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According to a columnist from Salon.com, “The Vatican, and the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Southern Baptist Convention should be very worried.” http://www.salon.com/2013/01/16/religion_may_not_survive_the_internet/ (Sorry about the crappy popups)
I think this article gets to the heart of why many of us are here. One paragraph was particularly interesting:
Quote:A traditional religion, one built on “right belief,” requires a
closed information system. That is why the Catholic Church put an official seal of approval on some ancient texts and banned or burned others. It is why some Bible-believing Christians are forbidden to marry nonbelievers. It is why Quiverfull moms home school their kids from carefully screened text books. It is why, when you get sucked into conversations with your fundamentalist uncle George from Florida, you sometimes wonder if he has some superpower that allows him to magically close down all avenues into his mind. (He does!) The Church seems to have a schizophrenic response to the internet. One the one hand, E Cook’s recent commentary that “Some have immersed themselves in internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of early church leaders. Then they draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony.” One the other hand, the Church is trying to be more open with sites like “Revelations in Context.”
http://history.lds.org/series/doctrine-and-covenants-revelations-in-context?lang=eng#/date/10/1 In spite of JDs recent comments about the middle path, a middle of the road approach to religion may be the only viable, long-term response to the open information system that is the internet.
turinturambar wrote:According to a columnist from Salon.com, “The Vatican, and the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Southern Baptist Convention should be very worried.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/16/religion_may_not_survive_the_internet/ (Sorry about the crappy popups)
I think this article gets to the heart of why many of us are here. One paragraph was particularly interesting:
Quote:A traditional religion, one built on “right belief,” requires a
closed information system. That is why the Catholic Church put an official seal of approval on some ancient texts and banned or burned others. It is why some Bible-believing Christians are forbidden to marry nonbelievers. It is why Quiverfull moms home school their kids from carefully screened text books. It is why, when you get sucked into conversations with your fundamentalist uncle George from Florida, you sometimes wonder if he has some superpower that allows him to magically close down all avenues into his mind. (He does!) The Church seems to have a schizophrenic response to the internet. One the one hand, E Cook’s recent commentary that “Some have immersed themselves in internet materials that magnify, exaggerate, and in some cases invent shortcomings of early church leaders. Then they draw incorrect conclusions that can affect testimony.” One the other hand, the Church is trying to be more open with sites like “Revelations in Context.”
http://history.lds.org/series/doctrine-and-covenants-revelations-in-context?lang=eng#/date/10/1 In spite of JDs recent comments about the middle path, a middle of the road approach to religion may be the only viable, long-term response to the open information system that is the internet.
Listening to the Dehlin podcast about his research and sharing it with the brethren… I think they must be feeling very nervous about the impact of the internet. With growing presence of critics and more subtle ways of sharing issues, they will not be able to keep a lid on it forever.
I hope there’s more of history.lds.org and less of the ‘don’t touch it, don’t look at it.’
They should be worried…just liked the Catholics should have been worried about the printing press. We are at the cusp of a spiritual awakening….and reformation will happen.
The question…will the church evolved…or get left behind.
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It will survive in a different form. The printing press did not kill the RC church – it now has more members than ever.
There are even internet religions. Google Yoism.
Very interesting – thanks for posting. I guess I agree with the basic premise to a point, but don’t end up at the same conclusion as the author. The interweb is obviously giving us access to history, cultural analysis and diverse points of view. Twenty years ago it might be very difficult to study up on Hinduism if you’re living back of Burke. Today, you can read all about it from anywhere. There are adherents of the Dalai Lama all over the world who’ve never met him. We have access to so much information now, it’s easy to get material that challenges your religious worldview. Despite all this, religion in human society goes well beyond just a belief system. Religions are tribes, too. In fact, tribalism is a big reason many Catholics stay Catholic, many Mormons stay Mormon, and many Jews stay Jewsish. I don’t think the internet will replace that. I have a number of “friends” from the internet, including at places like this, but my relationships with flesh-and-blood folks are almost always much more satisfying. I realize that’s not true for everyone, but it is for me. Mormonism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, etc. will all survive this flood of info not because one of them is more “true” than the other, but because they connect people. I love science and rational inquiry, but I never bonded in a meaningful way with anyone from my zoology class. I have bonded, strongly and firmly, with my brothers and sisters from my mission, from my favorite branches and wards, etc. I’m a Mormon not just because I believe JS was a prophet. I’m a Mormon … because … I just … am. I just am. And the internet can’t touch that. So in a way, the quote from the article “People connected are God” likely has a bit of truth to it. The Mormon Church connects me to people in many more fulfilling ways than my iPad does.
I may be surprised to be wrong, but I imagine there will be immovable Catholics, Mormons, Jews, JWs, Muslims and Baptists 500 years from now. The various belief systems of these groups may have shifted in response to the readily available info on the internet, but the cultural identity will remain fairly constant. Just my humble $.02.
The closed information system bit totally rings true, but I hate hearing it from Salon. I feel like a lot of what they say stinks of an “I told you so” arrogance. I have only spent a limited amount of time poking around history.lds.org and I worry that the Revelations in Context is a bit of a front. The site seems designed to draw you into the main lds.org site. The top navigation all leads to the main church website with no obvious way back to the Revelations in Context content.
That being said, I am glad to see an effort. Kind of like the Mormons and Gays website it is a good start.
The flipside is that the internet is full of lies and disinformation too. I can’t talk about history or historical sources but I have read stuff about current Mormon practise which is simply wrong…. why? Because I can speak from personal experience. One example – caffeine is NOT banned by the church. We are allowed to drink cola if we wish. turinturambar wrote:According to a columnist from Salon.com, “The Vatican, and the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Southern Baptist Convention should be very worried.”
…
In spite of JDs recent comments about the middle path, a middle of the road approach to religion may be the only viable, long-term response to the open information system that is the internet.
Yes, I think the church has reason to worry but for maybe different reasons than have been expressed. I believe that many religions, including LDS, will have a reckoning with not only the Internet but with education / enlightenment in general. I believe that in general education and worldly knowledge tends to debunk religion. Detailed knowledge about many churches shown they have skeletons.
However, churches survive because of faith. Believers will trust that somehow the church or religion will bring salvation in spite of the many flaws. I think the LDS church will survive but it may look more like the Catholic church with a small % of hardcore believers. I’m more worried that tithing revenues will decrease and that will impact the church in many ways.
The internet made this group possible. Just saying.
I remember 20 years ago, when interacting for the first time in my life with people of other faiths, how cool it felt to be a Mormon. Belonging to this booming church, our missionaries sweeping in masses of new members from across the globe, while my Protestant and Catholic friends belonged to once-dominant faiths now in serious decline. Killed by too much modernism (Protestants) or too much conservatism (Catholics). Sure, a core of the faithful still believed, their faith fueled by their heritage, however poorly the present compared to it. Or if they didn’t much believe, at least many felt strong social and familial ties, bordering on ethnicity, that kept them in. But that seemed to me weak tea. Now I’m feeling more humble and my religion seems less different. I’m not saying our best days are behind us, but I regard that as at least a possibility. I’m much more certain that the days of our innocence are behind us, and that the future shape of the church is unguessable. And I find that really, really exciting. I say, bring on the change, you internets!
Old-Timer wrote:The internet made this group possible.
Just saying.
Amen brother.
I am also glad that the internet may have opened up the possibility to expand my mental/spiritual horizons. I would rather be aware of the weaknesses in my faith than to suffer from some of the ignorance that I have in the past. Sure it hurts and can be confusing at times, but it also makes my world rich in ways it never was before.
Can I get a witness?
SamIam wrote:the days of our innocence are behind us
Profound.
Quote:the days of our innocence are behind us
Yeah, at some point we have to become adults of God, as Hawkgirl says.
Loss of innocence is painful, but I prefer it, personally. I really do think appreciation for the sweet is heightened by experience with the bitter – and I believe personally discovered sweet is better than generic sweet.
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