What is the impact of the Episcopal Church’s digital outreach?

Sunday morning in her sermon about the craziness of Jesus and his followers, Beth [Scriven], alluded to an address by the Rev. Michael Curry at the national convention as “going viral.” This transformation of an ecclesiastical address to a viral YouTube file was monumental, Beth said, suggesting that Episcopalians are not intently followed in social media.

Why is this? Is the church that boring or irrelevant that it attracts no interest in the most sensitive of channels that can amplify an offhand remark by a public figure and reverberate it around the globe in a matter of minutes? Why are the considered remarks of Episcopalians grounded in the Twitter-verse before they can fly?

For one, Episcopalians are not power brokers in the secular sense of the expression, so our words would not cause ripples, no matter how inspired. We may not affect the outcome of elections, ball games or the stock market, and that probably dampens the effect we might hope for. But Jesus was not a power broker. Wouldn’t his words reverberate in social media?

Jesus’s reputation surged up Galilee and down through Judea, and crowds swarmed in anticipation of his arrival. Was it something about his brilliant command of the law or his charisma challenging the local authorities? Why was Jesus’s message viral in a word-of-mouth sort of way?

Another reason for obscurity on the net: Episcopalians are not intent on making the biggest noise possible, being heard for the sake of being heard. We are not keeping up with the Kardashians or creating a buzz for a product line. We are not pitching the Gospel. Still, Jesus showed no desire for sensation. Indeed he often told those he healed not to spread the word about his miracles. They re-posted his words in spite of him.

So why is our digital voice muted, when the voice of Jesus was echoing in the Temple and in the governors’ palaces? Are we technologically inept? Are we unplugged in the media? Not at all. The church can be found wherever wireless is radiating. What are we missing then?

Beth also preached about the “good” kind of crazy that shakes Christians out of complacency, along with the tolerance for disagreement that allows us to speak our minds. I wondered if Episcopalians have become too down-the-center to disagree or too wary of conflict to trouble the waters of discussion. I say this with the trepidation of one who always tries to reconcile disagreement and runs from conflict. I worry about division and broken relationships more than the average Christian, having run out on a suffocating cultish experience in mid-life. I am not a risk-taker in most areas of my life, and I recoil at being called “crazy.” Taking crazy pills is not high on my agenda.

Yet I wonder if it is my craving security that dampens the Gospel as Jesus preached it. It muffles the truth, the truth that would cut through diluted common sense, acceptable rationalism, or ultra-moderation. It holds back the protests I might have raised, if I weren’t calculating how many friends they could lose me. It filters my suspicions and doubt, the haunting questions I might have raised but for fear of mockery. No one can question my fidelity, my critical awareness, my fairness, because I walk the “via media.”

The “via media” is one of the best things Episcopal. We are not power-brokers or peddlers of hype, but “people of the way” trying to live what we say and give the Spirit rein in our actions. I affirm this via, but when I consider the digital world, I feel very moderate and tame. I lack the urgency and passion I hear in everything Jesus said. Am I holding back the objections, the questions, the outrage and taking cover in the “via media” for my lack of courage?

Digital media carry a cacophony of voices, but without the piercing impact of the words of eternal life. Am I contributing to the cacophony or bearing witness to the truth? I can adopt every new digital medium, but if my message is muffled or homogenized it can’t compete with this din. Is this just the way of the world or has the world had its way with me? Have I diluted the “craziness” of the Gospel, because I want to be considered sane?

The message and medium are all there, but my digital impress on the earth lacks the conviction that borders on crazy. It was this kind of crazy that made Jesus a viral presence in a low-tech millenium. And this kind of crazy that could be the difference between murmuring on the internet and raising the voices of apostles and prophets.