Hello again—I know this is my second email in a week, but I just got word on the title of my book and couldn’t wait to share it.
The official title is:
Untrustworthy
The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community
This isn’t what I originally used in the book proposal—that was Fake News and False Witness, which I still like but suspect would feel dated much too quickly—but it was my favorite of around half a dozen suggestions I compiled back in August. I’m happy with the pick.
It will be a while yet before the next big reveal—the cover art and, with it, pre-order options (!)—which I expect will come in early 2022. My next email will return to my book rec list, I think, but this one I’ll close with a plug of my latest column at Christianity Today, which was inspired by a chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I reread for book research—er, I should say, which I reread while doing research for my forthcoming book, Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community.
Why church shouldn’t just be on Facebook
Facebook, more than other major social networks, is deliberately courting religious use. The site is testing a prayer request feature, which seems only to differ from regular posts in groups in that you can respond by clicking an “I prayed” button instead of “liking” it. Facebook is also working directly with some denominations and megachurches, hoping to make faith a steady new source of traffic and ad revenue.
Reading up on Facebook’s religious outreach, I was surprised by how positive pastors and other faith leaders were when interviewed about this integration of worship, congregational community, and social media. Some added caveats about misuse of technology or privacy concerns, but they largely welcomed it as a valuable tool for everyday church life. Some even seem to think, as televangelist Pat Robertson once said of television, that it “would be folly for the church not to get involved with the most formative force in America,” that “the message is the same, [and] the delivery can change.”
That thinking is misguided. For all its practical uses in extraordinary circumstances like the pandemic or as a means of including and ministering to those who physically cannot come to services, social media as a space for ordinary group worship will do us more harm than good.
Facebook—and other social media sites—are not simply the next evolution of the cassette ministry or a convenient online centralization of logistics and worship. Their formative power isn’t neutral.
The medium will meaningfully reframe or outright change the message—chiefly, I suspect, by trivializing it and pulling our attention away.
Culture critic Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, when TV was the medium under scrutiny. Postman wasn’t a Christian, nor could he know about social media. Still, his chapter on televised church (containing the above quote from Pat Robertson) offers three prescient warnings Christians need as we consider a new medium for worship.
Read the rest here.
Best,
Bonnie