What does James say is the implanted word able to do?

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Dude Abides

Home
Progressive Christian

Last updated on: May 16, 2008 at 3:53 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2008-05-16T15:53:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

GODSTUFF

FACEBOOK: FINDING A SACRED PLACE IN CYBERSPACE

What began with simple curiosity has, in a few short weeks, become something deeply meaningful. And it all happened on Facebook.

Like many folks who skew more toward Generation X than Generation Z (for whom the social networking site was, apparently, originally intended), I started my foray on Facebook as an exercise in ennui-abatement. I went looking for college and high school friends, more to see how many kids they had and whether they’d lost their hair, than any higher purpose.

My best friend in St. Louis was on there, and through her I found a few more friends, and so on until I (somehow) amassed upwards of 500 “friends” on Facebook, including some people I actually know, or at least knew once upon a time.

It was fun to log on and see who popped up. But it remained little more than a curiosity slake and time waster, until one of our friends died suddenly last month. Most of us learned of his death on Facebook, and we started to mourn together — online.

More old friends joined and reconnected as we worked our way through the early stages of our grief. Our Facebook exchanges ranged from silly reminiscence — remember the time he pretended to jump off the roof of the Congress Hotel? — to soul-wrenching questions about why and what it all means.

It’s been five weeks since our friend was killed, and we’re still talking, digging deeper together in wide-ranging conversations that cover faith, doubt, division, denominationalism, law vs. grace, Roman Catholicism and Reformation, social contracts and divine covenants. All of it transpiring (mostly in the evening hours) on Facebook.

We’re having the kinds of conversations we used to have when we all lived within walking distance of one another on a Midwestern college campus. Except now we’re in California and Hawaii, Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi, Brooklyn and London, Sweden and the suburbs of Chicago.

Some of us, I would dare to say, have even begun to rediscover (or exhume) our faith. On Facebook.

For me, it’s become what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his book The Great, Good Place, described as a “third place.” Most people have two primary places — home and the workplace — and then there is a third place where they feel anchored and part of a chosen community. It might be a bar (illustrated beautifully in the TV series “Cheers”) or a neighborhood restaurant, a house of worship or a bowling alley. Everyone, Oldenburg argues, needs a third place.

Heidi Campbell, a professor of communications at Texas A&M University and author of the book Exploring Religious Community Online: We Are One In The Network, has been researching spirituality and the Internet since 1996. I asked her about my spiritual Facebook experience and she said it’s something she’s seeing more and more. Facebook is a kind of “mediated third place that allows people to engage or invigorate their spirituality,” she said. “In a contemporary, information-based society, it’s often hard to get that face-time connection. It becomes that virtual third place where I can kind of connect with that transcendent part of myself through conversation when I couldn’t maybe take the time out to get to a church to have it.”

Or find one where you feel safe enough to have the conversation, as the case may be.

Some of us in our peculiar Facebook community are members of churches. And some of us left the church not long after college and haven’t returned. Most of us are still trying to live the faith. What I think we’ve begun to do, though none of us has named it such, is pastor one another. Whether it’s the Massachusetts Yankee who converted to Roman Catholicism while living in the Middle East, the Dutch-Reformed-turned-Episcopal surfer, or the Buddhist mommy-to-be, we’re all talking. And more important, we’re all listening to each other in a way we wouldn’t be able to do in person.

“The beauty of Facebook or another online community is that you’re choosing your community,” Campbell said. “Because it’s a lot of like minds gathering or people with a similar background, like your experience, you can develop a sense of intimacy more quickly. Some criticize that because they say it’s a false sense of intimacy and it’s a false sense of community because it’s these self-selecting, homogeneous, very tightly bound groups. But I think you could argue … it’s the way you connect with people now.

“As middle age is staring us in the face, we’re trying to reconnect in a lot of ways. There’s some part of that spirituality that traditional religion [doesn’t] really connect with, but there’s that meaning-making, that God void, that I want to reconnect with, and so the Internet is becoming a great place, whether it’s to explore or to meet other people who are on that search.”

When you think of it that way, logging on takes on new meaning.

Even cyberspace can be a sacred place.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 15, 2008

Next Post

May 16, 2008

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A little happy ARCHIVED COLUMNS BECOMING FAMILY BelieberNess BREAKING NEWS! Disquiet Time DJ JEFF'S SPINTASMS falsani FILM from OCRegister From Sojo.net God Nods GODSTUFF I Take Requests incubatespirit LURKING IN THE NARTHEX On My Nightstand ONEMOMS Polling the Room PONTIFEXCELLENT Thru My Eyes TWO CENTS Uncategorized Upcoming Events VASCO VASCO'S HEART

Select a Month January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 July 2014 May 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 October 2003 March 2003 December 2002 October 2002 January 2001

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does James say is the implanted word able to do?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Heal your body Defeat your enemies Judge the nations Save your souls