Jim Gilliam  “The Future of Sharing” (says “internet is my religion”)http://www.livestream.com/pdf2011/video?clipId=pla_8a026681-a944-4459-a735-6ff526f72b5a

“it wasn’t faith in the internet,  but in people connected through the Internet” 5:50 (a crucial distinction,  although he re-iterates “Internet is my religion” again at the very end).

This was an extraordinary presentation,  and moving.  And I found myself identifying with him and also feeling bad for him that he wasn’t exposed to something more like Sojourners or Tony Campolo rather than Jerry Falwell.

I am sad to see the rejection of Christianity , although it wasn’t “Christianity” that really failed him,  it was Moral Majority-ism politically charged movements that had no real communal power;   just typical media demagoguery-driven strategies.

Gilliam says “God is what happens when humanity is connected”….an insight from a person “de-faithed” by his surface formation in fundamentalism;  an “individualist faith” does not translate into life.   Connectedness reaches us at a much deeper level

Now he’s left not with a church (because his failed to reach him at his depths),  but with the connectedness,  to which he can include the “soldiers who fought for our freedoms”  (the secular, communal religion)

This guy Jim,  with his moving story,  is a good example of how the church is missing the boat on Web community and activism.   He saw NO cultural relevance to his prior fundy background once his “personal/individualistic” spirituality,  and his “faith” was energized by web activism that had an impact.

Right now,  the church has a monstrous opportunity to become an advocate and an enabler of the “people”.n   So many issues on the table and being fought in the public square that screams out for the church to join and help enable (in a sort of a theological/communal correction to the rightwing, “Faith and Freedom”, Moral Majority movements that proved to be political machinery with no human lasting power ‘after the campaign”.

Jim should not have been forced to go elsewhere to discover systems of Web Community,  to the extent that he can now dismiss “Christian faith” (again,  as seen in Liberty U. and Moral Majority) and “replace” it with the ideology of ultimate value found in connecting to one another.  The idea of connecting re: causes should not be dissed by Christian church.  Particularly where it involves powerful backlashes against measures that attack the gains acquired by “collective efforts”.

I am not surprised at Jim’s experience.  It happens constantly as people experience real collective effort and community,  and compare that to the surface, old-media model of “Moral Majority” rally-the-troops efforts. And in Jim’s case,  he hooked up with the opposition  to the Iraq war and the deceptions of the Bush administration.  With the likes of Liberty u./Falwell-fundamentalism,  you have an opposing campaign urging people to buy into nationalism and associate that with Christianity.  Jim was smart enough to see through the BS,  and saw the attempts of the Moral Majority ideology to diss the anti-war conversations.Unfortunately,  Jim was not exposed to enough church-based efforts that represented a truly justice-oriented theology and motivation to gather and draw upon each other.

[Update: I have posted my update comment below as part of a new post here ]