Announcing Coursekit

Darren Grem

Undoubtedly, most of y'all have put down your red pens and taken off your "instructor" hats for the winter break.  But if I could have your attention (Harvey! You! Yes, you! No fantasy football until I'm done talking!) for just one second, I'd like to invite you to take a look at Coursekit, the newest little teaching engine to come down the line.  I'm sure it's been talked about in other spaces, but since I don't remember it being talked about here, I figured I'd give it some free publicity.

Here's a take on where it came from, what it's about, and where it's planning to go:

A couple years ago, I sat in on a "Technology in the Classroom" course. We spent the early part of the day talking about new tools that were available. The discussion turned into a litany of complaints: IT policies that prevented the installation of new software, draconian site-blocking measures, thimble-sized storage allowances. At every turn, each new tool that a teacher wanted to try out would require a fight with administration. The frustration was palpable. "Why are the IT people making pedagogical decisions?" lamented one teacher, "Why do they get the final say about what does and does not happen in my classroom?"

Joseph Cohen, cofounder and CEO of Coursekit agrees. The problem, he says, is that most educational software is bought and sold at the enterprise level. The people deciding what to acquire are not the people using it and that disconnect has allowed unusable software to flourish. . . . [Thus,] On the product design side of things, Coursekit is focused on a user experience that is as simple and elegant as possible. This means that all the basics are there: a calendar, file sharing, submitting assignments, and grading work, but in ways that are stripped down to what Coursekit's user testing has shown them to be the essentials.

The "essentials" are teacher profile, syllabus, posting/comments module (similar to FB), assignments dropbox, and grading platform.  If you use Twitter or Wordpress in the classroom, then this streamlines that for you.  Additionally, it's 100% free since they've taken a"set up the site, monetize it later" business model.

Like all tools, it has its ups and downs.   If you want a more user-friendly interface (unlike BB), then it also seems to be worth considering.  I'm not sure if they're going to enhance the personalization of Coursekit soon by making it open to template modification (like Wordpress) or beef up some of the grading and watchdog tools (like Turnitin) that's a part of its competitors.  We'll also have to wait and see how it hooks up with other turns in the digital instruction world, such as the move toward digital textbooks, and the still-under-consideration move to see how smartphone apps and iPads might replace those big, gazillion-dollar "smart classrooms" some of the more money-flush colleges installed a few years back.  In any case, do know that there's another kid on the block for y'all to consider, especially if you've found (like myself) you're bombarding students with different digital platforms to use in class or for class projects.

New Pew Report

Darren Grem

Quick post to draw your attention to the newly released stats from the Pew folks on "global Christianity."  The big takeaway:

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread – so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity.

In addition to a quiz that might be of use in the classroom, lots of handy tables and maps are available for teaching and reflection on historical trends, including this one:

RD: Spirits of Enterprise

Darren Grem

James Lorusso -- a Ph.D. candidate in American religious cultures at Emory -- has a new post at Religion Dispatches on the "spirituality at work" movement and its relationship to free market capitalism.  He writes:

We might think of the workplace as an indisputably secular space, but over the last two decades, interest in what’s become known as “workplace spirituality” has grown from a fragmented smattering of unorthodox entrepreneurs and management gurus into a full-fledged movement.

Bringing spirituality into the culture of business, advocates believe, will not only enhance the quality of individual working lives, but also drastically alter the broader conduct of business across the planet.

Aiming at nothing less than a wholesale change in human consciousness, workplace spirituality has the trappings of a full-fledged religious movement—but whose religion? And what’s behind it?

The first round of scholarship on this movement -- David Miller's God at Work and Lake Lambert III's Spirituality, Inc. -- tended to be overly close to the sources.  Both tried to relate what the movement was about without being too critical of it.  Whether this was intentional or not is debatable.  Miller has a whole initiative at Princeton devoted to studying workplace spirituality and it certainly seems like he's in favor of it as a kind of "better" way to do business.  Lambert III's book likewise deems workplace spirituality as a type of "religious" experience worth serious consideration by scholars, but as Brittany Shoot's review of the book for RD noted, "capitalism [in Lambert III's treatment] is not examined as a potentially harmful system to some group of workers down the line."

Lorusso is a part of the second round of scholarship on this movement, one that -- as Dan Williams points out -- has been led by historical inquiries into evangelical contributions to contemporary corporatism.  In general, those in the second round are more critical, arguing that, at best, spirituality provides a kind of "psychological wage" for those working for self-described spiritual companies.  At worst, it fosters spirituality onto people's workaday life or provides a thinly-veiled cover for abuse.  Lorusso's forthcoming dissertation will undoubtedly add to this scholarship by redirecting our attention toward the spiritual capitalists and capitalism that Lambert III studied, albeit with a more critical lens and, hopefully, with an eye toward understanding religious/spiritual constructions, appropriations, and inconsistencies  inside companies as often dynamic and debated.

Finishing a Good Work

Darren Grem and Tim Gloege 

We invite you to consider a request made by Sarah Morice Brubaker, friend of the late Sarah Hammond.  She is sending out an all-call to anyone who might be able or willing to contribute their skills or knowledge toward finishing Sarah's book, God's Business Men: Evangelical Entrepreneurs in Depression and War, which would have been published with University of Chicago Press.  It was under contract and in revision. 

If you'd like to help out, send e-mail to sarah.morice.brubaker@ptstulsa.edu. 

Adventures in Christian Retail: A Response -- Part II

by Darren Grem 

As promised, here's my follow-up to my first post in response to Charity Carney's recent "Adventures in Christian Retail." 
Why “Christian” at all?  

So, if we’re going to ask about their experiences, the experiences of those at CC and other Christian businesses, how do we start? The intersection of religion and capitalism is a pretty well-trod one, so we have plenty of guides. Marx, Weber, and dozens of lesser mortals have unpacked religion – especially a Western-derived version of Christianity – in the marketplace. You can certainly read Dr. Carney’s experience at CC with those models and come to fine conclusions. 

With CC and other CC’s, however, I think it’s also instructive to think about historical context before moving on to an analysis of why -- or in what way -- this particular site is “religious” at all. In other words, first focus not on what a CC is doing to mark itself as “Christian” or “religious.” Focus instead on what it cannot do at this particular historical moment. Companies cannot hire/fire/promote/demote employees based on religion as per the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII. Of course, they can get around this or create a wink-wink, nudge-nudge "cultural gatekeeper" that signals it’s only accepting applications from like-minded job seekers. And, if they are operating stores in areas where, say, 95% of the people in their local community are of some religious group, then there are powerful cultural pressures for folks not to raise a legal stink. Still, at the end of the day, ignoring or doing an end-run around Title VII is taking a risk of the most fearsome four-letter word in corporate America -- tort. 

Yet, many business owners feel compelled to do something. Why is that the case? It depends and ranges widely based on race, gender, political leanings (which are, admittedly, conservative in general), industry, mass vs. niche market, place, type of Christianity, and other factors. But one thing, at least as far as I can tell, does unite their various impulses for bringing Christianity into the workplace and marketplace. For the most part, they share a sense that the workplace and marketplace are spheres of influence and, therefore, places for cultural activism, a way of shaping the world in their own image.  

Indeed, the ideological and cultural fights of the past thirty years have made an impression on many Christian business owners. This is not to say that the cultural issues of previous decades have not, but that the recent ones over race (such as affirmative action), gender (such as abortion or the "feminization of work"), and class (such as the disconnect between work, identity, and community) are the most prominent -- and they have been wrestled with in the midst of drastic restructurings in American capitalism that have left many without a row to hoe, a line to work, or a mouse to click -- or worried about the said row, line, or mouse. As scholars, we like to focus on the "big" arenas, big-name politicians, and, unfortunately, all too often on the biggest blowhards in these fights. But I would argue that the reflective decision by a small business owner -- or an attendant or a cashier or line worker -- to bring "faith," however they conceive of it, to play in their personal crusade in and against whatever the imagine as the dominant culture to be -- that is worthy of attention as well because it illustrates the very work of identity construction, cultural construction, class construction, and political construction. It's the very place where religion hits the road. And, as Dr. Carney's dispatches noted, it's a decision with multiple and often complicated implications. 

Ok, so, given those historical considerations, how might we interpret what’s going on religiously at CC or other companies? What's a company that wants to be “Christian” to do?

It can create an unmistakably “Christian” internal culture. But there are legal risks involved with that, at noted above.  

It can encourage or allow a “soft culture” of Christianity in the company. I think this is where the “Christian muzak” that Dr. Carney heard comes in. I’ve been to many CC's and seen it in countless other forms. Evangelistic tracts sitting next to the candy rack. An ichthys on the registers or on stationary. Bible verses on the bottom of Big Gulps. Tattoos on a tattoo artist (my favorite). It

all seems to work off the same impetus -- toss a little Christianity into the pot as spiritual spice, thereby making the company just a little "different." To attenuate charges of sectarianism or intolerance, especially if its not selling goods or services“by Christians for Christians,” a company can be somewhat flexible with its language, imagery, rituals, and terms of consent. I think of it as custom-fitting a Christian business for a “spiritual but not religious”America. Playing “Imagine” in the midst of a CCM-tilting playlist is another way to do this. So is putting “God’s Glory Auto Sales” up instead of “JesusChrist is the Only Savior of MANkind’s Auto Sales." 

It can also encourage an operationally“Christian”culture in the company, one that accords to whatever managers and workers are willing to accept as “Christian.” This is extremely difficult to observe and generalize about, even though it is certainly the part that sympathetic observers of Christian business like to talk about. In much of the Christian business/self-help/leadership literature (which is a growing genre), this is everywhere and it's usually framed in us vs. them terms, sometimes with culture war flourishes, sometimes not. In short, it's the infusion of "faith at work" that creates the presumed “difference” that Christian business owners see between themselves and their “secular” competitors, especially in how“moral” or “ethical” their business practices are. Higher wages, better customer service, "Christian" leadership, "character"-based decisions not to cheat an unknowing customer – these are all practices that can fall under this category and advance the evangelical-style "world changing" that CC's often cast themselves as partaking in. As Dr. Carney notes, this also opens the company up to charges of hypocrisy on religious grounds. Someone might say, “I’m a Christian. To my mind, Christians don’t do what you're doing to folks. You’re doing that to folks. Are you really Christian?” I've already written about when or where such questions might be appropriate to ask. But as scholars, I think one of the more interesting lines of inquiry might be why those religiously-based criticisms do or don’t often stick to Christian companies (or companies in general). I’m sure those conducting research into the history of anti-corporate Christianity right now might have something to say about that. (See Heath Carter's post as well as Janine Giordano Drake's forthcoming dissertation.)  

It can use “Christian” in branding, promotion, and networking. Some companies explicitly advertise themselves as “Christian." Maybe they put it in their ads, mission statements, or name (e.g., ServiceMaster, as in "Service Thy Master"). Others do it through corporate policies like – as Dr. Carney notes –closing on Sunday. This certainly advertises to customers who might share the company's religious affiliation or sensibilities. In the past, this has also been a way of creating anti-secularist solidarity between Christian businesses and consumers, as witnessed by the uptick in "Christian" business directories in the 1970s and 1980s. The placement of company franchises in church-saturated or notably dual parent, heterosexual, evangelical environs can also create links between a company’s brand and a “base” of Christian consumers. Joining Christian business owners or workers in non-profit, non-competitive associations (e.g., Fellowship of Christian Companies International) can do the same, encouraging sacred "fellowship" and the creation of social capital between members of the same business class or niche market.  

It can incorporate “Christianity” or “Christian”tenets in its social engagements, CSR, philanthropic endeavors, and political interests. Not every Christian company does this, but many do. It takes various forms – sponsoring “character-building” camps for kids, donating to Christian service or missionary agencies, giving money to local Christian charities, giving personal wealth to like-minded candidates. Publicly-traded companies, of course, generally hold back on using corporate profits or encouraging religious donations by executives, for obvious reasons. For that reason, a decent number (probably about half) of businesses with Christian owners or managers are privately-owned, thereby freeing them up to be freer with their money (or with their “stewardship”as they often call it). Trust me –political donations are down the list. For these folks, at least, there’s not much ROI in theocracy.

All of this should give the sense that what Dr. Carney observed did not happen by accident. If we are to take religion seriously in the marketplace, we need to think seriously about what folks are deciding to bring into the workplace, when and why they are deciding to do that, and how and why certain manifestations of religion appear there. This can be highly specific and custom-made, particular to a given store in a given area in a given state at a given point of time. It might even be limited to a given shift.

We should also recognize that, for as much as the appearance of religion in the marketplace is intentional, it is not always as well-thought out by our subjects as we might think or expect. Best-laid incentive-chasing does not explain it all, no matter what the Freakonomicists say. This does not mean that our subjects are not religiously self-reflective or collectively so. It certainly does not mean that they are dumb. To be sure, those running Dr. Carney’s CC might be behind the times in terms of tag-gun pricing and finger-counting bookkeeping. But many of CC’s counterparts are not Luddites, primarily because they have never been or can’t afford to be.  Many founded hi-tech companies or work for engineering firms. A few run or work for design firms and programming shops; others depend on government contracts and more than a few work for the DOD. As Darren Dochuk is currently researching, a lot of them founded or work for extractive companies– hardly a profession for the empty headed. Others created retail chains and work for large-scale corporations that depend on “just in time” coordination, top-shelf mathematical models,and multivariate problem-solving. All that, in my opinion, is more instructive and important to consider than the low-fi traditionalism observed at CC. Evangelicals have been often noted for their technological prowess in media production from the printed page to the Internet age. I wonder if that they’ve been even more technologically-inclined and savvy in corporate America, a place that evangelicals have been comfortable working in and through for much of the twentieth century and especially for the past fifty years.

And yet, to be sure, just because they can get a precision, laser-cut sprocket delivered to Toledo by Tuesday does not mean that they dotting every "i' and crossing every "t" when they pull or push religion into the marketplace. There are incongruities caused by religion's presence in the marketplace that fit oddly even within our received models of how it should work -- and sometimes quite oddly with how our subjects imagine a given religious practice should work. 

Take, for instance, Sunday closing. Sunday closing is incongruous with the very capitalism it's embedded within. Capitalism does not close on Sunday. The goods that are on CC’s shelves might have been made by Christians in another time zone, where it was actually Sunday there but Saturday here. The cargo ships and tractor trailers transporting these goods to the loading dock behind the store did not stop running on Sunday. As Dr. Carney reports, folks worked on Sunday putting those goods on the shelves because of the pressures and demands of their boss, who is certainly aware of the pushes and pulls of the system. The only point in the capitalist system that can be closed on Sunday at CC is the consumptive point– the doors letting customers in and the people behind the cash register checking them out. And all that is primarily because it is in retail. Can you imagine a Christian hotel closing on Sunday? A Christian electric company? Or worse yet, a Christian coffee company? 

Sunday closing is, therefore, an odd thing. But I think it's at those points of incongruity and inconsistency are where the richest analysis can and should happen, at the very points too many journalists, scholars, and many others like to leave uncomplicated, poke fun, or dismiss. It's at those points when religious sites like CC push us to consider the in-betweens of culture and capitalism in contemporary life, as well as push us to think hard about those who work every day in the midst of those in-betweens. 

Thanks again to Dr. Carney for telling us all about her time at CC and inviting us to think about it. And, in case you're dying to know, "CC" is a pseudonym for [intentionally left blank].

Adventures in Christian Retail: A Response -- Part I

Darren Grem

I want to thank Dr. Carney for the opportunity to respond to her “adventures in Christian retail.” I don’t intend to offer a peer review or a point-by-point response to each post. Rather, I’d like to reflect on a few questions raised by Dr. Carney’s time at CC.

There’s probably too much to deal with in one post (read: I had more thoughts than one post can contain). So, I’m dividing it up into a few posts. Expect another one soon.

So, are they really “Christian”?
If you do research on “Christian” business long enough, you’re guaranteed to field some version of that question. Often, it's the first one that folks ask, and I think it comes from an urge for normative evaluation of for-profit endeavors and, therefore, of capitalism itself. For whatever reason, people want to know if you can do capitalism in a “Christian” fashion, by which they usually mean “morally,” “ethically” or “differently from That Bad Company I Hate.” Among Christians, especially evangelicals, the question usually begs for answers about whether a company is "doing more" than acting within the boundaries of the law. They usually want to know if a given company is also willfully encouraging what they deem to be “Christian” forms of activity, whether in-house or in its broader socio-economic engagements. It’s most analogous, I suppose, to questions about the “greenness” of a company, with all the attendant assumptions and complications that question entails. And, given the egregious abuses witnessed on Wall Street and elsewhere in corporate America in the past few years, it’s an understandable one to ask.

Others, of course, ask about a business’s Christianness because they are suspicious of any religious claim about business. Or, perhaps they relish hypocrisy. Either way, they want to know what really makes a Christian business tick, what really goes on behind the scenes, and who or what is really responsible for making the entire enterprise -- of Christianity, of capitalism, of "Christian" capitalism -- a fraud at best and a cover for abuse at worst.

If you wanted, I suppose you could take away either impression about CC, as per Dr. Carney’s dispatches. The comments that accompanied some of her posts – defending “Christian” businesses or deriding them – show that you can.

I certainly have my own opinions about the “Christianness” of various companies. But asking if a company is actually a "Christian" business usually ends up obscuring more than it reveals. Let’s be honest – as with anything else, where you start your line of inquiry will shape the questions you will ask and the answers you will probably get. Asking about a company's "Christianness" will also -- more than likely -- lead you back to yourself and your own definition of what "Christianness" entails. That's fine, I suppose, in certain contexts. But I'm not sure it will tell us much about CC or any other form of "Christian" enterprise.

That’s why I’d rather not do religious diagnostics here; neither do I want or intend to knock Dr. Carney’s own diagnostics of CC's "Christianness." So there's no misunderstanding, let me be crystal clear. I am not advocating that we ditch our moral, ethical, or religious compasses when thinking about religion and capitalism (and, of course, it’s debatable whether that’s even possible). Neither am I talking about situations where, say, a law has been broken. In Dr. Carney’s case, she claims that CC broke the law and claims to have solid, non-circumstantial, non-anecdotal evidence to prove it in court. Hence, she is urging investigation by OSHA and considering litigation. That is an entirely different matter, and, if she or anyone else wants to add religious justifications or language behind their reasoning for legal action, then they have every right to do so. I am only talking about how we proceed if we’re trying to make sense of the religious, historical, and economic dynamics behind the world of Christian business.

So, how can we proceed? Thankfully, Dr. Carney’s experience shows us a way.

Whatever you may think about the pros and cons of her “undercover” methodology, her discussions with folks at CC – especially the men and women working the aisles and running the registers – point to the fact that our interest in a company’s “Christian” identity is a shared one. The employees at CC evaluated its Christian claims for themselves and came away with opinions that do not fit easily into an either/or dichotomy. Their emotional state, personal experiences, religious upbringing, sex, race, economic security, historical context – all of these factors went into how they addressed, for themselves and others, how “Christian” the workplace was and is, how “Christian” their boss was and is, or how “Christian” their work was and is.

This is all to say that places like CC are very interesting religious sites indeed. They are places where the complicated relationship between identity, community, religion, class, gender, race, and capitalism is in high relief. Of course, they are not the only places where this relationship is available for observation and study in contemporary America. But they are a “field” of a sort. Or, as another historian of all this once told me, they are “archives” ripe for the picking.

So, for starters, let's try to proceed with an analysis of such sites that is less about us and our own religious or ethical or conceptual matrix. Rather, it is about trying to understand, contextualize, and convey theirs.

Up next: Why “Christian” at all?

Awards and Prizes for our Bloggers and Friends: The Hits Just Keep on Coming

Paul Harvey

On my way soon to the Southern Historical Association this coming weekend in Baltimore, where I will have the distinct pleasure (if my plane isn't delayed, if God wills it) of giving a tremendous award to one of our blog contributors, Darren Grem (Deg), who has been named one of the co-winners of this year's C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize, given to the best dissertation in Southern History in any given year. Deg's dissertation is entitled "The Blessings of Business: Corporate America and the Rise of Conservative Evangelicalism." As one of the judges for this year's contest, I had the rare opportunity to survey a large number of dissertations in the field that came out in 2010 (and you wonder where my summer went), and was happy to see southern history in such great shape. There were a LOT of deserving contenders and any number of them could have been named winners -- indeed, I anticipate many will win prizes given out by other professional associations.

A description of Deg's dissertation may be found here. Since most folks reading this won't be at the awards ceremony Friday, here's part of what I will read on behalf of the selection committee:

Dr. Grem’s dissertation “follows the money” of American evangelicalism through the twentieth century, focusing on the relationship between corporate capitalism, southern entrepreneurs, and the rise of evangelical institutions. Individual chapters trace the innovations in funding and Christian entrepreneurship from figures as diverse as Billy Graham, R. G. LeTourneau, the founder of Chic-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby, and evangelists such as Billy Graham and the Wycliffe Bible Translators. The result is a rich and complex analysis which places corporate capitalism squarely within the world of southern evangelicals through the twentieth century, much like C. Vann Woodward himself did with the world of the “Redeemers” and the New South movement. It’s one of the finest and most important works in American religious, intellectual, and economic history that I’ve read in a considerable time, and the fact that it combines all three of those fields I’m sure is one of the things that made it so attractive to Oxford University Press.

Just a couple of other notes here. First, congratulations to blog friend Alison Greene, whose dissertation "No Depression in Heaven: Religion and Economic Crisis in Memphis and the Delta, 1929-1941," was one of the three finalists for the prize, and her work will soon be an oustanding book.

And, I might add, if you survey the list of recent winners of the C. Vann Woodward dissertation prize, you'll find the makings of some of the most important works in southern history published in recent years. Three in particular I'll note. The 2003 winner was our blog contributor and my co-author and co-editor Edward J. Blum, whose dissertation became the landmark work Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism. In 2004 the selection committee picked Chandra Manning's dissertation, which a few years later became a book that has become a staple of my classroom, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War. Then in 2007, Bethany Moreton won the prize for her groundbreaking work that has since become the book To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Makings of Christian Free Enterprise (Bethany then went on to be one of Deg's mentors at UGA, so the baton has been passed). In short, the C. Vann Woodward prize, both for the recipients as well as for the remarkable list of works that have been named as finalists for the award, has served to bring attention to books that have fundamentally shaped the field of southern history -- and it's no coincidence that religion has been central to a sizable number of the finalists and winners of the award since its establishment.

Just a quite note of irony, as befits the modern founder of the field and the author of The Irony of Southern History: C. Vann Woodward was, of course, one of the greatest historians of the 20th century, and all students of American history will be familiar with landmark works such as Origins of the New South and The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Woodward's focus, as was true of his generation more largely, was usually economic and political history; no one will ever best his scathing portrayal of the "Redeemers" in Origins. Woodward knew little, and probably (as far as I know) cared less for religious history, which is given a reasonable but somewhat perfunctory treatment in Origins. That makes it ironic in many ways how many of the recent winners of the award named after him feature religion centrally in their work; it speaks also to a larger transformation of the field of American history too, I think.

And the same note of congratulations for my partner in crime Philip Goff, whose Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI remains central to the enterprise of American religious history in so many ways. Phil's Center has just received a sizable grant from the Lilly Endowment for a three-year project on "The Bible in American Life," which has many aspects to it and will culminate in a national conference in 2014. Read all about it here. So shout out to Phil for yet another success for the Center.

God Groups and Facebook Faith

Darren Grem

Yesterday, The New York Times posted on "Room for Debate" about "The First Church of Facebook." Here's the intro:

Nearly a third of Facebook users in the U.S. now list a religion in their profile, and they are highly engaged with religious pages — commenting, “liking,” socializing. Many religious people celebrate this new medium for outreach, but early this year Pope Benedict XVI issued a warning: "It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives."

Facebook replaced Christmas letters. Online dating replaced “friend of a friend” setups. Can online communities like Jesus Daily take the place of offline religious life, like what happens at synagogues and churches?

Contributors were invited to address whether or not online communities -- such as Facebook groups, blogs, and other social networking outlets -- will come to replace brick-and-mortar churches. Presumably this is more of an issue in the Protestant world, although it has a certain salience for Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, and Jews, as well as for those who blend faiths as they seek out spiritual community (see, for instance, the reference to "Bu-Jews," or those who try and mix certain aspects of Buddhism and Judaism).

"Supplementary" sites of religious experience and community, of course, have a long history, especially in the American context. So does fretting about religious siphoning and competition from the more tech-savvy or consumer-minded. On that, it seems like they're debating a settled point. Religious leaders and groups have spent years and decades, if not centuries, creating "communities" in physical places where meaning, direction, solace, empowerment, and all the emotional and social experiences we call "religion" can be found or fomented. That's a religious infrastructure that's fairly hardwired, both on the map and in the mind.

The better question, then, seems to not be about whether all that will go the way of the steam shovel and cowboy.*** Rather, it seems to me -- as it does to a few of the contributors -- that it's better to ask: What drives someone toward a Facebook faith? What is to be found there? What happens to someone when they seek out an online God group? Who and what stands to benefit - or lose - from an online religious experience? Does it create religious encounters, interchange, conflict, segmentation, segregation? What does it mean for religion in the private, public, and political spheres? Additionally, how do we, who study "religion and spirituality" write or think about online religion? Are our present conceptual models -- informed as they are by past forms of tech-mediated religion, from the book to TBN -- applicable or workable in the Facebook age?

I suppose it all comes down to a basic question: Looking back in fifty years' time (or perhaps even less), will the rise of online info-tech and social networking platforms have proven to have been revolutionary for religion?

*** Thanks to my son, Will, for introducing me to these provocative examples of creative destruction.

So, You Think You Can Live "Biblically?"

Darren Grem



That's the question that writer and blogger Rachel Held Evans is trying to answer. The author of a memoir about growing up in conservative evangelical circles (and with one of the best titles ever), Evans is addressing the issues raised in her first book about what it actually means to live fundamentalistically. As this Slate article details, this is not done for the sake of satire. Rather, she's attempting to answer what it actually means to live as a woman "by the book," following as closely as possible Old Testament and New Testament dictates concerning hair, dress, hygiene, and so on.



As the article demonstrates, she's only a month into the experiment and has already caught the attention of theological conservatives and biblical literalists. Though certainly intended to toss down the gauntlet on the "roles" of women in the church, the book will dive into issues of sex and the sacred that evangelicals all down the spectrum continue to debate, especially in and through their cultural and political activism. Regardless, it will hopefully make for a good read for courses on religious life, conservatism, and gender.



Postscript: Seth Dowland will certainly fill in the historical context for all this with his forthcoming book on manhood and womanhood in conservative evangelical politics. So, get your credit cards ready!