The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture
Several weeks ago, Shane Hipps spoke at Mars Hill Bible Church on the Spirituality of the Cellphone (link good for about 7 more weeks) a look at how human culture is, and has been, shaped by its media and the underlying technology for thousands of years. His message was so compelling, dovetailing with a professional project I’m working on, that I ordered his new book which greatly expands on the subject: The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture.
As a one-time ad-man for Porche, who left the world of marketing to become a pastor, Hipps does a remarkable job at examining how the media we use and choose, in and of itself, conveys certain messages, things what we need to be cognizant of as Christians in our culture. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you are interested in how to communicate Christ in an increasingly postmodern society.
Relying heavily on the works of Marshall McLuhan, a prominent media scholar from the 1960’s and 70’s, Hipps concisely catalogs the key culture changing media of human history (writing, the printing press, the telegraph, etc.) and shows how the culture was shaped by its primary media. McLuhan, who coined the phrase “the media is the message” has been shown to be quite prescient of the ‘progress’ of media and its cultural impact, decades after his death.
The shift to the Age of Print
During the first century, most cultures still transmitted their values and beliefs orally. This type of transmission was a community experience, and was highly experiential and concrete. Thus, God was seen primarily as acting toward communities of people, and the importance of community over the individual was culturally enforced.
With the invention of the phonetic alphabet - where meaningless symbols were strung together to form words - and the printing press in the 1400’s, the community was no longer important for the purposes of creating, sharing and codification of values and beliefs. With this, the cultural shift toward the individual and the erosion of the importance of community followed. Cultural thought also moved from examination of concrete and practical matters to abstract thought and theory. Additionally, objectivity and reason became primary thought patterns, supplanting subjectivity and mystery. All of these changes can be directly traced to the phonetic alphabet and printing press.
This “age of writing” was the very basis of modernity, and fathered systematic theology and Christianity as many of us in the west have experienced it. The focus of communal worship moved from the community experiences of the body - the sacraments - to the individualized experiences - primarily preaching. Hipps writes:
Consider the preaching of 18th century evangelists. Theologian Jonathan Edwards often preached sermons that lasted up to four hours. George Whitefield, a contemporary of Edwards, preached one sermon entitled “A Preservative Against Unsettled Notions, and Want of Principals, in Regard to Righteousness and Christian Perfection”. The title alone reveals the tremendous preference for complex, abstract thinking during the age of print; it sounds more like a doctoral dissertation than a sermon. […]
You might presume these sermons were intimidating for the common audience. On the contrary, these were great revival sermons of the day. Edwards and Whitefield were to the 18th century what Billy Graham was to the 20th century. Their sermons were so influential they became the primary force behind the Great Awakening, which gave birth to the modern Evangelical movement in America. […]
Another effect of this emphasis on abstraction was that Protestants became preoccupied with getting their doctrine straight. Anyone who didn’t hold to a particular set of abstract propositions in her head was deemed a heretic. As the modern age of print continued, Christians began scanning the Bible to extract propositional truths from disparate places and contexts in order to organize their theology into abstract categories. This became known as “systematic theology, ” a chief resource of the modern age and one that continues to be a core curriculum in most seminaries today. (p. 57-58)
The Electronic Age
Hipps then goes into the technology that has led to the electronic age and postmodernism, beginning with the telegraph - which was the first invention to take one of the human senses and transport it far beyond the individual. He examines the many ways that technology is re-creating “community” experiences (images and audio) and that our culture is moving to a “community of individuals”, where you are ‘close’ to people you’ve never met physically and ‘far’ from people who live next door to you.
He examines the way that our media have led to the inevitability of postmodernism. For an example, just think of blogging - every article on the ‘net is published for the community to experience, and so, in many ways, it is up to the individual’s experience in reading each article which determines whether or not they accept it as truth.
In probably one of the most profound sections, Hipps relays a story about sharing his faith with a co-worker, when he realized that he wasn’t trying to convert his friend to Christianity - he was first trying to convert him to Modernism, so that he would then accept the Modernist version of Jesus he had been taught. He explores the modernist view that conversion is an event to the postmodern view that conversion is a process - a series of events. He also writes about the change this brings to the emphasis in the church
Clearly, this preference for concrete images rather than abstract propositions can be a great gift to the church. This movement has restored our right-brain preference for metaphor, poetry, and story - the linguistic version of images. Because of this, we have grown in our appreciation for the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the parables of Jesus, which actually went out of fashion to some degree during the print age. At the same time, this appreciation can lead to a waning interest in the writings of Paul, an imbalance that was prevalent prior to the Reformation, an imbalance Martin Luther worked hard to remedy.
It might surprise some to learn that in his preface to the New Testament, Luther offered an evaluation of the New Testament Canon. In a section called “Which Art the True and Noblest Books of the New Testament?”, Luther writes, “John’s gospel is the one, fine, true and chief gospel, and is far, far to be preferred over the other three and placed high above them. So, too, the epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter far surpass the other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.” Luther’s reasoning was simple - anything in Scripture that tells the story of Jesus was far less helpful than books describing explicit doctrines about Jesus. (p. 77-78)
So What?
The Emerging Church is truly a movement - it is a response to the change in the culture - and not anything that even resembles a ‘denomination’. The reason this is so hard for many Modernist-leaning Evangelicals and Fundamentalists to grasp is because it does not fit in with the abstract categories and systems which they have grown overly-comfortable with, and married to.
Hipps does an excellent job laying out the things enhanced by different technologies, and those things which - if taken to an extreme - are harmfully lost. His book is an excellent primer on communicating Christ to a world that operates under a different cultural mindset - one that is more experiential and concrete than the culture in which the American Evangelical church was born. And, rather than seeking to convert people to Modernism in order to bring them to Christ, he gives practical advice on using the technologies and media we have today to effectively communicate Jesus.
I highly recommend The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture…
May 9th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I probably should pick this book up. I’ve seen it at Ollie’s (a closeout discount store, for those that don’t know) for like 4 bucks.
Anyway, this statement rings very true to me:
I’ve talked to so many people who cannot grasp this. They just assume everyone associated with the EC is a theological liberal or something, and they really have a desire to have clear deliniation on things. They have to know who’s in and who’s out, who’s with them and who’s not. Not being able to have these little categories is really bothersome to them.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Communicative mediums and tools are ever evolving, but the greatest conduit for reaching people with Christ is and always will be a committed life that communicates Christ through word and deed. That is transcultural.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
The Gospel is transcultural!
The fact that every human being born is a sinful wicked creature is transcultural.
The fact that God sent His son to die for them is transcultural. (for God so loved the WORLD)
The fact that repentance is required for reconciliation is transcultural. (unless you repent you will perish Luke 13:13)
The need for the Spirit of God to make a man alive is transcultural. (you must be born again Matt. 7:21)
All these things are relevant and important for the man with the cell phone, the man with the walkie talkie, and the man with the smoke signals. All of the above is true for all of them.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
True to all of the above. But talk to a bible translator about the difficulty of translating much of the gospel to make sense to a foreign culture and you will find that it’s not so simple.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Very true, Chris. As long as it doesn’t change the nature of God’s truth. For instance, Rick Warren’s “mulligan” comaprison on Easter is extremely shallow and misrepresents the gospel.
On the other side, defing repentance as turning from sin before believing is equally misleading. The Greek word mean changing your mind. When I got saved I changed my mind about Jesus and never thought about repenting of specific sins. Repenting of unbelief is inherrant if trusting Christ.
So my point is on one side we can “de-fang” the gospel through over relevence, and on the other you can place unscriptural blockades.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Yes, but is it an abstract proposition from 2000 years ago, or is it a story which happened then and is still happening today?
Yes, but what’s the point? By itself, this is just an abstract proposition with no practical application. Or, is it the reason we no longer live in the paradise of Eden, until the story we are a part of is complete, at which point we will be back in the garden?
Yes, again - but is this an abstract proposition, or is it something concrete and tangible?
Yes - and this is something concrete - it comes from the word/idea of t’shuva, which is a word picture. Without t’shuva, we are walking away from God. With t’shuva, we are shown that we are walking away from God, and we stop, turn and walk back in His path. Without a picture of what repentence is, it is just an abstract concept, a mental exercise.
This is present in the story of man’s origin, where God breathed into the dust to make man - it is his breath, His Ruach, his Spirit which gives all men life. It is this picture Jesus uses with Niccodemus - being “born again” - which is concrete.
All of the things you listed are indeed transcultural, but when we insist on transmitting them and only believing they are acceptable in our own context (be it modernist, postmodern, western, eastern, etc.), then we are deceived and we do harm to the body of Christ.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I agree with what Chris L. said, but I would also add that repentance and reconciliation are not necessariliy universally understood concepts.
For example, in our culture we think of reconciliation in terms of the payment or penalty for our sins. The greater the sin the greater the penalty. In eastern cultures, it’s not so much the penalty of sin that is the problem as it is the shame and broken relationships caused by the sin. No payment or penalty could really ever cover the cost of the sin. The only way sin can be dealt with fully is when the injured party restores a relationship with the one who is at fault. So in this context, the cross isn’t seen so much as a payment as it is God taking the shame and humiliation of the party who sinned upon himself. It’s not so much the taking of penalty or forgiveness of a debt, as it is the act of God lowering Himself for the sake of a restored relationship.
All I’m saying is that saying a truth is “universal” is a tricky thing, because all truths are wrapped in cultural baggage of some sort.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Phil,
“For example, in our culture we think of reconciliation in terms of the payment or penalty for our sins. The greater the sin the greater the penalty. In eastern cultures, it’s not so much the penalty of sin that is the problem as it is the shame and broken relationships caused by the sin. No payment or penalty could really ever cover the cost of the sin.”
So if I go to an Eastern culture I could talk about sin and how that has damaged the relationship between them and God and how God made a way to make that broken relationship right, then would that be sufficient?
May 10th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Repentance is changing one’s mind. When a sinner leaves his unbelief and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, he has repented. The process of sanctification only then begins. There were many - and I mean many - sins I did not repent of when I was saved. But I had allowed the Spirit to change my mind about my condition and who Jesus was and i repented of my unbelief and was saved.
To attach any sin to salvation repentance is to not only misdefine the Greek word, it is legalism in its purest form. That is why it is wrong to require a gay person to give up their lifestyle before they can be saved. It is then a mixture of faith and works.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Rick,
Simply ‘changing one’s mind’ is a western concept, in which you first change your mind and then act accordingly. In the Hebrew context (which is similar in many ways, with some key distinctions, to the postmodern context), you change your actions and your mind will act accordingly. Salvation, in this context, is not a single event, but a process. Salvation, in this context, as well, is not some future abstract concept, but one that is present and continues into the future. We westerners/modernists have created a distinction between “faith” and “works”, which is not present in the eastern/Hebrew/pomo mindset, in which both are sides of the same coin.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Rick,
Correct. you cannot tell someone to give up a sin so that they can be saved!!!!!!!! I agree absolutely 100%.
However, the giving up of the homosexual lifestyle comes later and if it never comes, then we can rest assured that the individual has not been redeemed.
The giving up of the homosexual lifestyle would be the ‘fruit’ of repentance. “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, “We have asked Jesus into our heart so we’ll be ok” Luke 3:8
If there is no fruit of repentance, there is of course no repentance.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
If only you applied that to ODMs.