Towards A Theology Of Web 2.0: some brief notes

Here are some notes I’ve been working on for several days. I haven’t managed to polish the prose, but hopefully they might set people thinking. ‘Towards A Theology Of … ‘ might sound pretentious, and I recall a college friend taking the mickey with a paper entitled ‘Towards A Theology Of Football’, but I’m really just trying to say that these are provisional thoughts as part of an attempt to work from a conviction that God is interested in all of life, the Web included. So here goes:

There is so much around about the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was already somewhat postmodern because of GUIs and intuition, also ‘surfing’. But Web 2.0 represents an increasing postmodernisation. It goes from static websites to dynamic ones(rather like going back from a Greek mindset to a Hebrew one). It moves from reading what is provided (sermons – cf. my site) to interaction (which is very postmodern and can be consumerist). Note for example the emphasis on conversation (particularly in blogs with their comments and trackbacks – no wonder the emerging church ‘conversation’ favours not simply the web but web 2.0). Then there is collaboration (online apps – is this a feminising of the web and more so of the church, because it is contrary to competition? Although note that collaborative web apps are being introduced for reasons of empire and competition – Google v Microsoft, etc. So now you can word-process online and use spreadsheets together. Some vendors provide a whole suite of programs.)

So what kind of witness and evangelism is appropriate on the web? In Web 1.0 you listen to the proclamation but in Web 2.0 it must be dialogical. The Web Evangelism Bulletin has long been anti-church websites that are electronic notice sheets and has promoted the ‘bridge strategy’ where a Christian writes about his/her profession or hobby and mentions their faith somewhere in it. That itself can still be static, but if combined with the interactivity of, say, a blog that is well tagged, they may be onto something.

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