We all know about the widespread appeal of twitter, facebook, blogs and wikis that invite people to re-connect to each other and their topics of interest. Beyond this superficial social networking, political possibilities arise. When people become outraged by the activities of their countries they take to the street, alerting each other via txt messaging. Violence erupts when armies and police meet the protesters head on. Now, the images of innocent citizens as they are wounded or killed are broadcast via internet cafes through footage captured on mobile phones. The potential for these tools to be used for insurgency is evident.
What is less newsworthy is the way that people are coming together face-to-face to talk seriously and deeply about what they believe in. New media can be used at a grassroots level to incite or mobilise, and can also be used more benignly. For example, home meetings are increasingly the site for political and spiritual activity in countries as diverse as China and the United State.
Networked communication has created new opportunities for home meetings to get organised quickly and directly. Meetings can be announced electronically to reach connected subscribers, who can then continue the outreach by word of mouth. Hosting arrangements can change with little disruption.
Consider modern China, the antithesis of the US, where Christian fellowship is growing at an unparalleled rate. This despite the bureaucratic hurdles that are set impossibly high for the re-establishment of places of worship. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their recent book, God is Back, observe a growing movement that is outside government control. Chinese people who meet in unregistered assemblies are operating underground, beyond the reach of authorities. They are outsiders who gather in small self-managed groups in a house church, usually a family's living room. When the group becomes too large, and knowing the authoritarian reach of the bureaucracy, it simply forms a new house church in another home.
The Chinese Government is understandably twitchy about this turn of events because of the perceived threat it poses to patriotic socialism, even the capitalism-fuelled version of it. The rise in house meetings in China is all the more surprising because the right of free assembly is not guaranteed. Gathering in homes carries the stigma of conspiracy, even when no threat is intended. Given the documented reprisals against followers of Falung Gong in China, this blind eye towards Christian house churches is a curiosity definitely worth watching.
The apparent tolerance for religion represents a significant shift in a country renowned for demand for adherence to a single secular ideology. Now China is dealing with massive change, wrought by economic liberalisation. The grounds are shifting, a new dawn is heralded, the masses have a new opiate: hope. The meetings require no church building, no compulsory rituals, no hierarchy, no paid ministry, no institutional bondage. The house church begins like any small community gathering with introductions all round, followed by hymns and music downloaded from the Internet, then a deeply discursive period of bible study with a close examination of the text.
This growth in house churches is occurring at a time when attendance at traditional church services is declining in many countries alongside a steady growth in evangelical mega-churches. Any decline or expansion in the West is dwarfed by the overall growth of Christianity in China, with some estimating the flock to be in the 5-10 per cent range of population, or 65-130 million followers, who mostly meet in living rooms.
Meanwhile in the US where home bible study groups have existed since the Puritans settled there, another kind of house meeting has emerged. This could be described as a meeting of insiders, supported by the state. Inspired by the god-like and charismatic President Barack Obama, organisers and supporters have been convening house meetings to help to formulate public policies. US house meetings are not a time for prayer, but instead for deliberation. The Government sets the agenda and invites individuals to offer themselves as facilitators. Like the Chinese house churches these begin with introductions and downloaded materials. The facilitator has been issued with instructions about how to encourage group deliberation and consensus seeking and the group discussed the issues at hand (health, energy, etc) then develops recommendations. This has led to thousands of lively, analytical conversations across the land.
These American folks spend their time in living rooms just as the Chinese are doing, similarly occupied with their hopes and dreams and an appeal to a higher authority. Only the content of discussion differs. One is coordinated by the state, the other criticised by the state; one is above ground, the other deep down. One is political, the other religious. Insiders and outsiders are employing similar tactics, using common tools.
Social media can lead to a flood of words dashing selfishly across the ether. Opinions are not so much shared, just issued without the time for considered judgement or public reasoning. In its most superficial forms it lacks movement toward collective considerations. But social media can call people to action, not just to large-scale protest, but to small-scale gatherings where those deliberations can occur. Together, the living room and social media can be a force to be reckoned with.
Social media has connected living rooms to the public discourse. The home is the most comfortable site to conduct in-depth discussions about things that matter, by people with common interests hailed with the help of technology. (These activities contrast sharply with the town meetings that have been exploited by opponents of health care reform in the US.) Whether in China or the US, a new force for change is emerging that is finding expression through social media and the living room, which has the potential to capitalise on the constructive energy they unleash.
Associate Professor Lyn Carson is academic program director with the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
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