9. A Rumble of Thunder [Previous | Contents]

Dominion of the Machine?

In his novel Erewhon, Samuel Butler (1835-1902) describes a hidden culture which had been ahead of Europe technologically, but had revolted against a society dominated by machines. After the revolt, the Erewhonians had settled into a society which no longer permitted the use of machines with a complexity greater than machines found in the late Middle Ages. In a series of chapters containing excerpts from the Erewhonian book called The Book of the Machines, Butler outlines a debate which was current in late 19th century England. This debate centered around the nature of the machine and whether or not the machine can be considered to be ‘living’.

Writing in 1872, Butler says:

I would repeat that I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched, and checked while we can still check it? And is it not necessary for this end to destroy the more advanced of the machines which are in use at present, though it is admitted that they are in themselves harmless? [1]

The lower animals progress because they struggle with one another; the weaker die, the stronger breed and transmit their strength. The machines, being of themselves unable to struggle, have got man to do their struggling for them: as long as he fulfils this function duly, all goes well with him — at least he thinks so; but the moment he fails to do his best for the advancement of machinery by encouraging the good and destroying the bad, he is left behind in the race of competition; and this means that he will be made uncomfortable in a variety of ways, and perhaps die. [2]

Complex now, but how much simpler and more intelligibly organised may it not become in another hundred thousand years? or in twenty thousand? For man at present believes that his interest lies in that direction; he spends an incalculable amount of labour and time and thought in making machines breed always better and better; he has already succeeded in effecting much that at one time appeared impossible, and there seem no limits to the results of accumulated improvements if they are allowed to descend with modification from generation to generation ... This is the most alarming feature in the case. [3]

Over one hundred years ago Butler addressed an issue which is almost as controversial today. Will machines (computers) become so ‘intelligent’ that they will replace mankind as that component of the created order which has dominion over the rest of the created physical realm?

Butler wrote Erewhon shortly after Darwin (1809-1882) published his book The Origin of Species (1859) and was influenced greatly by it. He seems to have held a mechanistic view of life. As a result, he could not distinguish between the inanimate creation and the animate creation. This led him to the conclusion that eventually machines would replace mankind.

This view is prevalent today among many who hold the same philosophy. They believe that soon we will have computers which will have enough intelligence that they will be able to take over the world. Science fiction writers have often dealt with this theme. A familiar example is the computer HAL in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. HAL sabotaged the space voyage beyond Mars and took over the ship.

The belief that computers will soon replace man is based upon a mechanistic and evolutionary view of life. This viewpoint holds that man is only a small step in the chance evolution of non-living non-rational matter into living and rational beings. According to this view, the process of evolution continues. The next steps of evolution will eventually result in the replacement of carbon-based intelligence (mankind) with silicon-based intelligence (computers). But this evolutionary and mechanistic view of life ignores the fact that God created man as a unique being and endowed him with special attributes, including a rational soul which cannot be fabricated in the material realm.

As man cannot be greater than his creator, so machines will never be greater than their creator. Therefore, as Christians we do not need to be concerned about a future model of computer which will become animated, have a will of its own, and conquer man. Our concern rather should be focused on the role of the computer in society and the impact its use will have on humans and on the Church.

We must be concerned about how men will use their machines rather than about the machines themselves. The Erewhonian ‘solution’ was to outlaw machines. This ‘solution’ is not found just in fiction. It was the approach of followers of a man named Ned Ludd. The Luddites, around 1810, attempted to stop the industrial revolution by destroying machines in the hosiery and lace mills in Nottingham and in several other English cities. The Luddites ‘solution’ failed, as does this same ‘solution’ when applied by postal workers or printers who destroy equipment in an attempt to stop change.

Our approach to the information revolution as Christians must not be that of the Luddites who feared both change and automation. Rather our approach must be based on wisdom, guided by the following principles:

• We should be infected by a spirit of optimism. We must always remember that the Sovereign God is in control of all the events of history. The computer and the tools of the modern communications network were invented under God’s providential rule. He will never permit man to exercise evil to the depths of his depravity, and use these tools exclusively for evil. God will turn these inventions of man into instruments which he will use to crush the head of Satan. God always gets the last laugh. “The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.” [Ps 2.4]

• We must take responsibility for events in this world. “From a Christian perspective, we are ultimately responsible to our Maker for the way we live. What AI [Artificial Intelligence] tempts us to do is to sidestep that responsibility by passing the burden to the machine.”  [4] As Christians we must maintain the balance between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility.

• We must acknowledge that most inventions from the hand of man have both good and bad dimensions. Because of God’s general grace, unregenerate men are able to invent useful tools. However, because of the stain of original sin infecting the inventor, inventions always have a dark side to them. But in the hands of Christians guided by biblical principles, the tools of man can be of great service for the Kingdom of Christ. Christians should capture for Christ all the inventions of men, which are not inherently evil, and put them to work for the cause of Christ and his Church.

• We must face the fact that every aspect of the 21st century world will be dependent on computers. Christians should be the trend-setters in the application of this technology, rather than spectators being passed by. By their example, Christians should demonstrate to unregenerate men the way to exercise a proper dominion over the created order.

• We must not become so infatuated with new technology that we forget our primary purpose, which is to “glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”  [5] “The danger of grasping new opportunities in telecommunications is that we get sucked into silicon idolatry.”  [6] We must resist ‘silicon idolatry’ and see the computer as only a tool, and not as our saviour.

If you are a Christian, there are a number of specific ways by which you can apply these principles and capture the computer for Christ. Some of these are identified in the following sections.

Ring Liberty’s Bell

Governments will attempt to control computer and communication technology as they discover the ‘dangerous’ ways in which this technology can be used:

Computer technology, despite its image, is now essentially radical; it tends to decentralize; it is best fitted to the individual and the community. ... The centralizing forces will have to work hard against the natural imperatives of the technology in order to neutralize its potential for a rebirth of individual and community control over information and education. [7]

The Electronic Highway will soon be carrying an incredible variety of information from, to, and about North Americans. It will carry personal and business communication, customized electronic news journals, data bank queries and educational information, consumer shopping orders, invoices and electronic transactions, and personal medical records. All of this information, in theory, could be made available to government monitors of the Electronic Highway. “It requires little imagination to see how a totalitarian government could pervert the achievements of the information revolution into the omnipresent and irresistible instruments of control for a self-perpetuating fascism.” [8]

The totalitarian and socialistic tendencies of humanistic governments will cause them to develop, or mandate, means for controlling and monitoring the free flow of information on the Electronic Highway. In the U.S. for example, the FBI is very concerned about the difficulty of tapping multiplexed, digital, and fiber optics phone lines. They have requested legislation that would require all telephone equipment to be designed so that they can tap any conversation. [9] Similarly, the National Security Agency has been putting a lot of pressure on the U.S. Government to restrict the use and sale of encryption devices which would permit private parties to interact without the fear of electronic monitoring. [10], [11]

Some of the arguments with respect to government monitoring of the Electronic Highway have merit. For example, electronic transactions between drug dealers could be tapped and used as evidence against them. But the arguments defending the maintenance of the privacy of personal communications seem to out-weigh the government’s ‘need to know’.

The fact that so much private information is being carried on the Electronic Highway leads many to fear that privacy is essentially no longer something that citizens can expect. [12], [13], [14], [15], [16] The possibility that governments will try to regulate the free flow of information on the Electronic Highway should be a concern to all of us. But what concerns me even more than the possibility of regulation by government, is the lack of concern shown by most Christians. The fight for privacy on the network seems to be left largely to organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which appears to take an essentially libertarian viewpoint. Where are the Christians who are concerned for maintaining the rights of personal privacy within the balanced context of laws which are based upon God’s law?

I believe that Christians should ‘fight’ for communication freedom on the Electronic Highway. This freedom will help to ensure that truthful information can be made available even when there are many who wish to suppress the information. For example, the global E-mail networks, which are currently very difficult to control by governments, were used recently to disseminate information contradicting official propaganda. This was the case in the former Soviet Union, China, and Serbia and Croatia, [17] where alternate accounts from the official government ones, were made available to the West via E-mail and FAX.

We should encourage our elected representatives and their appointed agencies to disallow regulations which hinder the free flow of content on the Electronic Highway or which permit monitoring of the content on the highway. We should take this stand because the “free flow of information can be most hazardous for an authoritarian regime.” [18] The free flow of information is essential for the proclamation of the Gospel.

There are ways in which you can help to prevent an abuse of the Electronic Highway by governments. One way is to use the network as soon as feasible for all types of communication. The more the network is used, the more difficult it will be for the government to monitor or control the information flowing through the network. The newspaper publishing industry in the West provides an example of this. “The newspaper and other forms of publishing had become so tightly held within the mechanisms of an industrial economy that governments felt it possible to loosen their grip upon an industry that was already too prolific to be supervised completely.” [19]

Any government desperate enough to control every means of communication of its citizens could remove or strictly licence the installation and use of telephones. But as the numerous other devices which use the telephone network (or Internet), proliferate this control will be made excessively difficult, for example:

If the Net is ubiquitous, affordable, easy to access, tunneled with encrypted passageways, and based on multiple competitive channels, no local tyranny will be very effective against it. [20]

Totalitarian regimes cannot exist without full control of information, but it is impossible to control information when you have tens of thousands of personal computers, modems and faxes. [21]

Conservative activists in the United States have discovered that the route to power travels along the information super-highway ... [T]here’s no doubt that many more conservative messages are zipping around the country ... [T]he spirit of empowered conservatives seem to be summarized best by a caller from Clarksville, Ark., who proclaimed: “I thank God every day for Net.” [22]

[E]ach assault on freedom-of-the-Net will breed 10 technical work-arounds. Cybercrats can’t outfox cypherpunks [sic.]. ... The information revolution will transform the politics of power just as surely as the broadcast media did 70 years ago. Only this time, power will devolve back toward its sources, not inward toward demagogues seeking to gather it. The net will subvert the centralized economic and social control mechanisms tat allowed the great welfare-warfare states of the 20th century to dominate our commerce, our psychic landscape and even our definition of who we are. [23]

Therefore, you should not resist using E-mail and other forms of electronic communication. These new forms will be upon us soon, and will become as common as the telephone is today. Instead of resisting (for whatever reason), look for opportunities to maximize the diversity of communication media you use, and thereby make it that much more difficult for governments to limit your ability and freedom to communicate.

“When a technology is new, we cannot foresee its social and environmental effects. But by the time they become apparent, it is too late or too difficult to do anything about it.” [24] However, as Christians we know that the natural inclination of man’s heart is to use technology for evil. Therefore, we know in general what are the consequences of giving an authoritarian regime unlimited licence to control the communication of its citizens. Therefore, another way you can help to preserve the freedom of communication is by becoming more aware of the role and work of the CRTC and FCC and other bodies regulating communications in North America.

You should take the time to understand the importance of maintaining an unregulated, truly competitive, service-supplier industry. [25] “It is critically important that the Electronic Highways ... be open to everyone.” [26] Where possible, you should become involved in establishing government policy.

Especially important areas for you to consider are listed below. [27], [28], [29]

• Equality of Access — Anyone should be permitted to use any devices connected to the network, to send information to anyone else on the network without interference of any kind, and to provide any kind of information without interference. [30] How can governments be constrained so that they don’t limit freedom of access to the Electronic Highway? How can private interest groups be controlled so that they do not limit access?

• Non-Discriminatory Tariff Rates — Rates for the transmission of information should be consistently and fairly applied on the basis of published rates. How will charges be defined, for example, by number of bytes (characters) per kilometer per time unit or by source of content? How can competition among carriers and equipment suppliers be encouraged to ensure low costs?

• Content/Container Separation — The supplier of the network should not be involved in the definition or specification of the content of the information which may be sent across the network as this may stifle both competition and free speech. [31] This separation is not currently practised in most TV networks today, making it difficult for certain parties to gain access to TV time. Should there be a monopoly supplier? Who will ensure that sufficient band-width or frequencies are made available to allow the free flow of information?

• Privacy of Communication — The content of information transmitted on the network should be known to only the sender and the recipient. There will have to be a fine balance maintained here. Using the Electronic Highway for communication of fraudulent, subversive or pornographic information will be easier and cheaper than through the current postal system. Should there be controls to stop evil information from being sent? How should it be monitored? Who will provide the definition of ‘evil information’? How should it be controlled? Who should control it? How can the flow of information be controlled and still leave free the communication of the Gospel?

• Guaranteed Delivery — A transmitted message should reach its recipient, even if there are hardware or network failures. No machine or human filter should be applied to the communication without the sender’s or recipient’s approval. Who should be allowed to monitor and interfere with the delivery of messages on the Electronic Highway? For what reasons? Under what conditions?

“Respect and protection for the individual has long been a duty supported by Christian churches in the West.” [32] This duty will fall upon us as we face the challenge of maintaining freedom on the Electronic Highway.

Offer Meaning

As computers take on new roles in every part of our lives, there will be changes in the way people work, obtain their schooling and use their recreation time. This will likely cause a change in the amount of time people spend in their homes, and cause a redefinition of work. The trend toward increased telecommuting to work is evident. In the U.S. in 1993 41 million people worked from home (compared with 39 million in 1992). [33] In the Los Angeles area 4.7 million workers worked from home on a full time or part time basis in 1990. In 1994, the number of workers was up to 8.7 million. [34] As someone once said: “as goes California, so goes the nation.” This is only the beginning. This trend will likely escalate, and within a decade there will be a similar dramatic increase in telecommuting to school and to obtain recreation services (e.g., video-on-demand).

The trend toward telecommuting will increase the amount of time people spend isolated in their homes and may increase the amount of free-time that people have, especially children and adolescents. These changes will undoubtedly cause social problems. Families are likely to be disrupted and there may be increases in juvenile delinquency and boredom. There will likely be less face-to-face social interaction, and people may find their work less meaningful and challenging. Overall people may feel more isolated.

The Church is going to have to meet these challenges. For example, it will have to offer ways to involve teenagers in activities which will give them meaningful challenges and help them find their place in society.

The Church will also have to take more seriously the definition of roles for each member in a congregation. Where people have other meaningful communities, roles in the Church do not appear to be as necessary. But in a society where the Church is one of the few personal communities, meaningful roles in the Church become essential. The Church will not be effective in its ministry or outreach if it assumes that people living in cyberspace can have their spiritual needs met through the Electronic Highway. The truly effective congregations in the next few decades will be those which can offer meaning to their members in the context of the growing sterility of cyberspace.

Man was designed by God for involvement in a community, and to obtain meaning within that community. The concept of an elite group of professional clergy who perform most of the work in the Church does not provide opportunities for community involvement and personal meaning within the Church community. To be effective, the Church must change its approach. It must provide meaningful opportunities for involvement and service. The leaders of the Church must obey Paul’s instruction “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ...” [Eph 4.12]

As the Electronic Highway connects to every home, “we will need some creative approaches in ministry and evangelism proposed by innovative ministers who are not afraid to meet changing conditions with new ideas.” [35] The Church will have a unique position in society as an institution in which people can find meaning while working together for a useful cause. The Church will be given the opportunity to hold together a community.

Offer Love

The Electronic Highway will change many of the ways that people interact. Face-to-face communication may decline. As a result, the Church may see a further decline in attendance at worship services as people attempt to fulfill their religious urges from the Electronic Highway. If this happens it will be consistent with what seems to be the pattern for the impact of electronic media on the Church. There apparently was a decline in attendance when the radio began to carry religious broadcasting. [36] Religious broadcasting on TV has apparently had a similar negative impact on the Church:

There are several research findings suggesting that religious television programs may be detrimental to the local church. A religious program on television may be effective in awakening within viewers dissatisfaction with their present situation. ... Far from being a complementary service to the local church, therefore, broadcasters appear to be providing an overlapping service, one traditionally provided by the local church. [37]

Some experts say if current trends are to continue, major Christian denominations will turn en masse toward television preaching as a means to convey their respective messages, a medium which for years has been dominated by individual evangelists. ... There is a distinct possibility that all this technology could backfire on church leaders. [38]

Television, like any tool of communication, is in itself neither good nor bad. But recent history makes it clear that it is a tool to be handled carefully ... It is filled with characteristics and practices that at best limit its value as a ministry tool, and at worst pose a threat to the spiritual health of those who use it. [39]

The Church will have an opportunity to meet the challenge of the Electronic Highway through the community aspect of its nature. The people of God sharing fellowship with one another will be one of the few places where people can find warm human contact. But to be effective in providing this, the Church must become less inward-looking and reach out in love to a society suffering from an ‘electronic narcosis’.

Challenge the Age

Another challenge which will face the Church is how it will reach people with the message of the Gospel in an age of isolation. People living in cyberspace will lead progressively more physically separate lives. In small private communities, the concept of public space, morals, and religion will become less meaningful to the majority of people.

Christians in the West have fallen for the myths of the separation of church and state and pluralism, and have largely given up on the public domain. Christianity is no longer considered to be the religion of the nation or to have an influence on its morality and behaviour. Rather faith and belief have become a private matter. During this current century the Church has allowed the Gospel to become progressively more distant from the mainstream of culture. While absorbing the outward materialism and morality of the culture, the Church in turn, has largely been unable to provide a challenge to the pagan heart of the culture.

The Church has become progressively more isolated from the culture, and has essentially no idea about how to relate or communicate the Gospel to the culture.

The task of relating to those who do not share evangelical assumptions may be more difficult than it was a generation ago. An elaborate evangelical subculture provides for many a safe haven from the storms of diversity. It is now possible to proceed from kindergarten to a Ph.D. within evangelical confines, to listen to evangelical media from morning until night, and to consume a steady diet of evangelical books and magazines. Studies show, for instance, that the burgeoning evangelical media empire — radio, television, and popular music — retains minimal audience beyond evangelical borders despite claims that the unchurched are being reached. By constructing a culture of their own, evangelicals run the risk of being less capable, and sometimes less interested, in communicating with neighbours different than themselves. [40]

How is the Church going to break out of its cocoon and make its message heard? “Entering the electronic age, organized religion does not appear to rise above ... 28th place in offering direction for national policies.” [41] The Church is silent most of the time and ineffective when it does speak.

This silence can be blamed in part on the inability of portions of the Church to gain a hearing. The media are largely controlled by individuals and organizations which are not supportive of the Gospel or of the Church. “Outside of humorous or superficial references to church and clergy, nearly all characters in the modern media are drawn to act as though religious faith has no relationship to daily decisions and actions. God is even more remote than outer space and the future has no relation to the present.” [42] The Church gets no support from the media.

In addition, the Church is often excluded from these media because of the cost of using them. It is expensive to purchase ‘space’ or ‘time’ in the mass media such as newspaper, radio and TV. Many congregations and denominations cannot afford to use these media for presenting their message. This seems to be particularly the case with those portions of the Church which take seriously the doctrines emphasized at the time of the Reformation.

The congregations or denominations which can afford to purchase access to the mass media often seem to waste and misuse their opportunity. This especially seems to be the case with those using TV. One writer has observed that “there is not even one serious daily news program presented from a Christian perspective on the world. Most evangelical talk-shows and on-air preachers tend to express shallow, undeveloped ideas of the implications of biblical truth to the various issues of the day.” [43]

Most TV shows produced in the name of Christ seem to be as shallow as the average fare of non-religious TV. This may be because the ‘Christian’ TV shows are produced according to the same standards as the rest of what appears on TV. In the opinion of televangelists, “television broadcasting ... is a God-given gift. Yet television is the epitome of the secular life, a marketing medium for consumer products and a show place for glamorous celebrities and stars. Televangelists rail against it as a source of godlessness, pornography, licentiousness, and mind control. But the inescapable fact is that they are part of the television world. Television techniques have enabled them to succeed.” [44]

“While in their messages the paid-time religious preachers strongly criticize and even condemn secular society, in the staging and promotion of their programs they use criteria and celebrities from this same society to demonstrate their validity.” [45] It may be this obvious inconsistency between their message and their actions which has led many to a lack of trust in televangelists. This lack of trust is shown through a recent Gallup poll. This poll found “that 23 percent of those surveyed said television evangelists are ‘trustworthy with money’, while 63 percent said they are not. In 1980 a similar poll found 41 percent saying the evangelists were trustworthy, with 36 percent saying they were not.” [46]

We cannot point to the Church’s use of TV with satisfaction, as we can to its use of the printing press. We cannot find success on the ‘tube’ as we can between the pages. The question confronting us is: how will we use the new means of communication which are now becoming available? Will we repeat the mistakes of the televangelists, and turn the Electronic Highway into the carrier of meaningless foam? Or will we follow in the footsteps of Luther and use the Electronic Highway to cleanse the Church and challenge the age?

The Electronic Highway will provide an inexpensive channel which will be open to all congregations and denominations. It will support a spectrum of new media and information processing technologies which can be used for establishing the supremacy of biblical truth. These include:

• Electronic publications in standard textual form or in hypermedia form. Electronic publishing will permit the Church to produce high quality publications for not much more than the cost of entering the information into a computer. The appearance should rival anything produced by highly-financed publications such as the weekly news magazines.

• E-mail and electronic bulletin boards which should permit the Church to reach a large constituency without the large cost now associated with using the public mail system.

• Computer-based courseware modules based on a Christian philosophy of education, which the Church can prepare to offer the world an educational alternative, while the current publicly funded, centralized education system crumbles.

• Translation services to transform the written or spoken words of any individual into any other language ‘known’ by the computer. This will permit the Church to share the fruits of biblical study and historical research across all the cultural groups on earth.

• Query and retrieval of information from central econoses. Christians will place in an econosis a vast theological library. Each item in this vast data store will be accessible through a PC. This may encourage more serious research and the return to the study of the lessons of church history among Christians.

The Church must articulate goals and standards for using the new technology. It should develop approaches for producing high-quality material which can reach unbelievers with the Gospel. Let us avoid two possible scenarios which will waste this opportunity from God:

• Let us not turn the Electronic Highway into the peddler of trivia, and

• Let us not miss the opportunity to use the power of this new means of communication by misunderstanding the significance of what is happening in cyberspace.

The first scenario can be illustrated by a passage from Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451:

Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, ... so ... full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. [47]

In the example above, the communication media were used for the trivialization of knowledge. In the example below, also from a science fiction story, called Julia’s Dilemma, it is the media themselves which are trivialized. The significance of a society existing in cyberspace was totally misunderstood.

The original fellows had dissipated the endowment, first in publishing books with no hope of sale and finally, as an understanding of the future caught up with them, in rather stilted computer-aided learning routines. Unfortunately, they had not realized that in the meantime the population at large had ceased to be text literate but was instead image literate. That is, their understanding of the world around them was once more conditioned by images and sounds as had been the case with their distant ancestors. People just didn’t read much anymore. [48]

We are on the frontier of cyberspace, and have entered a transitional period between ages. The changes will be as significant as those brought about by only a few other transitions in the history of humanity. How the Church enters cyberspace will likely be as significant as other key events in history such as the appointment of Moses to shepherd God’s people; the conquests of Alexander the Great and the introduction of Greek civilization throughout the Mediterranean world; the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus; the commissioning of the twelve Apostles; the conversion of Constantine; the invention of the printing press; and the challenge of the Roman Catholic hierarchy by Luther.

As the Church enters cyberspace it will be forced into conflict with all that this age considers valuable and important. This conflict is what the Church needs, since “[a] basic advantage of cultural clash and transition is that people on the frontier between different modes of experience develop a great power of generalization.” [49] The Church has not had this power for centuries, and instead has been coasting on the legacy of the Protestant Reformation.

As the Church moves forward into the new frontier “we need to burst out of the wineskins of the conventional and create whole new ways to seek first the kingdom of God in our lives and in our mission.” [50] May God permit the Church to be at the leading edge of this frontier to challenge the technological age of the 21st century with the Gospel.

Be Men of Issachar

We are told in I Chronicles that the men of Issachar who joined David at Hebron were men “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” [I Chron 12.32] You should be like the men of Issachar. You should understand the ways in which technology can have an impact on society and on the Church. You should not sit by in ‘blissful’ ignorance. You should read about and experiment with the new technology.

We all must understand that it is impossible for the computer to have no impact on the Church. The question is, will the impact be for good or evil? If we do not understand the technology in which our civilization is already being immersed, there will be little hope that the Church will be able to use the technology for good. We will be like the monks in the monasteries left holding goose quills, while the printing press cranked out hundreds of pages a day. Marshall McLuhan summarized their plight:

Had the Schoolmen with their complex oral culture understood the Gutenberg technology, they could have created a new synthesis of written and oral education ... The oral Schoolmen did not meet the new visual challenge of print. [51]

The Church has been print-bound for centuries. It has tried to change this through its use of TV, but has had less than outstanding success. While it has made forays into the world of TV, the Church has continued to use print. But the current ineffectiveness of print can be seen by the stream of tracts left on the sidewalk behind a street-evangelism team, or the kitty-litter boxes lined with a neighbourhood church’s newspaper.

The Church must face the reality of the new information age. It will not be an age of print, regardless of what we may hope. “To a large extent, this new world will be created through a new digital information technology that allows a convergence of modes, one information technology that can serve both our eyes and our ears. ... Technology will have profound impacts on culture — impacts on all our arts and letters.” [52]

We need men of Issachar who can understand the times and know what the Church should do. We need men of vision who can show us how to use the new technology for the work of the King.

Control Technology

On the 500th anniversary (2017) of Luther’s protest against indulgences what will be the role of computer technology in society? What will be its role in the Church? We cannot give a definitive answer. We can, however, suggest possible directions based on the current trends, and we can play a role in the direction that these trends will take.

After God had created man, we read that “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” [Gen 1.28] God blessed man and made him ruler over the inanimate and animate realms within the physical creation. This dominion, under God, extends to computer and communication technology.

As Christians we have been blessed with a responsibility for the application of technology. This responsibility means that we must bring technology into the service of the Church and under the Lordship of Christ. We must control technology, or others will control us with it. We must not accept the outcome of these trends as ‘given’ or ‘inevitable’. We must understand the history of technology, the philosophy underlying its invention and application, and the ways it can be used and misused in the Church. We must accept responsibility for the shape of the future.

It was evangelical Christians in NA who, following in Luther’s footsteps, drove the development of popular communication through the printed word. They transformed the ground rules of print. [53]

Between 1790 and 1830, nearly 600 religious magazines were founded. ... Evangelicals such as those who backed the various Bible societies pioneered in print technology (e.g., cheap stereotyping, steam-powered printing, and mechanized papermaking). And they were leaders in conceiving innovative ways of distributing the printed word. [54]

Will evangelical Christians be the pioneers in cyberspace? Or, will they resist in the mistaken belief that by turning back to the old way — basic education emphasizing reading — we will be able to arrest the decline of western civilization? Will they continue to hope for a return to the printed word, when it is no longer effective in reaching a perishing world? Will they be like the monks who clung to the hand copied manuscripts until they were drowned in reams of printed pages? Will evangelicals allow secular humanists to commandeer the technology of cyberspace for their liberal causes, or will they take command for the Kingdom?

In the next two decades we can expect to see changes in computer technology which will make obsolete many current modes of communication, create new modes of communication, and change forever the remaining modes. [55], [56] From these changes we can expect both blessings and curses. It is our responsibility to control the application of computer and communication technology so that the blessings outweigh the curses. “Christians who have always been in the ‘communications business’ (‘in the beginning was the Word’) should be among the first to realize the crucial significance of these new technologies. Opportunities exist for us to shape the new technologies in a responsible manner. Do we recognize those opportunities? Are we ready for them?” [57]

I hear a rumble of thunder. This rumble signifies the dramatic power of the computer for the cause of the Gospel. This rumble is a warning of the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church. By God’s grace, this rumble will unleash a reformation which will shake the world.

Copyright © 1997, James R. Hughes. All rights reserved.

Endnotes [Previous | Contents]

[1] Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1983), p. 203 Back

[2] Ibid., p. 207. Back

[3] Ibid., p. 212. Back

[4] David Lyon, The Silicon Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 83. Back

[5] Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 1. Back

[6] Lyon , op. cit., p. 72. Back

[7] David Godfrey and Douglas Parkhill (eds.), Gutenberg Two (Toronto: Press Porcepic Ltd., 1985), p. 1. Back

[8] Ibid., p. 84. Back

[9] Paul Wallich, “Tap Dance,” Scientific American, June, 1992. Back

[10] John Perry Barlow, “Decrypting the Puzzle Palace,” Communications of the ACM, July, 1992. Back

[11] Lance J. Hoffman, “Who Holds the Cryptographic Keys? The Government Key Escrow Initiative of 1993,” IEEE Computer, November, 1993. Back

[12] John Perry Barlow, “Private Life in Cyberspace,” Communications of the ACM, August, 1991. Back

[13] Mary Gooderham, “Farewell to the Private Life,” Globe and Mail, August 14, 1993. Back

[14] Gary Stix, “Dr. Big Brother,” Scientific American, February, 1994. Back

[15] Anne Eisenberg, “Privacy and Data Collection on the Net,” Scientific American, March, 1996. Back

[16] Chris O’Malley, “Snoops Welcome to a Small Town Called the Internet Where Everyone Knows Your Business.” Popular Science, January, 1997. Back

[17] S. E. Goodman, “Political Activity and International Computer Networks,” Communications of the ACM, February, 1992. Back

[18] James Martin, The Wired Society (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978), p. 246. Back

[19] E. V. Clemans, Using Computers in Religious Education (Nashville: Griggs Educational Resource, Abingdon Press, 1986) p. 21. Back

[20] John Perry Barlow, “The Great Work,” Communications of the ACM, January, 1992. Back

[21] Steve Usdin, “Soviet Systems: Much Need, But Few Rubles,” Datamation, April 1, 1991. Back

[22] Gerald F. Seib, “Computer Networks Take a Right Turn,” Globe and Mail, March 21, 1994. Back

[23] Bill Frezza, “The Internet: Killer Virus of the State,” Interactive Age, June 5, 1995. Back

[24] Lyon, op. cit., p. 66. Back

[25] Godfrey and Parkhill (eds.), op. cit., p. 92. Back

[26] Ibid. Back

[27] Ibid., pp. 92, 102. Back

[28] Barbara Simons, “Questions About the NII,” Communications of the ACM, July, 1994. Back

[29] Jeff Johnson, “Viewpoint: the Information Superhighway: A Worst-Case Scenario,” Communications of the ACM, February, 1996. Back

[30] Fred W. Weingarten, “Public Interest and the NII,” Communications of the ACM, March, 1994. Back

[31] Gary Stix, “Domesticating Cyberspace,” Scientific American, August, 1993. Back

[32] Lyon, op. cit., p. 101. Back

[33] Chris O’Malley, “Millions of Workers are Homeward Bound,” Popular Science, February, 1994. Back

[34] “USA Snapshots: Home Work Catches On,” USA Today, February 9, 1994. Back

[35] Russell M. Dilday Jr., Personal Computer: a New Tool for Ministers (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1985), p. 156. Back

[36] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), p. 267. Back

[37] Peter G. Horsfield, Religious Television: The American Experience (New York: Longman, 1984), pp. 146-147. Back

[38] George H. Hill, Airways to the Soul: The Influence and Growth of Religious Broadcasting in America (Saratoga: R & E Publishers, 1983), pp. ix-x. Back

[39] Ken Sidey, “Addicted to Broadcasting,” Christianity Today, February 10, 1992. Back

[40] Nathan O. Hatch and Michael S. Hamilton, “Can Evangelicalism Survive its Success?” Christianity Today, October 5, 1992, p. 28. Back

[41] John. W. Bachman, Media — Wasteland or Wonderland: Opportunities and Dangers for Christians in the Electronic Age (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1984), p. 14. Back

[42] Ibid., p. 29. Back

[43] McKendree Langly, “Televangelism’s Crisis, Public Witness’s Future,” Eternity, June, 1987. Back

[44] Razelle Frankl, Televangelism: The Marketing of Popular Religion (Cabondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), p. 151. Back

[45] Horsfield, op. cit., p. 101. Back

[46] “North American Scene: People and Events, Briefly Noted — Declining,” Christianity Today, March 3, 1987. Back

[47] Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), p. 67. Back

[48] Godfrey and Parkhill (eds.), op. cit., p. 28. Back

[49] Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), p. 142. Back

[50] Tom Sine, “Shifting into the Future Tense: Churches in the Information Age have Tremendous Resources to Plan for the Coming Decade,” Christianity Today, November 17, 1989. Back

[51] McLuhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, op. cit., p. 76. Back

[52] Hiroshi Inose and John R. Pierce, Information Technology and Civilization (New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1984), p. xix. Back

[53] Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in The United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), p. 227. Back

[54] Ibid. Back

[55] Judith A. Perrolle, Computers and Social Change: Information, Property, and Power (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1987). Back

[56] Michael Heim, Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). Back

[57] Lyon, op. cit., pp. 56-57. Back