Quoted in the L.A. Times A quip I made to L.A. Times reporter Stephanie Simon about how embracing technology can be like a dance with the devil made it into her report on the growth of "digitized spirituality," published in Tuesday's edition of the Times.
I was one of the "experts" she quoted for the article, which focused more on cell phone tech than the Internet. I was right there, rubbing elbows with George Barna and the pastor of the Indiana church that did that clever My Lame Sex Life website. My blip of fame -- which shall live on in cyberspace, thanks to the good folks at Church Marketing Sucks, who commented on the Times piece -- could be construed as being a bit luddite-ish or anti-tech. Nevertheless, I stand by what I said. Here's the salient portion, taken out of context.
Andrew Careaga, a youth pastor in Salem, Mo., welcomes some of these advances. Yet he worries that when spirituality migrates to cellphones, it becomes just another item to check off the to-do list — "a five-second spiritual fix, you've seen the verse of the day and you're done."
"Technology always seems to be a Faustian bargain. It encroaches on our ability to unconnect with the world and connect with God," said Careaga, the author of "e-Ministry: Connecting with the Net Generation."
I said a lot more than that, of course. I went on about the benefits of the Internet in terms of forming community. But Ms. Simon seemed to like that "Faustian bargain" bit. Full disclosure: I stole that idea from Neil Postman, who used the term in his wonderful 1990 speech Informing Ourselves to Death, and I mentioned Mr. Postman's work to Ms. Simon.
Ms. Simon does a nice job presenting the issues pertaining to digital spirituality.