These are the notes for a series of three talks given in May 2014 to curates in the diocese of Winchester as part of their IMD programme. The talks were given extempore but the notes may be of interest. I’ve given variations of this talk in different venues since, including Sherbourne Abbey (for the general public), Sarum College (for ordinands), Bath & Wells (for ministers, lay & ordained), and Grey Coat Hospital (for 6th form students).
Overview
Don’t want to make assumptions. Get a feel for where we’re at. How many online etc.? Telephone (landline but leave vague). TV. Computer. Mobile. Smartphone? Percentages.
(In UK in 2006, 16m accessed the Internet every day; in 2013 it was 36m (73%).)
Digital divide: income, geography, and age, but not going to talk about this (nor about privacy but obviously hugely important and pertinent to all three, esp. marriages and funerals).
Social Network (since 1930s academic ref) > Internet > Broadband > Mobiles (always on, everywhere) (% using mobile to access Internet every day: in 2010, 24%; in 2013 53% – ONS)
Digital Age: trend setters, early uptakers, main uptake etc.. cf Bill Dutton’s work.
Social Media as subset of the Digital Age, Occasional Offices as subset of church’s overall ministry.
Main shift since mid-noughties – Web 2.0 (marketing?), participatory. 93% of 16-24yr olds use Soc Med every day. 1 in 2 of every adult 45-54 as well!
What matters is twofold. For those who do it, their experience and how it shapes and is shaped by the technology. In addition, and this applies for those who don’t use it, it’s shaping the narrative of our day: ‘the internet is receding into the narrative’ Robin Mansell (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrBl2Jvb4VA& ).
Occasional Offices – what one might call significant moments of ‘status change’. Identity will be a key theme of these talks.
Desire for choice and customisation exist within broader worldview, which in part is shaped by and is shaping the new media. Participation & choice of networks as a away of customising identity.
This is all only 25 years old (comparison with effects of printing press in 15 century (at all levels of society). How many years ahead in ministry? This is the key change in terms of context for their ministries.
2 dangers – according all this too much importance, and according it too little. I think the latter is more likely.
Identity and Baptism
Context & Theological Reflections
- Using soc med, creating our identities byte by byte in conjunction with others – relationality
- this creating is not separate, it interweaves our everyday existence (esp. because of mobiles)
- so convergence of offline and online – increasingly an old-fashioned way of looking at it
- participatory, creative, anti-authority (because of the medium) – you, along with anyone else, can post to YouTube, Tweet, FB, Pin, Instagram etc. You can contact the person directly without going through their PA. A flattening of the hierarchies. The speed with which a good idea (and also lies and untruths (see Rowan in Tablet) can spread.
- Your identity in part shaped by which platform you use arty fashions Tumblr, media Tweeters, youthful YouTuber – fracturing of social media market now that your grandparents are on Facebook (remember mySpace?!). Snapchat (where the content is deleted shortly afterwards – ephemeral (up to 10 secs (but that doesn’t stop the screenshot – sends a notice when possible))), WhatsApp , WeChat, Keek (video) KiK (IM) etc. Big convergence in terms of what they’re all offering.
- Which platform for which relationships (YouTube & Twitter go together)
- But one of the key things is that we are no longer defined by the town your growing up in etc.. You can create/join networks of like-minded people all around the world, whatever it may be.
- We get to choose who we identify with (and who co-creates our online identity) and we’re able to be in contact with a much larger number of people
- Multiple networks – weaker networks (Gianni Vattimo & Weak Thought if time). Reducing the strength of traditional ties, family, religious, geographical
- Postcard example
- Increased demand for customisation and personalisation
- It’s all so time consuming.
- Overload/excess of possible, meaningful relationships.
- Deliberate acts – difference between serve and rally
- Weakening of ties -> sentimental emotions. Constant flow. Superficial, self-aware
- Strong emphasis on being entertaining – room for seriousness?
- Increase in customisation in advertising as your online behaviour is tracked.
- imago Dei – relationality at our core when God is understood as Triune, but with the mediated person (personare – mask/icon!), self-constructing
- I am creating my own identity – I am my own saviour (idolatry). I am in control (not!).
- All this contrasts completely with what is happening at baptism. A new identity in Christ – issue of agency. Who gives us our new identity? In baptism we are given our new identity by God. Christ is the minister of the sacrament (Schillebeeckx (Belgium RC theologian – link to John Macquarrie’s A Guide to the Sacraments))
- All this is taking a huge amount of time and effort. Little room for gaps. For silence. Interior silence For hearing God. Every moment is to be filled with this digital noise requiring huge ongoing effort.
Questions
- Recent training – missio Dei. Importance of contextualisation. How to achieve this without giving in to kitsch on the one hand and retreating into aesthetic snobbery on the other? In a context of pressure of waning numbers (20% in 2000, 12% in 2010). Got to be ‘relevant’ etc..
- How to convey the identity that is being given, one which transcends and undergirds and reframes all our other identities?
- Baptised into the church, a network of men and women whom we did not choose (just think of the tensions revealed in Paul’s correspondence with the church in Corinth). Questions of quite how this is actually the chase given the homogeneity that often occurs in church. How to convey this importance of there being a physically gathered community through which the Spirit shapes us when that is less and less a feature in terms of everyday life – people expecting ad hoc meet ups, impromptu / and for a baptismal congregation who are often not part of the regular worshipping community – actually in many ways, it’s quite characteristic of contemporary gatherings – one-off.
- social media – drive to informality. They’re not stuffy. Tone and voice is all informal. Abbreviation, wit, succinct in. Solemnity out (for the most part, we’ll come back to that). Limitation of 140 characters and constantly distracted – diminished attention spans – or rather multiple things at once.
- Large criss-crossing networks attending the service. Involvement in the case of infant baptism in the story of the child (right up to confirmation and beyond). Same for adult?
- Commodification under-pinning the parents’ desire for a unique service? How do parents react when it’s a group baptism as opposed to adults being baptised together?
Questions on the hand out:
- What are your experiences of social media? Do you find it affecting your everyday life positively and/or negatively?
- How do you stay in touch with your family, friends and acquaintances these days? Has this changed much over the last 15 years.
- How can we teach and make connections to the concepts of ‘belonging’ and ‘commitment’ in the light of changes in the way we communicate and relate to one another using social media?
Unity and Weddings / Marriage
Context & Theological Reflections
- We see the same desire for identity and customisation – creating new identity together – customised networks, individualised in exactly the same way as so many others do (Big Data, trends, degrees of individuality). Be it in terms of music, readings, flowers etc..
- The church gives off a degree of being consumer-oriented by presenting the couple with a menu of options? Consumer-orientation?
- But as the church we understand marriage as a symbol of unity. Union of difference (Ephesians 1). Unity involving the relationship of difference. Transition of created relationships becoming jointly created identities.
- Key question is how is social media strengthening/weakening the marriage relationship?
- To help us get a handle on all of this, the idea of Connected Presence/Absent Presence/Present Absence/Present Presence (Scott Campbell and Yong Jin Park, communication scientists, for Connected Presence. Kenneth Gergen – social psychologist – on absent presence: you’re here but your focus is elsewhere. Present absence are Lee Rainie, Barry Wellman from MIT: you’re elsewhere but you’re here with us. And then there’s Present Presence (me!) and also Absent Absence (also me), but come to this if time/useful under Funerals.
- Map this onto Buber’s I-Thou, I-It. How absent presence turns/pulls/draws immediate, present relationships into I-It (relationships that we use or experience) rather than I-Thou, personhood relating to us to the mystery of another I, the I of the other is not a means but an end in him or herself) and those who become present but who are absent physically (but not via the IM, email, txt, FB update, tweet, Instagram) become the focus. Give example of someone ‘dropping out’ out the immediate conversation.
- Mediated Presence (sacraments – ‘the outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace’
- Marriage as a symbol – Bride of Christ. God’s Present Presence (map on to the above). Refer to Zimzum (present absence) & Isaac Luria in Moltmann’s Trinity and the Kingdom of God (see below)
- Blurring of public and private
- Weakening of core relationships as relationships in peripheral networks compete for attention (tie in with Gianni Vattimo (‘Weak Thought’ if time).
- Weakened relationships with little time for Present Presence, more vulnerable to the usual vicissitudes of marriage which are intensified by the dangers of the couple’s respective digital histories Facebook – exs etc. They’re like digital tattoos.
- Issues of attention and focus
- Marriage made real after the event seen through the eyes of a camera and shared & tweeted on FB.
- I-Thou, I-It (See above and how it maps on to Absence and Presence etc.
- Bride of Christ
- If time – Zimzum – Moltmann Trinity: Isaac Luria 0 means ‘concentration’ or ‘contraction’, a width drawn into the self. The existence of the universe was made possible through a shrink process in God. A delimitation first. see The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. p.109 | Also “In a way, He is yet more present in His absence than in His presence.” http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2047206/jewish/Tsimtsum.htm
Questions
As more people meet via soc med and use services like match.com (?),
- How can you conduct the liturgy in a way that heightens the sense of present presence for the couple getting married – overwhelming emotion of the day, all the distractions, made more real when replayed? Especially when they face each other and say their vows. If more of their relationship is mediated technologically.
- Awareness of each other’s online histories as part of pre-wedding preparation? What elements of the marriage service prepare the couple for their need of grace and forgiveness?
- No children to attend! A private occasion when in fact weddings are public. And public sharing of the event is simply an extension of those who are present to those who are absent and yet present either asynchronously via social media updates or synchronously through streaming.
- The register is where you record the day. Photos, tweets, FB updates etc.. Are they the same. If not, how?
- Should soc med (please turn off your phones (but it’s my camera?!)) be insisted upon given that this media is going to be heavily drawn upon by the couple as they live their married life. Most of us share and seek advice and support online. Is it right to cut off that moment and exclude it from the future telling on the couple’s stories by their friends and families?
- How can the church participate in the telling of the wedding couple’s story by their family and friends?
Questions on the hand out:
- Think of your own immediate, closest relationships. In what way are they characterised by Connected Presence/Present Absence/Absent Presence/ Present Presence? How has social media affected things?
- How does the changes brought about by social media affect the way that the bride and groom hear, accept and subscribe to the vows they are being asked to take?
- Have you counselled couples who have experienced difficulties as a consequence of their digital histories? If you do marriage preparation, do you cover this kind of thing?
- Should wedding guests at the marriage service, which is a public event, be required not to use their phones for taking photographs etc.?
- How can the church participate in the telling of the wedding couple’s story by their family and friends?
Memory and Funerals
Context, Theological Reflections & Questions all mixed up together!
Memory as increasingly digital (our memory is increasingly ‘outsourced’ as ‘we’ don’t need to remember, we can just Google it (issues of authority and trust…) In the press: Privacy – EU legislation ‘Right to be forgotten’. The flip side of this is that people very much want to be remembered and not forgotten. But remembered in the right way.
What does it mean to take a funeral service, minister to the bereaved in this changing context.
As more of our memories and experiences are mediated by social media, sharing content online, what happens to all of this when we die? For those in their 70s+ there isn’t too much material nor is there really the expectation but if you think of what happens when a young person dies, in addition to the location where they died, if it was an accident, it’s online, most normally on Facebook where a page is used for friends, especially, to express their loss. Social media as a form of modern commemoration. Changing face of mourning. Changing context. Blogging terminal illness (think of Alice Payne, of Stephen Sutton (equivalent of John Diamond), with 860,000 Likes and 200,000 shares – memorial pages, videos, #funeralselfies.
The church has traditionally offered a graveyard or a garden of rest. Non-commercial resting place. All of the digital ‘resting places’ are in commercial hands. New entries into the market like pyxit.com.
How can the church make space to conserve the digital memory of the deceased? This might seem at first thought somewhat bizarre, but people have in the past made gifts to the church and then had a flagstone engraved in the church building…. A sense of permanence. Hard to convey other than in stone but to what degree are such feelings those of a pre-digital age?
Hitherto, it’s only been the artists, the creatives, the significant figures of the past, in politics etc., who have left their mark in history. For the rest of us, depending our time, our existence would be recorded simply by our birth/baptism, wedding and death. But now it’s there for all of us. Already there is a record of material of everyday life for our descendants to view. This may seem of only minor interest but think of the importance that the Bible accords to genealogies. Mapping out our history of faith and being able to see those who have gone before us, talk and move about.
Digital wills – different attitudes by the different social media platforms. Give example of Twitter (non-transferable), Facebook – the page can become an online grave, where people can leave messages of condolence, love, memories etc., Instagram (Peaches Geldof’s photos, removed from public view by request of the family).
How to incorporate the digital life of the deceased into the funeral service and the initial grieving of the bereaved or should we just ignore this aspect of their life? If we ignore it, are we not just ignoring the way that many today give expression to their grief, by being able to share their memories.
To what extent are people already wanting to customise their funerals and be in control of how they are remembered? All the material on soc med means that they aren’t but the deceased may try in advance to control how they are remembered. Even making an ‘appearance’ at the service … Think of the eulogy. Is it a huge step to expect that in time people will want to record messages to be played to the congregation? And whilst it may seem bizarre, the broader culture is preparing the ground in the way that video montages or the best bits of people’s lives are weaved together, both at the occasion of mini-deaths (being ejected from XFactor or Strictly!) but also when they do die – think of how actors are remembered at occasions such as the Oscars and the BAFTAs (interesting, too, one could go in a whole different direction on this and how it ties in with celebrity culture – back to idolatry …). What in one generation is the preserve of the wealthy (home videos etc.) becomes the norm for subsequent generations as the means become cheaply available. These are becoming ever more common. So it’s not a big step from here. And these videos are now posted to YouTube in remembrance of the deceased.
“A video of the deceased or in memory of the deceased is a moving way to share their life with others. A composite of homemade videos or a video tribute that features music, images and video can often communicate what words are unable to.”
Memorial Videos: Surviving Death has Never Been Easier
http://www.yourstoryherehome.com/memorials.html
#FuneralSelfies esp. more amongst the younger
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2013/11/19/3635209/
Live tweeting the funeral service (for those who couldn’t be there):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/01/mourning_on_social_media_it_s_not_crass.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/3014972/fast-feed/death-in-the-time-of-twitter-or-how-we-grieve-now
DeadSocial app – status updates and messages after we die. Other online services motivated by the same idea.
“My youngest son died in August of last year. He was 24. Initially I didn’t want people to put it on face book, though I knew I could not prevent it. How wrong I was……….there were hundreds of posts following the news of his sudden death. Each and every one an expression of sorrow, love or disbelief. Some entries filled with such sadness, some with such profound words of wisdom, respect and support for my family and myself and everyone acknowledged the enormity of our loss. His page remains open and is a constant source of support for us all. A place where we can talk to him, where we have wished him happy birthday, Christmas and New Year. We can see pictures of him we would never have had access to in any other circumstance. Inappropriate !!!!!!!!!! I don’t think so. The internet and social media have assisted and enabled us to bear this unbearable sorrow, and made us realise that we were not the only ones who lost him. A very humbling truth, rest assured.” olwyn56 comment left on:
Funerals as marking Absent absence – tie in with above mapping. But the hope is in enduring connected presence of the deceased with God (God uploading our memory, our identity (us as software…) – all doubtless metaphors of our time but nonetheless interesting to explore).
Fear of death leading to digital transfer/upload:
Stephen Hawking: “I think the brain is like a program in the mind, which is like a computer, so it’s theoretically possible to copy the brain onto a computer and so provide a form of life after death,” he told a crowd in Cambridge. “However, this is way beyond our present capabilities.” http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/21/stephen-hawking-brain-outside-body quoted in http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/scientists-are-convinced-mind-transfer-is-the-key-to-immortality Also people like Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil (director of technology at Google) and others. Roger Penrose disagreeing – with consciousness being ‘a quantum mechanical phenomenon’.
These thoughts may seem all rather far-fetched but look ahead 25 years. 25 years more for the digital age to shape us, including soc media. Think back to how things were in the early 90s before this all began …
So how to think about this theologically. Eschatology & Resurrection. Who will remember us? To what degree is all this an attempt to ward of not only our own deaths but also the annihilation of those who will remember us, too?
So tie in with Vernon White on the resurrection. For me to be raised, re-composed (! Max Richter’s Recomposed digital sampling of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons), all those who have made me who I am would need to be raised (give example of dad & MND – what would that mean?). All my life, my memories etc. will need to be raised, not just the ‘me’ at the moment of my death – importance of memory in the Resurrection narratives, esp. Jesus & Peter at the lakeside. Hence to what degree is this desire to record everything, tweet everything, FB, Instagram etc. a symptom of a society that has lost its faith in a God who will raise them from the dead and instead relies on attempting to create a form of digital immortality? A stay against the flux. If so, does the funeral service need to create a clear divide between life and death and signal the deceased’s digital death as well as their physical death? When does it come time to redecorate the bedroom/delete the FB account?
VW: [Resurrection] is grounded in the basic structure of resurrection hope. For throughout biblical narrative and doctrine ‘resurrection’ is thought of as happening to all time and history, not just to the end of it. That is the meaning of a ‘general’ resurrection: the potential is for all to be raised, wherever they lie on the linear pathway of time, not just those at the end of it. In other words, it is precisely all human history, not just its end, which has the potential to be taken up into the new heaven and new earth. That is why God is described as God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (earlier figures of human history) as well as God of Bill and Sally and ourselves, and those who follow us. … it means that nations, tribes and tongues whose impact in history may have long since vanished in the stream of time, will still be raised – precisely because their value is potentially eternal too. They were not just expendable means to some evolutionary end which left them behind in the march of linear time.
http://static.westminster-abbey.org/assets/pdf_file/0005/56408/Lent-Lecture-3.pdf
Questions
- Have you had experience of difficulties caused by the deceased’s digital life?
- Have you had experience of the deceased wanting to be present in some digital form after their death as a part of the service?
- Should you attempt to incorporate aspects of the digital life of the deceased into the funeral service and when you minister to the bereaved or should we ignore this aspect of his or her life?
- How can the church make space to conserve the digital memory of the deceased? Think of the engraved headstones, wall-mounted plaques, the garden of rest etc. …
Finally, here’s the image that was mentioned during one of the plenaries:
Banksy’s latest
Is this Absent Presence, Connected Presence, Present Absence ….?