Glocal Christianity

Voodoo, Yahoo and Nigerian Scams

According to New Scientist, Joshua Oyeniyi Aransiola, a sociologist at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife has the inside scoop on the Nigerian email scammers and it turns out their secret to success is voodoo: 

Those unfamiliar with Nigerian culture might find one of the study's findings particularly surprising - scammers make regular use of voodoo. As one Yahoo Boy put it: "The Voodoo thing exists for real, I have used it but I have stopped because of the fear of repercussion. With the aid of Voodoo the money comes faster. I have friends that still use it, they can collect money twice or thrice a week and it helps. I have a friend that uses a calabash filled with black substance; he hides it in his room and says incantations."

Send me $10,000 and I'll exorcise your firewall.

Now you can watch the entire Jesus Movie on YouTube

No need to buy the video. Now you can watch the Jesus Movie and The Passion of The Christ on YouTube for free. 

Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

If you are interested in the cultural implications of computer technologies, I highly recommend reading this article from Neil Postman on "Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change." He sums it up as follows:

"And so, these are my five ideas about technological change. First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us."

Is it the book or the text that matters?

How the Physical Form of a Bible Shapes Us: Will the digital Scriptures speed the decline of family spirituality once fostered by family Bibles? This is the question David Neff asked in Christianity Today. I think its a very good question even if I have no answers yet.

Following Jesus in Post-Literate Contexts

When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

Without denying the importance of verbal and textual communication, it's instructive to observe that Jesus never limited himself to scrolls or speaches. When questioned by John the Baptist, on whether he's the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth refuses to answer the question! Instead he says, in effect, "Let my actions speak for themselves! Can't you see the significance of these signs?"

Even in the oral culture of first century Palastine, Jesus did not rely exclusively on oral communication. Now, as we find ourselves moving into an increasingly post-literate, multimedia context, shouldn't we begin exploring complementary forms of communication more seriously?

However, in asking this I am not suggesting we should do so uncritically. I shake my head at the many, many Christian multimedia FAILs I see circulating through social networks. Multimedia communication means much more than bolting something shiny onto whatever you'd do normally. That is attractional thinking, not missional thinking. 

If we're to communicate more like Jesus we need to learn how to discern counter-Christian narratives in movies, music, games and other forms of entertainment. Likewise, we need to learn to discern counter-Christian themes in the actions of self-identified Christians and consider how we should respond in Christ-like ways to that. What we face here is a different kind of illiteracy. We're textually literate but non-textually blind. We need to recognize that we live in a low context culture where, even as we're saturated in symbols, we can't take symbolic literacy for granted. Most importantly, I think we need to recover the sence in which we, the church, are the medium of our message. 

Unsocial Networking

I find myself lamenting the dearth of deep conversation on the web. In an ironic sort of way, social networking seems to have made the web a lot less social. We've become more superficial, less reflective. Yet, sometimes slow is good. Jesus took time away from the crowds to focus on the disciples. Sometimes we have to focus to be more genuinely social, even in cyberspace.

Now you can share Glocal Christianity on Google+

In case you haven't noticed I've added the Google +1 button to the bottom of all of the posts here at Glocal Christianity. Feel free to spread the conversations around :-)

How not to convert a church

And people still look at me quizzically when I say symbolic illiteracy is a problem.

From Fark.com

Thou Shalt Not Share

What are the implications of extending the word "stealing" to include "unauthorised sharing"?

Some words to consider

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. (Acts 4:32)

You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’ (Mark 10:19)

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11)

What Blogs are Still Good At?

What Blogs are Still Good At? It's a question I ask myself as the web evolves. Navneet Alang suggests that, while Facebook has taken over comment sharing and Twitter has overtaken link listing, blogs are still perfectly suited for specialist communities and longer thought-provoking writing. It's about quality not quantity. Mark Schaefer points out that about 70 percent of all tweets link back to a blog so "content publishing through blogs is important".

I think blogging is all about knowing your niche. As this blog has evolved I find it's become more and more focussed on what it means to "follow Jesus in a multireligious, multicultural and multimedia world". Whereas in the past I'd share all sorts of Christian news and amusing anecdotes, these days I'm far more ruthless about sticking to these niche topics. How is media evolving? How is culture evolving? How, especially, is religion evolving? Where is God in all this? How do I respond in a Christ like way? I share less links, less trivia, I focus more on original content, hopefully better quality content.

I wonder where this is all going. TV didn't kill cinema, it forced cinemas to focus on their strengths: spectacle. The strength of blogs, for me, is that they provide an easily accessible outlet for exploring narrower interests in more depth. So I don't try to engage everyone, I focus on the thinkers, the artists, the explorers, the innovators.