Sermons and Blogs
Listening to science fiction author Bruce Sterling's speech at SXSW (MP3 link), I was struck by how similar it was to the sermons I grew up with. Except, of course, that it was eloquent, intelligent and relevant-- and I can put it on pause or turn it off. Nevertheless, a speech is a speech and they often use the same techniques of moralizing, mythmaking and humor. A transcript does not convey the adoration and indignation and scorn which alternate in Sterling's voice.
The moralizing is all there, except instead of concerning personal vices it is leveled against anti-intellectualism and geopolitical arrogance.
The mythmaking is all there in how he depicts who we (presumably the global online coffeehouse/salon chatter) are as a group, our glorious destiny and who our enemies are. Listen to his breathless depiction of commons-based peer production overthrowing the "monopolistic choke hold" of "legacy technology" and "legacy people."
The humor is all there: "Only in the United States do dying phone companies lobby the government as if they were Indian casinos."
Sterling even weeps aloud at the end while finishing off with a poem. Had I not recognized the speech as a sermon by that point, this would have clinched it. Crying is certainly not considered a failure mode among Baptist preachers; it's almost a prerequisite. I don't think my dad has ever preached a sermon that he considered a success in which he did not burst into tears.
Sterling even pitched a couple of books that he wrote. But at least he openly admitted "when authors do that it's hopelessly de-classe' and lame." Fortunately he has enough self-awareness to know when he's being lame, and didn't turn it into an infomercial with a sentimental altar call driven by tear-jerking music and testimony. It's not that schmaltzy. Only a church would fail to see the torch-and-pitchfork mob mentality of that practice.
In the end, it was interesting to see that as a soap-box blogger, I'm basically following in the family business. Preaching was blogging one-point-oh. This was the method the god of the universe supposedly ordained? Talk about unintelligent design! The software's feature set was pathetic. If you missed it the first time you had to get it on cassette tape, and that wasn't even available to the early church. It didn't have any feedback-- you couldn't take comments back then. So you could talk past your audience, and they would have no idea what you were talking about and you'd never find out until the pews were empty. Or they would come up with a fantastically brilliant disagreement and you wouldn't get a chance to explain and change their minds. Half the people in a congregation could be secretly thinking "this is inconvincing, but everybody else around me agrees with it" and not realize most of the others are thinking that too.
Comments
natashasikorsky on Mar. 17, 2006 8:11 PM
A transcript does not convey the adoration and indignation and scorn which alternate in Sterling's voice
Neither does a blog. In that regard, blogging one-point-oh has it all over the "upgrade".
Half the people in a congregation could be secretly thinking "this is inconvincing, but everybody else around me agrees with it" and not realize most of the others are thinking that too.
The same could be said of blog readers, except that most of them are in the choir. The biggest difference between what you do and what your dad did is your dad likely had a lot of people hear him say things they didn't want to hear. Your dad was actually in a position to change some minds. Blog readers? They're here because it's easy to be here. They're outa here if you bore them or discredit yourself.
That real-time, hard-to-skip the disagreeable parts nature of blogging one-point-oh is a feature, not a bug :-)
matt-arnold on Mar. 17, 2006 8:41 PM
The same could be said of blog readers, except that most of them are in the choir.
Maybe there is an internet on another planet which looks this way. I've never seen it. The blogosphere on this planet is a fulminating stew of guffaws and catcalls.
Who is this person who, instead of saying "that's incorrect and I know why" just says "There isn't anything I can say against it but I just don't want to hear the truth"? Where do you find this alleged person that you imagine your preacher talks to? It's awfully convenient to characterize their motivations this way.
Do you really think that if a preacher bores people or is discredited, the audience should stick around?
thatguychuck on Mar. 17, 2006 9:14 PM
Do you really think that if a preacher bores people or is discredited, the audience should stick around?
No, but in some congregations they do for a long, long time. Generations.
It's not a good way to do things, but it's a way things are done. :|
natashasikorsky on (None)
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