Jay Rosen talked about his “view from nowhere” yesterday on the weekly podcast, Rebooting the News,  that he does with Dave Winer.  It occurred to me,  upon getting back a comment on a tweet that Jeff Jarvis retweeted on Sunday*,  that this comes close to being what churches should do or express in their “opining”

What MSNBC needs to do is shift from what I call the View From Nowhere to a place where they say, ‘Here’s what we’re about.’ ”

Keith Olbermann’s suspended suspension: Why did MSNBC move so fast? | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times

Seems to me that “here’s what we’re about” is a pretty important item for  the church.  Isn’t this what “evangelism” is supposed to be;  what it (ie “evangelism”) means? Which is “good news”.  What is it that the church offers that is “good news”  (ie.  “alternative” to what is creating the bad news)?  If there isn’t much of a contrast between the kind of life and community a church offers,  how does this constitute “good news”?  If the “bad news” is the condition of society and it’s failing notions of “community”,  then why would one choose the church to be THEIR community?  Isn’t “where we’re  coming from” an important ingredient to “define” and “describe” and “tell stories” about? To offer up a montage of “these are the ideas out there,  all valid” and end up as a theological version of “the view from nowhere”,  then the church has failed.

There are many other problems and issues with the particular problems of churches and their struggle to “be relevant” visa vi their perceptions of what views their members are strong enough to “warrant careful treading”.  And there is the problem of “the view from above” as Jeff Jarvis mentioned,  which brings into the picture the associating of one’s own particular theological views with “what God is telling us”.  The defense that begins “The Bible says….”  is an  indication of this.  Fundamentalists have a particular problem of failing to recognize that what they see as “clear teachings”in the Bible are not something at which they arrived independently through an individual study,  letting  “God’s Word speak to them on it’s own”,  but something which their particular  community of interpretation has “shaped” them into “seeing”.  Perhaps even the “view from nowhere” is a part of that community when it considers what “political stand” to take.  The “view from nowhere” serves them well as a way to “be neutral” in regard to “political issues” which can be marginalized as basically irrelevant to the message of the church,  and that the church is characterized as “having no problem” with “containing” all these views. 

There is,  it seems to me,  some truth  to the  idea of the church  being able to “contain under  one roof” several political views,  but that doesn’t say to me that these differences don’t have important theological differences that should  be explored.  The “view from nowhere” here is often  used as a “shhhhhh”;  it is  best,  we say,  to “avoid” these matters,  as they will lay bare some “uncomfortable differences” and raise the  tension. 

There  is so much more to this,  but this is a start. 

* the retweet: 

Churches have their own objectivity & view from nowhere (or above) problem: RT @dlature: On Olbermann and MSNBC… http://bit.ly/9xV1Tv
Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis)–7 Nov via Echofon

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