This thesis looks at
how Protestant evangelicals are using adaptive strategies in the creation of
websites to reach a new global audience of non-Christians. These adaptive
strategies involve combining the traditional language of Christian conversion
with the visual content and design components of secular websites in order to
form a new type of evangelistic site with increased mainstream appeal. This
development calls attention to evangelicals’ traditional involvement in mass
media and the on-going process of evangelicals redefining their public identity
through the media. The Internet is becoming increasingly important to
evangelical organisations, and evangelicals have been increasing their online
presence steadily over the last five years. Looking critically at adaptive
evangelistic websites provides insight into the emerging ‘new face’ of
Protestant evangelism in all of its media incarnations, and the forces driving
the reconstruction of its public identity.
I first encountered the idea of adaptive evangelistic websites on the Internet itself, while looking for information about evangelistic efforts in North and Central America early in the summer of 1999. While surfing a resource website for missionaries, Brigada.org, I came across an internally linked site called the Web Evangelism Guide. The Guide, written by Tony Whittaker of the evangelistic publishing house SOON Gospel Literature, offers instructional advice for Christians who feel called to share their faith through the Internet. Through the Guide, Whittaker imparts his knowledge of the publishing industry and the Internet-using public’s preferences to help potential web evangelists create websites that are readable and accessible for non-Christians. While looking through a page on recommended evangelistic websites, it struck me that most of the websites that Whittaker seemed particularly enthusiastic about were at odds with the conventional image of evangelicals – they were circumspect in their presentation of the Gospel, politically moderate, entertaining, imaginative and strikingly secular in theme. These websites were definitively evangelistic, yet appealed to ‘general interest’ by allowing the concerns and personal interests of their designers to act as the public face of the evangelistic effort. The sites used modified evangelistic techniques, like testimonials and biblical reference, combined with informal language and the visual and thematic styles of different kinds of secular sites to attract non-Christians. This approach intrigued me, as the sites seemed to be at once radical innovations and careful reconstructions of recent popular portrayals of Christianity and evangelism. I subscribed to Whittaker’s monthly newsletter, the Web evangelism Bulletin, and through it found a multitude of resources for the aspiring web evangelist. Through these resources, I eventually located about thirty-five evangelistic websites that used the adaptive strategies first encountered in the Guide. Five of these sites are discussed in detail in this thesis.
These five websites are all
of North American origin, and the products of web evangelists linked into a
loosely defined network of evangelists from the US, the UK, Canada and
Australia. Harding (2000: xvi) gives two definitions of “evangelical”. The
first refers generally to Protestants who spread the Gospel of Christ, who may
or may not be Bible-believing (literalist) or anti-modern fundamentalists. The
second definition refers to a Protestant subset or denomination that formed a
conscious fellowship in opposition to anti-modern fundamentalists in the 1940s.
All of the evangelists in this study are evangelical in the first sense of the
word. They are all Bible-believing, but they are definitely NOT anti-modern.
The designer of one of the websites, David Bruce of Hollywood Jesus, is
an Evangelical in the second sense – he is the pastor of an Evangelical Church
in California. But in general all of the websites in this study are designed to
be ecumenical, regardless of their producer’s affiliations.
The term ‘Internet
evangelism’ or ‘Web evangelism’ can refer to using the Internet in any way to
spread the Christian Gospel: through websites, chat rooms, posting boards, news
groups and via e-mail. Methods of sharing the Gospel online may incorporate any
of the approaches used in interpersonal or church-based evangelism, including:
proclamational evangelism, which is straight preaching and discussion of
biblical text, specifically the four Gospels of the New Testament;
confrontational or intrusional evangelism, which requires going on ‘sorties’
into enemy territory and aggressively preaching the gospel; and relational or
‘friendship’ evangelism, where the gospel is shared in a non-confrontational
style through the dynamics of a personal relationship (Careaga 1999: 33). The
confrontational style of evangelism is typically used in chat rooms, posting
boards or through e-mail correspondence. Evangelistic websites more often tend
to be proclamational or relational.
Many different kinds of websites might be called evangelistic, if ‘evangelistic websites’ are simply considered to be sites that are the product of evangelicals. However, a distinction can be made between evangelistic websites, which intend to communicate the Gospel to a non-Christian audience, and resource sites for evangelicals. Resource sites are created by evangelicals and missionaries in order “to better equip Christians to preach the Gospel”(Whittaker, personal communication 17/05/00). Such sites, like the Southern Baptist International Missions Board’s imb.org, Campus Crusade’s ccci.org, or the aforementioned Brigada.org, compile up-to-date information about the technical, practical side of evangelistic and missionary efforts, as well as presenting information about various world-wide evangelistic efforts. Many websites developed by evangelical Christians are overtly proclamational. Sites of this sort, like e-church online or International Christian Network Cyberspace (http://www.icnc.org/), would seem to work best in creating fellowship among those who are already Christian, although they may also attract non-Christians looking for a sense of community and religious belief. There are also proclamational sites like Four Spiritual Laws (http://www.ccci.org/laws/) or Why Christ (http://www.whychrist.com), that clearly target non-Christians and act as sources of information or reference for the non-Christian. These sites present non-confrontational witnessing in a traditional way, explicitly defining their agenda and Christian belief for the openly seeking non-Christian. This sort of site is perhaps the most typical example of the general public’s expectations of an evangelistic website. What most web evangelists mean by an ‘effective’ evangelistic website is that it targets non-Christians, and that it uses a variety of strategies to connect with non-Christians. According to Whittaker, evangelistic websites may consist of straight presentation of belief through Bible discussion or witnessing; apologetics dialogue such as Answering Islam (http://www.answering-islam.org/); or through “general interest” pages. It is general interest pages that are the subject of this analysis, because the content of “general interest” pages is almost always nominally secular. To be successful general interest pages, evangelistic websites need to adapt to the norms of other websites that deal with similar subject matter. These adaptive sites do this by combining traditional and innovative conversion tactics, blending traditional linguistic strategies with innovative presentation. This does not lead to evangelistic websites copying secular sites; rather, it leads to the development of a new kind of evangelistic site altogether, an amalgam of language and symbol that allows evangelism to blend in with the dominant secular discourse of the Internet.
One of the largest concerns in choosing an analytic approach for this study was finding one that would allow for limitations in time, monetary expenditure and access to the field, while still providing an anthropological assessment which could be used as the foundation for a larger study in the future. I wanted to use an approach that would showcase the ‘revolutionary’ aspects of Internet use that also considered how evangelicals use of the Internet incorporates a historically-acquired sense of enacted evangelical identity. Although academic analysis of the Internet and related technologies is a relatively new development (since the mid 1990s), it is rapidly expanding; websites, chat forums, e-mail correspondence and the Internet as a holistic entity have been the subjects of various forms of analysis in the social sciences. The Internet and related features have at different times been referred to as a tool and a context (Basu 1999); an artefact and symbol of identity (Miller 2000, Hine 1999); an information superhighway, marketplace and town square (Careaga 1999); and as “an integrative tool in the advance of informational capitalism and as a historically new form of social interaction, social control and social change” (Castells 1996:18). Each of these descriptions is valid for defining ways in which the Internet is used at different times and in different contexts. From a real-life, localized perspective, the Internet is a powerful tool or resource to aid in the transfer of information. From a global perspective it is the virtual home of trans-national social groups and communities.
Looking at websites suited the my initial level of access to ‘high tech’ evangelical communities. Although at first I had no contacts within the community of web evangelists, I had unlimited access to websites as a web surfer. A more intimate acquaintance with the online community of evangelists would perhaps have allowed me to look closely at chat-evangelism[1], but such an approach would have required more time to forge relationships in the online ‘field’, and it would have left out many of the innovatory tactics that that I found so impressive in the websites described by Whittaker. Another difficulty with looking at chat-evangelism is that without inside information it is difficult to tell which chat room the evangelists will strike next. Looking at the adaptive strategies of evangelistic websites provides a more stable record of evangelistic activity. The layout and design of adaptive evangelistic websites emphasises the novel approaches being developed among evangelicals for use on the Net, while providing clear links to the history and tradition of evangelistic practice. For this reason, my primary focus has been on the production and intent behind the creation of adaptive evangelistic websites, and how their strategies allow them to perform two or more ‘authentic’ identities.
I chose to incorporate two theoretical approaches in my analysis of the
websites: an investigation of their production and visual elements from a material
culture perspective, combined with a linguistic analysis of the textual
elements of the sites. There are several reasons why I have chosen to use a
material culture approach, which draws on Miller’s (2000) work on Trinidadian
websites as Gellian ‘traps’ and Harding’s (2000) analysis of the language of
fundamentalist belief. Websites are ideally suited to a material culture
analysis. They meet Morphy’s definition of the ‘art object’ (1994: 655) - they
have “semantic and/or aesthetic properties that are used for presentational or
representational purposes”. They conform to Gell’s (1998) notion of
‘distributed personhood’, by embodying the trappings of certain identities and
broadcasting this image on the Net. Websites are also undoubtedly social agents
in both of the senses defined by Gell: depending on the view of the Internet to
which one ascribes, websites can be viewed as either ‘primary’ agents,
“intentional beings who are categorically distinguished from ‘mere’ things or
artefacts”, or ‘secondary’ agents, “which are artefacts, dolls, cars, works of
art, etc. through which primary agents distribute their agency in the causal
milieu” (1998: 20). If the Internet is being looked at as a community, then
websites would be best described as primary agents; if looking at the Internet
as a resource, the same sites would necessarily become secondary agents. This
study attempts endow websites with properties of primary and secondary agents,
by placing websites in a pivotal position that spans both the virtual and real
worlds. Evangelistic websites are described as constructed vehicles (‘secondary
agents’), through which real-life evangelical groups and individuals may engage
with secular virtual communities; at the same time, they constitute the
individual or group identity (‘primary agents’) that entitles the producers to
membership in a virtual community. Links in a website can be used to establish
meaning as well as relationship, and are an important means by which identity
is authenticated.
By placing websites in a transitional position between the virtual and real worlds, and looking critically at how meaning, structure and identity are expressed through them, they can be identified as supportive structures for any of the imagined roles of the Net. If one is looking at the Internet as a community, or a context for social interaction, then it is important to deconstruct the way in which websites embody the individuals that compose a virtual social group. If one is looking at the Internet as a resource, then it is equally crucial to examine how websites function as a tool, capable of effecting social change, or as the access point for the ‘information superhighway’. The key element to remember in any examination of websites is this fluidity of meaning – that a single website, designed in the real world to act as an agent in the virtual world, can be understood as a tool or a context, a superhighway, marketplace, a town square, or as a new form of social control and social change. Looked at in this way, the visual and linguistic ‘materiality’ of a website becomes a building block in all other analyses of the Internet and its roles.
A linguistic analysis of the textual content of websites is particularly necessary in studies of evangelical culture, as so much of fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant Christianity is stripped of non-linguistic forms of communication (Harding 2000: 37). Language is the power base of evangelicals; their linguistic strategies are deeply held and often the subject of discussion. The novel use of traditional linguistic conversion strategies is one of the aspects of adaptive evangelistic websites that make them so compelling, and so clearly historically rooted in an evangelical tradition. Yet, although the use of language in this context is innovative, the willingness to take such a risk, and to redefine their identity through interaction with the larger world is not new. There is ample historical precedent for evangelicals’ willingness to bring their message to the public in any way that is considered effective and practicable. The mixture of evangelical language with secular symbolism and design has resulted in a new, hybrid style of language, imbedded in a shifting visual (and sometimes audio) surrounding. The language and presentational styles together constitute the “aesthetic trap” described first by Gell, then by Miller. I have denoted the inseparability of both language and symbol in websites by the term representational register. Like a linguistic register (Macaulay 1994: 217), representational registers are varieties of language and symbol used in tandem (rather than varieties of language alone) in connection with a particular activity or body of knowledge. The newly created representational registers of adaptive evangelistic websites impart both feasibility and purpose to their status as “aesthetic traps” – the content is designed first to attract non-Christians, then to either integrate them into the Christian community (allowing dual membership in the secular and Christian communities) transform them from members of the secular community into Christians. The element of conscious purpose behind the ‘trap’ differentiates it somewhat from Miller’s use of the term, in which simply the act of catching the web surfer, and impressing the site upon him or her, is reason enough to set the trap.
This study provides a point of entry into the larger discussions
surrounding Internet use and religious organizations, which could not be
properly addressed here because of restrictions in length. The research that
was conducted over the last year has been limited to virtual field work, with
the intent and strategies of the producer as its primary concern. However, it
is my intention to use this small study to inform a larger, more integrative
study in the future. This will be done by trying to address the many questions
that this study raises: Do the changes in evangelical approach that we see in
websites carry over into the daily political and social life of evangelicals?
How effective are Internet evangelism efforts? How have evangelical Christians
who are not ‘online’ responded to the idea of an ‘electronic church’ convened
over the Internet? How has the introduction of Internet technology caused a
re-evaluation of the notions of ‘global’ and ‘local’ among place-based
evangelistic organisations? Have evangelists benefited from this alliance with
technology, or has some unique aspect of evangelism been lost in establishing
this network connection? Answering these, and similar, questions will require
an extended stay in the field with the producers of evangelistic websites,
learning about what Harvey (1999) described as “the real-life social networks
that enable and support virtual ones” .
Anthropologists and evangelists are facing similar questions about the
place-based nature of their work; both are questioning to what extent where
they conduct their work affects how they conduct it. Both also address
the question of whether or not online community can truly exist as something
independent of the real-life of web surfers. Evangelists as a community have
emphasised the need for making online life contiguous with off-line life,
seeming to imply that although the Net can sustain community life, it must
always be rooted in the ‘real’ to have meaning and validity. Anthropologists
and other social scientists seem less certain; there is still confusion about
whether or not there is such a thing as a true “virtual ethnography” (Hine
1999), and how useful such a thing would be if there were. Although the debate
as to whether or not the Internet constitutes a ‘real’ community is still being
publicly[2],
and academically (Harvey 1999) waged, there remains little doubt that social
groups can and do exist on the Internet, and that many participants in these
social groups consider their groups to be communities in the fullest sense of
the term. It can therefore be said that the Internet exists as a social context
in which people can enact a sense of community. This perception can be easily
supported by a range of sociological and anthropological definitions of what
constitutes a society or a community. From a Durkheimian perspective,
participants in online social networks can be said to engage in a world of
pre-existing social facts – there are shared linguistic norms, methods of
expressing emotion, behavioural expectations. Transgressions of the norms of
these online social networks are met by sanctions, usually exclusion of the
surfer (or his or her username) from the network (MacKinnon 1997), but
increasingly with legal action[3].
The Net not only alters real-life institutions, it also offers its own online
versions of many of them. But can these developments be separated from the
institutions and values of the ‘real-world’? Evangelists are of the opinion
that they cannot, and anthropologists may yet agree. Performing location-based
field research in tandem with virtual field research would help to develop an
anthropological response to a contentious question that may be with us for
years to come.
In this study
As noted above, this study is concerned with looking at adaptive
evangelistic websites as they enact certain identities in an effort to create
“traps” for non-Christian web surfers. This will be done first by establishing
a historical context for evangelistic use of mass media, and the use of
adaptive strategies. Then the production of websites as ‘aesthetic traps’ is
discussed. Both the language of evangelistic belief and the visual systems of
representation in secular websites are looked at as they combine to form the
new representational registers of evangelism, through which identity and
membership in various communities are enacted. Finally, in the analysis of the
sites themselves, evangelicals’ consciousness of their own historical position
and assessment of current consumer trends is discussed as this knowledge
relates to the creation of adaptive websites. This historical consciousness
permits evangelicals to redefine their approach and, through it, their popular
image. They are able to present adaptive approaches as part of an ‘alternative’
discourse on the Internet, and use adaptive sites as integrative spaces
or transformational gateways in which evangelical identity is redefined,
and the identities of web surfers are engaged and challenged.
[1] Perhaps through a chat-evangelism group like STRIKE (Starting Technology-based Relationships Introducing Christianity Everywhere) run by Andrew Hogue and other students at North Central Texas College (from an article by Andrew Careaga in www.gospelcom.net/ccmag/online/evangelism1.html 07/04/00)
[2] see the Guardian 11/03/00 debate between John L. Locke, a research fellow at Cambridge and Eva Pascoe, founder of Cyberia Internet Cafés, “Can a sense of Community flourish in Cyberspace?” for one recent example.
[3] ‘Who owns the knowledge economy’, The Economist 08/04/00, ‘Poles against pornography’, The Economist 25/03/00