Facebook offers many a spiritual experience
Cathleen Falsani/Religion News Service
Issue date: 6/15/08 Section: Divine Intervention
What began with simple curiosity has, in a few short weeks, become something deeply meaningful. And it all happened on Facebook.com.
Like many folks who skew more toward Generation X than Generation Z, I started my foray on Facebook.com as an exercise in ennui-abatement. I went looking for college and high school friends, more to see how many kids they had and whether they'd lost their hair than any higher purpose.
My best friend in St. Louis was on there, and through her I found a few more friends, and so on until I (somehow) amassed upwards of 500 "friends" on Facebook, including some people I actually know, or at least knew once upon a time.
It was fun to log on and see who popped up. But it remained little more than a curiosity slake and time waster until one of our friends died suddenly last month. Most of us learned of his death on Facebook, and we started to mourn together - online.
More old friends joined and reconnected as we worked our way through the early stages of our grief. Our Facebook exchanges ranged from silly reminiscence to soul-wrenching questions about why and what it all means.
It's been six weeks since our friend was killed, and we're still talking, digging deeper together in wide-ranging conversations that cover faith, doubt, division, denominationalism, law vs. grace, Roman Catholicism and Reformation, social contracts and divine covenants. All of it transpiring on Facebook.
We're having the kinds of conversations we used to have when we all lived near each another on campus. Except now we're in California and Hawaii, Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi, Brooklyn and London, Sweden and the suburbs of Chicago.
Some of us, I would dare to say, have even begun to rediscover (or exhume) our faith. On Facebook.
For me, it's become what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his book "The Great, Good Place," described as a "third place." Most people have two primary places - home and the workplace - and then there is a third place where they feel anchored and part of a chosen community. It might be a bar (think "Cheers") or a house of worship or a bowling alley. Everyone, Oldenburg argues, needs a third place.
Like many folks who skew more toward Generation X than Generation Z, I started my foray on Facebook.com as an exercise in ennui-abatement. I went looking for college and high school friends, more to see how many kids they had and whether they'd lost their hair than any higher purpose.
My best friend in St. Louis was on there, and through her I found a few more friends, and so on until I (somehow) amassed upwards of 500 "friends" on Facebook, including some people I actually know, or at least knew once upon a time.
It was fun to log on and see who popped up. But it remained little more than a curiosity slake and time waster until one of our friends died suddenly last month. Most of us learned of his death on Facebook, and we started to mourn together - online.
More old friends joined and reconnected as we worked our way through the early stages of our grief. Our Facebook exchanges ranged from silly reminiscence to soul-wrenching questions about why and what it all means.
It's been six weeks since our friend was killed, and we're still talking, digging deeper together in wide-ranging conversations that cover faith, doubt, division, denominationalism, law vs. grace, Roman Catholicism and Reformation, social contracts and divine covenants. All of it transpiring on Facebook.
We're having the kinds of conversations we used to have when we all lived near each another on campus. Except now we're in California and Hawaii, Copenhagen and Abu Dhabi, Brooklyn and London, Sweden and the suburbs of Chicago.
Some of us, I would dare to say, have even begun to rediscover (or exhume) our faith. On Facebook.
For me, it's become what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his book "The Great, Good Place," described as a "third place." Most people have two primary places - home and the workplace - and then there is a third place where they feel anchored and part of a chosen community. It might be a bar (think "Cheers") or a house of worship or a bowling alley. Everyone, Oldenburg argues, needs a third place.
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