book "Hollywood Faith" available on Google Books.