By Inaku K. Egere
1. Introduction
The nurturing and constant growth of the people of God has been the special mission of the Church over time. In the past, few indicators conveyed though not in an unequivocal manner the insatiable appetite for carrying out this special mandate by Christ meant to last till the end of the world (cf. Mt 28:20), since the Gospel is for all time the source of all life for the Church. The religion and spirituality boiling up within a particular culture has often times been defined or better still redefined in terms of the milieu.
Therefore, streaming through the memory lane, there was a time in history when spiritual journey for instance is described to be the “dark night of the soul”, a way of gaining intimacy with God through retreats in silent abodes such as monasteries, convents, or even hermitages. This practice is not extinct but is at this very moment unfashionable as oppose to what it was many years ago. Because of the advent of the new media technology, the quest for spiritual exercises now are gradually been positioned within a public forum in a new marketplace of prolific information and communication.
Amid the over whelming images, words, and sounds trumpeted by new media technology, the Church is saddled with the challenges of a dialectical relation between the demands and menaces of a situation in which she must communicate and nurture the Gospel values. Many more young men and women are today more than ever asking pertinent questions bordering around their faith. The media houses as products of the society have also in myriads of ways written and published articles and stories with similar themes such as: Do miracles still happen? Is Jesus really God? Has God forgotten this generation? Is the Bible the word of God? Is God still alive?. These questions may
have being articulated because of the belief that some situations in our lives have brought to limelight the awareness that we have not just only a relationship with events in themselves as the unfold but also to the mystery of life which inhibits them. The mystery which points to the ultimate being where people live, move and have their being. It captures the in and through relationship with the ultimate Mystery that interprets the presence of God as the transcendental ground and vista of everything which exists and everything which knows and takes place precisely in and through the presence of the infinite existent. Such contemporary philosophical theology suggests that people are aware of the presence of God in privies and parks, in times of joy and despair, in communication with people in the society or even in the solitary self. The stories and meaning which the person has distilled from such encounters eventually forms the starting point for faith development. With the synchronic and asynchronic nature of the new media technology, the heterogeneous audience can easily be reached. Indeed, with Internet for instance as the prototypical new media apparently prioritizing the element of connectivity, faith can be woven into and nurtured even within “the cross cultural fabrics of religious and spiritual life” especially as it has the capacity to be linked to other media, distant or sometimes near, one or many simultaneously with wide consequences. This paper therefore seeks to draw paradigms from wealth of the new media technology in enhancing the development of faith in our modern day society. Therefore, an understanding of the key concepts seems inevitable.
2. Key Concepts: Faith, New Media
Faith:
In Christianity as in other religions faith in the supernatural is a positive act of dependency. As it expresses “a total attitude claiming all of man’s faculties, a profound “Amen” to God” this attitude otherwise known as faith is defined by Richard McBrian as “the gift of God by which we freely accept God’s self-communication in Christ” Mcbrien’s definition of faith is from the perspective of faith development as a theological virtue. A very close study of Aquinas’s Theology of faith would reveal that faith is for Thomas Aquinas, a virtue which is all time primarily an act of the intellect with its emphasis on cognitive character. In his Summa Theologica, the scholar stresses the fact that, “to believe is an act of mind asserting to divine truth by virtue of the command of the will as this is moved by God through grace; in this way the act stands under the control of the free will and is directed towards God” John O Donnell, while commenting on Aquinas’s definition of faith says “Aquinas stresses more the intellectual character of faith than the existential surrender, although the latter is not missing…. Secondly, Aquinas notes that the motive for faith is the authority of God. This objective authority, however, becomes credible because of the interior inspiration by which God invites the believer to make the act of faith.” Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on faith was opposed by his predecessors, one of which was St. Albert the Great who would see faith as act of affective intellect. Indeed the intellectualist approach is seriously bereft as it has very little to offer the modern man’s existential concerns, questions and doubts. The deficiency does not imply a complete divorce from Aquinas’s theology of faith in this paper since Aquinas also believed that faith is “possible within the ambience of God’s offer of himself in grace and is offered to human participation in the divine life” and this is further epitomized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church when faith is described as “a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him” . Nevertheless, before this belief in God is possible it must be assisted by the grace of God, man “must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth” . However, even though, faith is a grace, it is also a human act. This is because, trusting in God and cleaving to the truths God has revealed is a joint cooperation of the human intellect and will with divine grace. St Thomas Aquinas succinctly puts it thus: “Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.” Pope Benedict XVI in his Wednesday audience entitled “Faith is a gift of God, but it is also a profoundly free and human act” observes that:
Faith is not simply a matter of man’s intellectual assent to truths about God; It is an act whereby I freely entrust myself to a God who is Father and who loves me; it means clinging to a “Thou” who gives me hope and confidence. To be sure, this adherence to God is not devoid of content: it enables us to know that God himself revealed himself to us in Christ. He showed us his face and he truly drew near to each one of us….Faith means believing in God’s unfailing love, which endures even in the face of man’s iniquity, of evil and of death, and which is able to transform every form of slavery by granting the possibility of salvation. To have faith, then, is to encounter the “Thou”- God who sustains me and offers me the promise of an imperishable love that not only aspires to eternity but also gives it. It means entrusting myself to God with the attitude of a child who knows very well that all of his difficulties and problems are safe in the “thou” of the mother.
Faith is a gift of God and at the same time a free and human act therefore, its growth and sustainability will depend on many factors that individually or collectively influence the human person. The environment where one lives has a lot to contribute towards the growth and maturation of ones’ faith.
Therefore, faith involves man and uplifts him “in a gamble for life that is like an exodus, that is, a coming out of ourselves, from our own certainties, from our own mental framework, to entrust ourselves to the action of God who points out to us his way to achieve true freedom, our human identity, true joy of the heart, peace with everyone.” This process can be aided by the new media technology especially in our world of today. Perhaps a brief explanation of the word ‘new media’ might be advantageous in this respect.
New Media
Over the years, many scholars have asked this pertinent question. What is in a name? In the Shakespearean literature, the Juliet wondered: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” . Interestingly, Juliet may be wrong, for “different names bring to the fore different attributes, and by prioritizing different elements; they focus attention on some aspects and overlook others. The result is that for all intents and purposes they end up ‘smelling differently’…. In other words, their outlook, attributes and uses, shift as a result of the names used to apprehend them…names do not merely describe them, but construct them as particular kinds….” In the case of new media, the name immediately creates an intellectual divide between “new” and “old” without actually denoting the parameters where the new would differ from the old other than their age difference or year of invention. A good example of this problem of specification is the classification of Internet as a new form of media with over 40 years of history. More so, the term new media has been in use since the 1960s and its meaning incorporates an increasing varying set of applied communication technologies. Defining such a term even at its embryonic age posits some challenges.
Nevertheless, the editors of the Handbook of New Media (Lievrouw and Livingstone) also point to the difficulties of saying just what the ‘new media’ compromise. They would prefer to define them in a composite way saying: “By new media we mean information and communication technologies and their associated social contexts, incorporating: the artifacts or devices that enable and extend our abilities to communicate; the communication activities or practices we engage in to develop and use these devices; and the social arrangements or organizations that form around the devices and practices.” The editors linked information communication technologies (ICT) with their related social frameworks, bringing together three elements: technological artefacts and devices; activities, practices and uses; and social arrangements and organizations that form around the devices and practices. In deed many technologies according to the definition are infrastructural because they combine elements of technology, practices and social organization.
The term further signifies a shift in media logic, which demonstrates a certain level of novelty, innovation and dynamism. This signification is what may have prompted McQuail to say [the] ‘new electronic media’ can be viewed initially as an addition to the existing spectrum rather than as a replacement.” In McQuails position, new media are products of a continuous hybridization of both existing technologies and innovations in interconnected technical and institutional networks. New media technologies are historically relative terms. As Marvin observes that, “we are not the first generation to wonder at the rapid and extraordinary shifts in the dimensions of the world and human relationships it contains as a result of new forms of communication”. New media has features which distinguishes it from the old media. Digitalization is pivotal but interestingly, the transmission of digital bits rather than the physical atoms does not define the term adequately. Perhaps an understanding of the characteristics of the new media may suggest or create a continuum in our discourse on faith and new media. However, new media as application of microelectronics, computers and telecommunications could be identified with three specific characteristics namely, interactivity; demassification and asynchronicity.
3. Faith Nurturing with Interactive Exchange: a dialogue view
In new media spheres, the word interactivity attracts a lot of comments from communication scholars but solely because the term is so difficult to be understood. Rather its frequent usage stems from the fact that, it forms the hub of new media communication structure. Though many scholars of communications over the years have observed that, the word while frequently used in conjunction with the discussion of new media, is often either undefined or underdefined. In deed, as a “collide oscope” of interfaced situation between faith and the new media, its density will be better appreciated with its description or definition clearly stated. Some of the definitions that capture the logic of our enquiry in this paper is that of Ha and James, who defined Interactivity as “the extent to which the communicator and the audience respond to, or are willing to facilitate, each other’s communications’ need. While Rafaeli, one of the most cited scholars on interactivity identified interactivity as going beyond simple one-way “action” or two-way “reaction” that may not be truly responsive. For Rafaeli, “Interactivity is an expression of the extent that in a given series of communication exchanges, any third (or later) transmission (or message) is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to earlier transmissions.” The common denominator about the two definitions above is the fact that, they both focus on communication exchange that helps in reducing the time lag between exchanges.
From the perspective of interactive exchange, we shall then look at the new media role in nurturing the Christian faith through the dialogue view approach, focusing on role exchange and mutual discourse, with emphasis on conversational-style exchanges. The interactivity of this new media will help the Church as whole and all pastors like Christ to “set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance”. This ministry of the Church can be made feasible and even less cumbersome if through new media interactivity medium is used first of all to reappropriate “exact knowledge of the faith, so as to reinvigorate it, purify it, confirm it, and confess it” In deed, in the field of symbolic interaction for example, Blumer had identify three premises which are of vital importance in our discourse. For him, human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that those things have for them. Second, the meanings of such things are derived from, or arise out of, the social interaction that an individual has with others. And finally, those meaning are modified through an interactive processes used by individuals in dealing with the things they encounter. Faith is an encounter with God. This divine experience is sometimes made more concrete through the use of signs and symbols.
Church as the custodian of faith and morals at various levels makes use of these symbolic expressions/interactions in her mission. She sees the new media as “precious aid for spreading the Gospel and religious values, for promoting dialogue, ecumenical and inter-religious cooperation, and also for defending those solid principles which are indispensable for building a society which respects the dignity of the human person and is attentive to the common good” . At various instances, new media is perceived by the Church as tools which must be used to fulfill its multifaceted, God-given mission in the world. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI, says that “everything must be done” for this mission to be completed. He acknowledges that media are unique among the Church’s many tools, in that they “[stimulate] people to listen to and embrace” the gospel . The Pontiff in Caritas in Veritate asserts that communications media, and technology in general, “[express] the inner tension that impels [humanity] gradually to overcome material limitations” . He sees them as reflecting, at their core, a transcendent desire. “Technology, in this sense, is a response to God’s command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15) that he has entrusted to humanity.” Pope John Paul II speeaks of media as having the ability to unite Church members around the world. They can “render the bonds of communion among ecclesial communities more effective” . The Pope further contends that, “The modern technologies increase to a remarkable extent the speed, quantity and accessibility of communication” . Faith therefore, like any other human act is communicative. Its metaphysical and dynamic composition is such that calls for expression and of course interaction. Faith is not only a private act in the strict sense of the word it is also communitarian because choosing to believe in God which is a personal act of faith also demands a social responsibility. Pope Benedict XVI in his “Motu Proprio Data” Porta Fidei, declares:
Confessing with the lips indicates in turn that faith implies public testimony and commitment. A Christian may never think of belief as a private acct. faith is chossing to stand with Lord so as to live with him. This “standing with him” points towards an understanding of the reasons for believing. Faith, precisely because it is a free act, also demands social responsibility for what one believes. The Church on the day of Pentecost demonstrates with utter clarity this public dimension of believing and proclaiming one’s faith fearlessly to every person. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes us fit for mission ad strengthens our witness, making it frank and courageous. Profession of faith is an act both personal and communitarian. It is the Church that is the primary subject of faith. In the faith of the Christian community, each individual receives baptism, an effective sign of entry into the people of believers in order to obtain salvation.
In the bible, St Paul gives us clues on how faith developed and also how it can be nurtured when he said faith comes through hearing the word of God (Romans 10: 17. The process of ‘hearing’ makes it imperative that between the source and receiver, they must be a channel of communication. Channels as pathways through which the sender transmits all features of the messages (faith), whether they involves sound, smell, sight, or touch in other to make interactive exchange in communication possible. Nevertheless, because of our dialogue view approach of interactivity which of course may have evolved both before and after the advent of new media, we will identify three traditions of interactivity: the user-to-user, user-to-documents and user-to-system traditions as portal for nurturing faith in a new media age.
4. User-to-user Faith Interaction in New Media
In recent times communication has changed rapidly the way people live and relate with each other in the society. According to Inaku K. Egere, these “[c]hanges in the communication media have always had mammoth consequences on the Church understanding of its own nature and mission. Church structures and theology were and are radically transformed by the tide of change.” Apparently, these changes profoundly influence the communication of the Gospel, the essential mission of the church and what constitutes the very source of its existence. The faith of Christians began it seminal process when the community heard and believe that “the word became flesh”, and that God had taking the initiative of beginning a new form of communication with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ and his encounter with people in the world. It is therefore obvious that the Church came into existence through revelation which in itself is an act of communication. The Church’s mission therefore hinges on sharing the faith generated from the good news of our salvation to the entire humanity and to perpetuate the communication of God in Christ throughout time.
For more than two thousand years, while carrying out this mission she has encountered myriads of difficulties in communicating the message in different times and cultures. These barriers and challenges may not be unconnected with media used at various times. Each epoch has its technology that is not alien to it but rather identifiable and acceptable by the users as an effective means of communication. The church therefore has to adapt the logic of the new “market place” (new methods) in carrying out her mission. Scholars like Angela Zukowski shares in this view when she observes that:
Today we have stepped onto a new landscape filled with new technologies and mass media attractions only to find people speaking a new language of having different cultural experiences. They may no longer hear voices of religious tradition, or they may simply refuse to even listen…If communication is the heart of the church’s life, then the evangelization must enter in a decisive way into this new age. The Catholic Church has a long tradition of using media and the arts in its communication and evangelization efforts. It is up to the evangelizers, therefore, to identify the new language and artistic expressions which can stimulate a public dialogue of faith.
Undoubtedly, user-to-user model of interaction in the new media has brought significant changes to human communication. The user-to-user interaction also known as computer-mediated-communication (CMC) has added a layer of technology between communicating partners. CMC as a form of human communication through computer emphasizes on “interaction between humans using computers to connect with one another. The computers may be central repositories for human messages, or they may comprise a network of links and nodes facilitating the transfer of human messages” . Apparently, this new layer gives the evangelizers a medium in which to test, modify, and expand generally the understanding of Christian faith in the changing world. Because of the ‘interactive profiles’ of these new media and more so, as product of our present day world, the CMC means of communication is quite effective and affordable. The church therefore “sees these media as “gifts of God” which, in accordance with his providential design, unite men in brotherhood and so help them to cooperate with his plan of salvation”
Presently there are numerous incarnations of text-based CMC, but under this model (user-to-user interaction) we will like to first of all identify computer conferencing (CC). Therefore, church representatives can make use of those systems that reside on large central computers to which several users can link directly via inhouse terminals or indirectly via home computers, modems, and telephone lines in nurturing the faith of the people. Through CC, messages containing catechesis, homilies, and sermons, religious instructions on both doctrinal and dogmatic issues are composed and saved to files that are designed to permit multi-user access. Spiritual directors and other pastoral workers can reach the people especially the youth through mediated retreats, spiritual excises and counseling. For instance, special interest groups (SIG) can be established in other to share individual faith encounter with God among members of the group. This kind computer conferencing could be made to be an ongoing discussion, sharing, interaction that does not require physical presence of the participants in one place. In fact, a member of this group may be residing in Canada while the other in Abuja. Very peculiar to this computer conferencing is the fact that, contributions from members on a particular theme may not be synchronized with the attendance of other members of the special interest group. Individual members are only connected to the group discussion when they log in anywhere and at any time of their convenience via the use of inhouse terminals (computers), modems and telephony.
Another user-to-user interactive device is the use of electronic mail popularly known as Email. Obviously, Email is another form of CMC that is text-based and very recently, advertisers and other business organizations have found out that the application is not only cost effective but also value oriented. Unlike the asynchronous computer conferencing, email does not need any group-accessible central repository of messages. Instead, “Messages are sent to individual addresses just as conventional mail is sent to individual addresses. Of course, bulk mailings by individuals or by automated message handling software are becoming as common as their counterparts in the conventional mail systems.” Very important about this type of user-to-user interactivity is the use of LISTSERVER as a tool for nurturing faith. With this application, messages in form of bible sharing, experiential stories bordering any spiritual encounter, sermons, homilies, etc. can be received from individuals and then distributed to others according to the mailing lists. Interestingly, “members of these mailing lists, then, constitute a group of communicants who can carry on asynchronous discussions much the same way as users of computer conferencing systems do.”
Faith can be nurtured through the use of electronic bulletin board systems (EBBSs). The genesis of these EBBSs could be traced back to conventional community bulletin board located at strategic positions such as public squares, town halls, cross roads where public information could be posted and read. In the 1980s, computer user groups used it for the purpose of online distribution of software and related information. This system became popular when the postings of the bulletins eventually resulted to interactive discussions. Very recently, EBBSs became local fora for educational activities, writers’ collectives, academic discussions and special interest groups. EBBSs can as well be used in parishes and religious institutions to propagate the Christian faith.
Very significant about these EBBSs is the “CHAT” mode interaction which is conceptually based on a more traditional public communication system. Most computers used today have this feature installed in them. Though they may differ from each other depending on the manner the exchange is presented on the screen, and in the number of simultaneous users who can interact in any one group exercise. Arun Bahtia while corroborating this argument says: “The exchange can be character by character, line by line, or in multiple-line blocks. In character by character mode, the recipients see each character as it is typed by the sender. In line by line mode, the message is not sent until the sender presses the key (or), and in the multi-line blocks mode, several lines are composed before the message is sent. In all cases, however, the transaction occurs immediately and is not held in a mail system or conferencing space for future retrieval.” Nevertheless, the transcript of the discussion can be logged for future review or use of the interaction even though the exchange is intended to be in real time. This application if effectively managed and utilized especially by counselors, pious association and religious groups in strengthening the faith of others, those involved may gain more spiritual insights since numerous simultaneous users can interact in real time and all communicants can observe the contributions of the others as they interact.
A common design for two simultaneous users involving the splitting of the screen horizontally with the top half used for receiving messages, and the bottom half for composing and sending messages can be attractive for the participants whose may spend more time sharing the faith because of the convenience of the technology.
5. User-to-documents Faith Interactivity.
In our previous sections, we dwelt extensively on how people interact with each other via the use of computer-mediated communication device. Here comes also another form of interactivity where people interact with documents and creator of those documents. This concept of the new media is as a result of the level of audience participation. In the old media, the audience is perceived to be passive thereby only relying on what message/information the media has for dissemination but with new media technology the audience is active. They invariably interpret and use the media. This model centers on what I will call ‘content on demand’. The users can involve in content exchange. That means all participants can either be senders or receivers of the content. “Bulletin boards are an example of this type of information exchange that often occurs asynchronously.”
With the rise of Web 2.0 linked to the development of a new technological infrastructure, the Blogs, Word press, interactive fiction, etc. can provide platforms in which multiple active participants create the content that forms the foundation blocks for an interactive environment. Parishes or individuals can create Blogs for example with religious contents that will uplift and nourish the faith of others who might read and sometimes contribute their spiritual experiences or reflections.
6. User-to-system Faith Interactivity
The models explained above prove that individuals interact with each other and also they interact with documents and the documents creators as well. The last but not the least form of interactivity is very akin to new media. It involves the interaction between individuals and the computer or any other form of new media itself. The human technology interfaces has connection with the early exploration of the mid 1900s when computer scientist began using the word interactivity to explain a new type of interface that was distinct from, and more user-friendly than, the batch processing. User-to-system interaction is a situation where the computer will ‘present’ information to users who will respond to that information. Computers can be programmed in such a way that they can provide information concerning issues of faith to users. Take for instance, with adaptive communication, the computer is not just still in command of the interaction, but also more responsive to individual needs. This could happen when “the state of flow is generally assumed to be characterized by a state of high user activity in which the computer becomes virtually transparent as individuals ‘lose themselves’ in the computer environment” . Such interface no doubt if properly configured can be more useful to individuals than sometimes their colleagues would be in matters of faith.
7. Challenges of nurturing faith in the New Media
The wave of the future in human communication is like the characterization of “flextime” which often betrays the process as a simple matter of convenience that alters the state of communication with apparent social implications. These alterations are significantly noticed in the areas of time and place, text-based interaction, and socioemotional content. CMC used for emotional interaction may have limitations because the text-based translation may be very limited because of the absence of the nonverbal cues.
Another major challenge is the reality of the widening gap in the digital capacity. Many religious bodies, pious associations/organization especially in developing countries (mission land) may not be able to overcome the financial and technical demands associated with the new media technology in nurturing the Christian faith. The limited access to the digital technologies may lead to inequitable sharing of communication infrastructure “(the electronic highways systems created by carries such as satellites, cables, fixed lines and mobile transmissions), computing capacity (computers, peripherals, networks), information resources (databases, libraries), and ITC-Literacy (intellectual and social capabilities to deploy ITC in beneficial ways) will require an enormous effort from the international community” .
The adoption and deployment of digital technologies is no longer a territorial issue. Global negotiations, such as “the recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, heavily affect national technology plans, while the processes of globalization” . The configuration of some of the CMC interfaces by and for developing nations may suffer net losses.
Web technology has a heterogeneous environment where a wide variety of people make available tumultuous access to contents for web visitors with a variety of capabilities. However, disabilities that may require speech synthesizers and other devices are often times not considered in the technology. This deprivation as a matter of fact, does not make faith a commodity for all.
8. Prospects and Conclusion
Paradoxically, most people who were critical at the emergence of this new media technology are gradually using it for various reasons despite the fact that, the values and images associated with the concepts of leisure, information and evangelization are still sharply differentiated.
New media technology because of its asynchronic and synchronic capabilities, many users can benefit from it; in fact, it has a wider spectrum in terms of coverage. Pieces of information can instantaneously disseminated to a large and disperse audience who are connected to the technology. The CMC interface especially the computer conferencing can increase emotional and spiritual connections among users by creating more active participation in exchanging messages and establishing collaborations in electronic discussion groups on faith matters.
New Media technology creates easier access to people so much so that spiritual directions, sermons, homilies, catechesis and more can be shared among those connected together by the technology. , Indeed, it provides vehicles for users to address their spiritual concerns to each other in the hope of resolving their faith crisis.
