theology twitterfied

[martasfic]

Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.

On a slightly lighter note, my most recent ThinkChristian piece is up. The pope just joined the Twittersphere, and I talk about the dangers of trying to boil down theology to something that can easily be communicated – to be fair, a problem that predates the internet and goes beyond Roman Catholicism. (Think the evangelical tendency to read the Bible literally and absolutely.)

http://thinkchristian.net/twitter-the-pope-and-theology-in-140-characters

I’d love to know what people think, but I’d *especially* love it if you’d comment at the site, if you’re able. I think you either need a FB or (ironically) Twitter account, or an account with their site. If you can’t comment there I’d still love to know what you thought there.

Comments

[hhimring]

I suppose Twitter (with which I'm not all that familiar, actually) works by limiting the size of the individual message but by keeping up a steady stream of such short messages. The steadiness of the flow seems as essential to the method as the shortness of the individual message. So that you wouldn't be limiting what you say to 140 characters so much as dividing the flow up into chunks of 140-character size. That would still have quite profound effects on the way you were trying to communicate theological truths, I imagine.

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

You know, I hadn't thought of that. I'm not on Twitter, so perhaps you're on to something. It just seems to me like it would have to be a bunch of people talking at each other, or perhaps talking all at once, rather than a genuine conversation.

I do hope things work out well for the pope in the new medium.