Major Articles Available Online (in
.pdf format)
“Enacting
a Virtual 'Ekklesia': Online Christian Fundamentalism as Vernacular
Religion”
(in New Media & Society , Volume 12 Number
5, August 2010: 729-744.)
Based on the interactive features of websites, researchers have
distinguished between religion online and online religion. Approaching
online religious expression as "vernacular religion"
can transcend the distinction by focusing on the lived experience
of believers. In this study, qualitative interviews and close
textual analysis are deployed to locate four traits that define
the vernacular ideology of Christian fundamentalism. Tracing these
traits in public discourse, they are seen to emerge as a set in
the early 20th century. Collecting a sample of 40 sites, the traits
are located in association with biblical prophecy. Based on qualitative
interviews conducted with four individuals in the sample, linked
websites connect individuals in a virtual ‘"ekklesia"
based on their shared interest. Locating religion in lived experience
instead of media artifacts, this research suggests that a limiting
tendency found in this form of fundamentalism is the result of
individual choices facilitated by network media.
“The
Vernacular Mode: Locating the Non-Institutional in the Practice
of Citizenship”
(in Public Modalities: Rhetoric, Culture, Media,
and Shape of Public Life, Daniel C. Brouwer and Robert Asen
Eds. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. 2010. 240-261)
This chapter argues that conceptualizing the vernacular as a
dialectical modality of discourse can help researchers of communication
and rhetoric account for the blurring of the distinction between
vernacular and institutional agencies and agents occurring in
online participatory media. The first section explores the two
primary theories of the vernacular in communication research.
While one relies on a distinction between vernacular and institutional
agents, the other relies on a distinction between vernacular and
institutional agencies. Participatory media, however, blur the
distinction in both agents and agencies. A third conception of
the vernacular is needed to account for this blurring. The next
section deploys the ancient meanings of the term to imagine the
vernacular as a dialectical mode of discourse hybridizing not
just texts but also discursive agents and the agencies they deploy.
Finally, the chapter demonstrate how this conception can account
for the complex confluence of agents and agencies occurring on
and around the example of The Official Kerry-Edwards Blog. The
institutional agents on the site successfully initiated a vernacular
dialectic that expressed support for Kerry. However, when Democratic
Party officials where perceived by their audience to be reducing
the alternate views expressed on the site by moderating its collaborative
mechanisms, their ability to deploy a vernacular modality was
called into question. Across an emergent web of network locations,
the blogging community asserted a redefined alterity beyond the
reach of The Official Kerry-Edwards Blog.
New communication technologies allow individuals to express and
consume a greater diversity of religions ideas. With the rise
of vernacularizing media, religious expression is becoming more
vernacular. In this situation, the unique perspective and methods
of Folklore Studies help document a vernacular ideology that emerges
in a network of websites when individuals express a specific set
of conservative evangelical beliefs.
This chapter documents the online vernacular web of expression
that has emerged among fundamentalist Christians who believe they
are engaged in an ongoing war against demon spirits. In the case
of this particular vernacular web, the access to others it creates
functions to encourage particular forms of intolerance. Out of
a perceived need to share strategies for combating evil spirits,
many educated and skilled amateur Web site builders see themselves
as crusaders in a world led astray by the homosexual rights movement,
government conspiracies against Christians, New Age spirituality,
and other belief systems. Creating a vernacular web of online
discourse, these individuals can communicate within a discursive
enclave that reinforces their extreme views. At the same time,
access to the diversity of people and ideas that are possible
online has led some of these individuals to engage a spiritual
warfare tactic of aggressive “witnessing.” When their
divine experiences are frequent and ongoing, both certainty and
intolerance are tempered into the most extreme forms. For them,
alternate views are not merely wrong—they are Satanic and
needed to be actively combated. For these individuals, the Internet
serves as an active battleground.
With access to mass media, individuals have had an expanding
array of ideas to engage and incorporate into their systems of
religious belief. With network communication technologies, this
access has gone beyond just the consumption of centrally produced
mass media content to include the ability to express their ideas
to each other in ongoing communication processes. Creating their
own vernacular webs of discourse, this chapter documents the practice
of “ritual deliberation.” Connecting with each other
through online participatory media, these individuals form a sort
of ekklesia or “church” that emerges from everyday
Internet discourse about the popular apocalyptic narrative of
the “End Times.” Because this church is only virtual,
however, its existence raises important questions about individuals'
ability to limit diversity in Internet-based religious discourse.
This article documents a virtual ekklesia as it emerges from
a network of websites where individuals express a specific set
of conservative evangelical beliefs. Not unified by any institutional
ties, this web of belief exists only in individual expressive
behaviors. I have termed this web ‘vernacular Christian
fundamentalism. To document this phenomenon, ethnographic data
were collected and examined to locate four specific defining traits
of the interactions on the sites within this web: Biblical literalism,
evangelicalism, spiritual rebirth, and apocalypticism.
From wikis to blogs, new participatory forms of web-based communication
are increasingly common ways for institutions and individuals
to communicate. The content these forms produce incorporates elements
of both institutional and non-institutional discourse. More than
a syncretic pastiche, this content is the product of hybrid agencies
made possible by these new forms. Terming this content vernacular
acknowledges that this hybridity frustrates any reified conception
of pure or authentic non-institutional discourse. At the same
time, the theory of a vernacular web attends to the complex new
transformational possibilities of participatory media seem to
offer individuals.
Through the example of a specific blog, this article locates
a category of online discourse termed the “vernacular
web.” Because the definitive trait of the vernacular is
its distinction from the institutional, the vernacular web emerges
in specific network locations as a communal invocation of alternate
authority. Imagining those invocations as located communication
processes, the concept of a vernacular web provides the theoretical
language necessary for speaking about the complex hybridity
that new communication technologies make possible.
This article explores the possibility that the leader of the
‘Heaven’s Gate’ or Human Individual Metamorphosis
religious group known by its acronym ‘HIM’ committed
ritual suicide with his followers in 1997 as a result of his own
rejection of the mainstream Protestant ideology with which he
was raised. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Applewhite confronted
what he considered the overly worldly and materialistic social
norms of his mainstream Protestantism through performing an identity
that completely rejected his own human selfhood. Coming to believe
that he was actually a multidimensional spiritual being named
‘Do’ that was only incarnated in the human body of
Applewhite, he validated that belief by creating a community of
followers who also rejected their humanity, believing that they
too were possessed by non-physical beings. This community sought
to minimize gender roles and the sexuality that those roles imply.
In the end, this rejection became so radicalized that it led them
all into the choice to negate their human identities completely
through suicide.
It has been suggested that one avenue for critically assessing
online discourses is in their ability to sustain themselves.
In this article, I argue that apocalyptic Christian discourse
is highly sustainable in the online environment precisely because
its argumentative norms are grounded in a profound narrative
plasticity. Because the authorizing biblical texts and interpretive
narrative that define this discourse exhibit a profound flexibility,
new events are immediately assimilated into the narrative structure,
making the discourse highly sustainable in the online environment.
However, a case study analysis suggests that precisely the same
qualities that allow this sustainability also allow this discourse
to insulate itself from the necessarily divergent ideas that
might generate more constructive public deliberation.
“Toward a Theory of the Worldwide
Web Vernacular: The Case for Pet Cloning”
(in Journal of Folklore Research, Volume 42,
Number 3, December 2005: 323-360.)
This article demonstrates that a “Worldwide Web vernacular”
has now emerged. The “vanity” or “home page”
in general and the “pet vanity page” in particular
exist as recognizable emic genres. The distinguishing features
of these genres are in their personal content. However, as a result
of the technologies that arose to satisfy growing commercial interests
in Web-based communication during the 1990s, that content has
come to be associated with particular formal features. It becomes
clear that these features are emically recognized as vernacular
in the example of a professional WWW designer who deploys this
aesthetic in an effort to render his marketing of pet-cloning
services more palatable to pet-lovers. By using these features
rhetorically, this Web designer offers evidence that the vernacular
gives voice to meaning not available from inside institutional
norms and forms. By comparing features of the commercial cloning
Web pages with a 42-site sample of pet pages, the defining elements
of this vernacular are located. In the end, this article finds
that the vernacular is now recognizable on the World Wide Web
precisely because the emergence of the “institutional”
gave the vernacular its power to enact meaning.
“A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric:
The Case of the 'Sinner's Prayer' Online”
(in Folklore, Volume 116, Number
2, August 2005: 175-191)
This paper seeks to rigorously define and illustrate the analytic
category of “vernacular rhetoric” through an examination
of the “Sinner’s Prayer” as it appears on an
amateur web page. In the online environment, this invitation to
a traditional prayer performance seems to be a strategy for converting
non-Christians. Through the application of the concept of vernacular
rhetoric, however, it becomes clear that the deployment of the
prayer can also function as an invitation for the already-converted
to “testify” to their faith. In this way, the apparently
evangelic prayer form also functions as an invitation for the
already-converted to perform previously held values. By applying
the concept of vernacular rhetoric to this example of online discourse,
its value as an analytic category becomes clear because it can
address the performative nature of World Wide Web-based documents.
“Who Posts DeCSS and Why?: A Content
Analysis of Web Sites Posting DVD Circumvention Software,”
with Kristin R. Eschenfelder and Anuj C. Desai
(in Journal of the American Society
for Information Science and Technology. Volume 56, Number 13,
November 2005: 1405-1418)
This study explored why web authors post the DVD decryption software
known as “DeCSS” --specifically whether authors post
DeCSS to protest changes in copyright law. Data are drawn from
content analysis of websites posting the software. Most DeCSS
posters did not include any content explaining why they posted
DeCSS; however, no authors presented DeCSS as a piracy tool. Of
sites containing explanatory content, many argued that DeCSS is
legitimate tool to play DVDs on free/open source computers. Other
sites asserted that current copyright law is unjust, and that
DVD related corporations are engaging in undesirable behaviors.
Based on the data, and theorizing from rhetoric and the collective
action literatures, we assert that much DeCSS posting is protest,
but it may not be copyright protest -- numerous posters protest
related issues such as freedom of speech. More research is needed
to determine the significance of DeCSS posting to broader copyright
policy debates including its relation to off-line protest, and
the development of shared identities and cognitive frames. Also,
the complexities of circumvention issues raise concerns about
whether policy debate will be limited to elites. Finally, data
point to the need to understand both international and local laws,
norms, and events when studying copyright protest activity.
“Sustainability and Radical Rhetorical
Closure: The Case of the 1996 ‘Heaven’s Gate’ Newsgroup
Campaign”
(in Journal of Communication and
Religion, Volume 28, Number 1, March 2005: 99-130)
Because of its multilateral structure, Usenet newsgroups offer
their users the benefit of rich audience feedback. When sustainable,
feedback dramatically expands an individual communicator’s
audience. In the summer of 1996, the H.I.M. religious group used
multiple posts to Usenet newsgroups to try to locate individuals
who might join their spiritual community. However, H.I.M. failed
to garner a large audience and, as a result, failed to locate
new members through Internet newsgroups. This occurred because
the group’s posts did not conform to the “negotiative”
rhetorical tactics typical of newsgroup discourse. Negotiative
rhetorical tactics encourage feedback and imply a pluralist attitude.
As a negative case, the H.I.M. newsgroup posts of 1996 indicate
that individuals who believe they have attained certain knowledge
can disregard the influences of a pluralistic medium because their
beliefs allow them to value benefits that differ from those most
obviously associated with that medium. This level of rhetorical
closure may imply the potential for dangerous antisocial behavior.
“The Double Bind of the Protestant
Reformation: The Birth of Fundamentalism and the Necessity of Pluralism”
(in Journal of Church and State, Volume 47, Number
1, Winter 2005: 91-108)
Martin Luther’s Reformation shifted the authority for divine
truth away from the Catholic Church and to the individual. This
shift created a double bind. While it made the ideology of fundamentalism
possible, it also made necessary the political pluralism fundamentalism
withholds. For a society to judge and act on values, it must share
a conception of truth. As becomes clear in Luther and Erasmus
of Rotterdam’s well-known debate about the freedom of the
will, individually authorized truths had no recourse to a shared
method of mediation through state or religious institutions. When
individually experienced truths conflicted, there was no longer
any governing authority to resolve those conflicts. As a result,
post-Reformation governments caught in this double bind sought
to maintain pluralist policies regarding divine authority in the
face of growing popular affinities for fundamentalism.
“On-Line Ethnography of Dispensationalist
Discourse: Revealed versus Negotiated Truth”
(in Religion on the Internet,
Douglas Cowan and Jeffery K. Hadden, editors. New York: Elsevier Press,
2000: 225-246)
This article discusses and applies a mixture of rhetorical and
ethnographic analytical methods to document and analyze a small
Internet community. Providing an easily identifiable and wide-spread
discourse, engaging in both on-line and face-to-face discourse
with American Evangelical dispensationalists create a window on
the evolving modes of Internet expression. Developing out of informal
electronic expression, dispensationalist debaters utilize complex
vernacular rhetorical techniques. In 1999, this community’s
debates were a feverish rush. In this rush, a rhetorical tension
emerges between the desire to negotiate about truth and the desire
to express an experienced or revelatory Truth. This article explores
the possibilities and limits of the hypothesis that the medium
of the Internet encourages and privileges more negotiative rhetorical
techniques based on the methods it has developed for this purpose.
“Apocalypse in your In-Box: End-Times
Communication on the Internet,”
(in Western Folklore Volume 56, Number 3/4,
Summer/Fall 1997: 295-315)
Historically, apocalyptic Christians have been portrayed with
wild eyes. Even in the 1970 revision of his 1957 classic The Pursuit
of the Millennium, Norman Cohn, maybe the most well-known scholar
of millennialism, kept them fearfully hanging on the periphery.
In recent press coverage, it seems that the average Christian
millennialist is dangerously devoted to a single malevolent leader.
This article argues that, on the Internet at least, this image
does not hold true. Most Christian millennialists who are highly
involved in electronic discourse seem, by the very nature of the
electronic media themselves, less likely to be devoted to a single
religious authority.
Minor Articles Available Online (in
.pdf format)
"Cults"
(in American Countercultures,
Gina Misiroglu editor. New York: Sharp Reference. 2009. 189-192.)
"Fundamentalism"
(in Encyclopedia of Religion,
Communication, and Media, Daniel Stout editor. New
York: Berkshire Publishing. 2006. 155-160.)
“Technology Takes Folklore into Future”
(in Wisconsin State Journal,
Madison, Wisconsin: Sunday, April 10, 2005: B2)
Entries for “Final Judgment,”
“Myth,” and “Second Coming”
(in Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism,edited
by Brenda Brasher. London: Berkshire/Routledge, 2001: 179-181, 326-7,
and 437-9)
“Toward a Folk Rhetorical Approach to
Emerging Myth: The Case of Apocalyptic Techno-Gaianism on the World-Wide-Web”
(in Folklore Forum. Volume
29, Number 2, Fall 1998: 53-73)
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