Practising what we preach

Practising what we preachAuthority, Technorati and religious bloggers

Paul Emerson Teusner :: RMIT University :: CMRC 2010

Paul Emerson Teusner - AoIR 9.0 2

The study• Part of wider study into

online religious identities• Sample of 30 Australian blogs

that fall within the “emerging church” conversation– Technorati & Google searches– As identified by bloggers

themselves– As identified by other bloggers


The study• Posts, comments and links

made between 1 July and 31 October 2006

• Rhetoric around authority and how authority is negotiated among themselves


Web 2.0 rhetoric• Democratisation of

production and distribution• Merging of public and private

spheres• Death of author and rise of

user


Emerging church rhetoric• Inter-denominational• Christians have lost the culture war• Conversation more than movement• Social change rather than church

growth• Lay leadership, disaffection with

current church structures, including academic theological method


Sample• Mostly Australian• 3 in the top ten Technorati list• 10 in the top 50

– 1 is written by female– 1 is written by male & female

couple– All over 35– All religious workers

• 1 is #2


Attitude to Technorati• See it as unfair and flawed• Those with high rankings

recognise the rankings of others

• Try to devalue the position of themselves


Andrew Jones was the equivalent of the Pope in the international Emerging Church conversation. Surely!? The nature of ‘emerging’ is that most people involved in the grassroots could not care less about who is blogging, publishing, speaking, or leading excellent worship experiences in high profile events.Duncan - Pacific highlander9 August 2006


According to this list of the Top 50 emerging church blogs, this blog is just not influential. Based on their method, this page should have been clinging to the bottom of the list. [...]

So why point it out? Well it isn’t to complain about not making the list, I’m not much into lists and infact think it is a little worrying when church bloggers obsess about them. The thing a number of A-Listers won’t admit is that a bit of their linkeage comes from people desperate to generate traffic for their own blogs.Fernando - Fernando's desk19 July 2006

Hefty praise from Mr No.1 on Technorati! :)Hamo - backyard missionary30 July 2006


I love a lot of things about the "emerging church" movement. I've written various things on this here site that could be construed as a bit EC. I'm even #133 on the technorati emerging church blog listing. But...Dave - Aropax nation4 August 2006

ahem . . . testing one, two, three does anyone know anything about this blogshares thing?while checking out where readers were coming from, I discovered this site that lists the X facta as being in the top 100 blogs in Melbourne my share price is a little sad :( but hey, it's not every day you get to say you're on a top 100 blog list :)Kel - X facta13 September 2006


Attitude to church authorityThe Uniting Church understands leadership very differently to this. Our prevailing model of leadership formation is for a ‘modern’, linear form of leadership. [...]

Part of that conversation needs to involve a reinterpretation of the role of ministers as leaders… and an ‘imagining’ of how leaders - who aren’t the minister - can emerge within a congregation.Cheryl - [hold :: this space]29 September 2006


Mary Hess (Tensegrities) made a very interesting comment here recently,“…historical theology has far too narrowly conceived what we mean by theology, and in doing so cut huge numbers of people out of the conversation.”I think Mary is right.Fernando - Fernando's desk22 August 2006

we had the video and music and compared quotes of Kurt Cobain & Marilyn Manson favourably with Jesus and quotes by Fred Nile favourably with the Pharisees. So kind of different but kind of similar.Chris - A churchless faith2 September 2006


Own authorityThanks for the link Hamo! I’ve never really considered myself a blogger of much importance (especially compared to many on your list) and I wasn’t really pushing to get my site linked (honestly!), it’s just when you had the “blogs I admit to reading” list I liked the idea of being in the “blogs I don’t admit to reading” list. Anyway, thanks for including me - appreciate it. :)Chris - backyard missionary31 August 2006 But don't just take my word for it. Read some other voices. Here's just one:http://hannahim.com/blog/category/emerging/Matt Stone - eclectic itchings23 July 2006

http://hannahim.com/blog/category/emerging/

http://hannahim.com/blog/category/emerging/


I’m not really part of the official emerging church networks and definately not being invited into the talking-shops either. However, I have been thinking about the missional, flat eccllesiological thing for over a decade now. More importantly, I’ve been doing it, trying it and playing with it for as long. I’ve run an academic reading group discussing Zizek, Baudrillard and al the usual suspects, given academic papers on theology and film, run a campus faith and film group, and so on.Fernando - Fernando's desk6 August 2006


How bloggers give authority• Intellectual authority• Indexical authority• Personal authority


“We don’t really have popular culture anymore, so much as a fragmented market crowded with expertly segmented, mutually hostile opposing camps of various forms of unpopular culture.”Mark SteynFernando - Fernando's desk18 August 2006

I guess I'm on of the postmodern Xns that Tom Lyberg speaks about when he says... "Slowly some postmodern Xns are rediscovering the Jesus who yelled at God for abandoning him on the cross. [...]“Chris - A churchless faith5 July 2006


Where bloggers give authority

• 390 hyperlinked references to the work or opinion of someone else– 70% to an author of a published work, or

the work itself– 26% to a blogger or online work– Some bloggers would make it daily

practice• 103 hyperlinked references to one

another– 62 links shared by 6 recipients– Links show closer ties to three

denominational groups


Considerations• Links show that authority favours

intellectual conversation• Author still valued over user• Links between blogs online determined

in part by connections made offline• Public discourse favoured over private

discourse• Religious authority in the blogosphere

still...– Male– Educated & literate– Professional

Practising what we preach

Education

Transcript of Practising what we preach