Julie Clawson - onehandclapping

Walking the Justice Walk

Posted on January 24, 2010July 11, 2025

I had an interesting conversation while I was at Urbana with a man who works on a university campus with InterVarsity. I had told him that my seminars were on social justice issues, and he commented that he hears more and more about students saying they care for the poor and the oppressed, but that he rarely sees them actually doing anything about it. When he challenges them on this, most on them reply that while they know they should be caring about these issues they have no idea how to put it into action. It isn’t that they are too lazy to make an effort, they honestly don’t know where to even begin. We went on to discuss how even great events like Urbana feed that dichotomy, educating people to talk the talk but not always resourcing them to walk the walk.

For example, in the large sessions I attended at Urbana, I heard a lot about the pain in the world. I saw that there were starving and hurting people. I was also told that I am self-centered for Facebooking and Twittering. I heard the stories of immigrants who have nothing and are desperately trying to survive. I was shown the magnitude of my consumption habits. And Shane Claiborne even told me how evil it is to live in empire that hurts instead of helps the world. I got the message. I felt guilty. I understood that I should care for others. But nowhere did I hear what I should be doing instead. I heard loud and clear what is wrong with the world, but nothing about what I need to do to make it right.

And these are the sorts of messages that students and churches are hearing over and over these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m overjoyed that message is getting out. We have to be confronted with the pain in the world and the truth about how our political and economic choices are contributing to it. The church has been silent for far too long about how to truly love our neighbor and care for the oppressed. But unless we are resourcing people at the same time with tangible ways they can be making a difference today, all we are selling is hollow idealism.

I had that conversation at Urbana, then I got on the plane to come home. On the plane next to me was one of the lead builders of the Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico. The Earthships are fascinating (and well worth the visit if you are ever in the area) – they are basically homes that are built from recycled materials and dirt and made to be off-the-grid and sustainable. They use the sun and wind and earth to heat and cool the home. All water is collected from the rain and used 4-5 times. They leave a light footprint on this earth. Well, this guy spent most of the plane ride talking about ways to make sustainable living a practical reality for every person in the world. He understands that the Earthships are a tad out there for the average person, but he was full of forward-thinking ideas as to how to make sustainable living doable for everyone. As he was talking, I realized that this was what was missing at Urbana and in most Christians discussions about justice. We focus so much on the negatives that we fail to actually make a positive difference. We need to be just as creatively full of ideas as this Earthship guy. If we want to make a difference we need to be out there resourcing any and everyone with doable everyday ways of how we can be loving and serving others.

I know a lot of people who live/write/talk about justice issues are often wary of suggesting practical steps for others to follow. I understand they don’t want to create a new legalism or limit the ways people can love others. But people are desperate for guidance. They want to do something but have no idea where to begin. Or they think they have to wait until they have enough time or resources to start. And then they end up getting mocked or condemned for talking about justice but not actually living it out. But what if we changed that? What if we stopped being afraid of telling people what they should do and just do it already? Not in a domineering or legalistic way, but as friends sharing resources – equipping each other to serve. If I can see examples of how others like me are serving others, I can have a better idea of what I can be doing as well. This isn’t hopeless, we don’t have to get bogged down with guilt or doom and gloom scenarios, we just need to be more like the hippie guy living in a mud hut in the New Mexican desert and just figure out the creative yet practical ways to start living differently today.

Ask Why

Posted on January 17, 2010July 11, 2025

I fully admit that people like Pat Robertson, Danny Glover, and Rachel Maddow need to shut up from time to time. Telling us why this disaster came upon Haiti reveals far more of their own issues than any real truth, and they could be doing a lot more good if they would just keep their mouth shut. Finding someone to blame will not make the disaster go away even if it makes us feel slightly better about ourselves. Pointing our finger a the people we hate and saying this is their fault does nothing to help the people of Haiti.

But blaming others and being responsible are not the same thing.

I was a bit unsettled recently when I read mega-pastor Erwin McManus’ tweet – “There are those certain they can tell us “why” this happened in Haiti when we should be asking “what” can we do to help the people of Haiti.” I agree, we must be asking what we can do to help others. And explaining away the whys by pointing fingers is just a futile exercise. But in order to know what really needs to be done, some of those why questions really needs to be asked. No, I’m not talking about those rhetorical “why did God allow this to happen?” questions, but more of the “why is Haiti in such dire straits because of this?” questions.

As a recent New York Times op-ed piece pointed out –

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story.

This didn’t have to be this bad. If Haiti wasn’t the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, if Haiti hadn’t been screwed over time after time, if we loved Haiti instead of oppressed it – this earthquake wouldn’t have destroyed the country. There are some hard why questions to be asked here. And if we shrink away from asking them, the what questions will fail to bring about real lasting healing.

Why have Haitian farmers been run out of business? Why is the Haitian soil stripped and the country plagued by mudslides? Why are Haitian girls sold into slavery? Why is 80% of the Haitian budget going to pay other countries? Why are the people there eating mud? Why is their government corrupt? Why are there hardly any jobs in Haiti? Why are there no supplies to build decent buildings? Why is it so hard for kids there to get education? Why are there no roads? And when we discover that the answers to many of those questions are unjust U.S. trade and military policies, it can be hard to swallow. We can brush it aside as just trying to pass blame and point fingers – and continue to give aid and remake the country in our image. Or we can own up to our collective sins and take responsibility for making amends.

If we don’t ask why, we allow ourselves to be ignorant. If we don’t know the history and culture of Haiti, we are doomed to just continue to make things worse. We have to ask why even when we don’t want to know the answer. We have to get over the blame game and just be responsible human beings. Ignorance is deadly. If we really want to know what we can do to help, we need to do more than emotionally donate a few bucks and start looking at what Haiti really needs (like debt relief, and better trade policies). But to do that we first have to face our fears and ask why.

Hope and Despair for Haiti

Posted on January 13, 2010July 11, 2025

It’s been a week of strange juxtapositions.

Apparently in the American church, a star football player can say how he played all his games for Jesus and people respond with “awww, what a nice Christian boy.” But say that you are working to put an end to human trafficking in the name of Jesus, and people wonder if you are really a Christian.

Then this morning I was at the gym watching the two TVs in front of me. On one was a story about a rich lady with a huge house who had started a rescue mission for disabled dogs. Each dog is given medical attention, a custom-made “wheelchair”, and lots of love and attention so they can live out their days as happy dogs. On the other TV were images from Haiti. A father carrying his young daughter whose face had been partly smashed-in. It sickened me to think that those dogs were getting far more spent on them and far better medical attention than that young girl ever would. Those dogs get to live as happy dogs, while that girl if she survives, will be deformed for life. With a facial deformity, she cannot get education or find a job. If she manages to not be trafficked into slavery as maid/sextoy in a wealthier house (Haiti being one of the worst offenders for child slavery), her only options will be to beg or prostitute herself in order to survive. She will become the “scum and riff-raff” that gets condemned for making poor countries the corrupt and sinful places many Western Christians see them as. We might pity her for the few seconds she is on CNN and maybe even send enough food to feed her for a few days, but we’d rather build retirement homes for dogs than do the radical work to change the system that oppresses her. What is our problem?

And then there are the true scum like Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson who have pulled their typical jackass moves in the aftermath of this tragedy. Pat in your twisted rewriting of history you display perfectly the juxtaposition between what Jesus actually said and what you want him to have said. You want to blame tragedy on personal sins. You take an old Haitian MYTH and read it as fact to support your cause. Sure, the Haitians in order to explain all the shit that has happened to them have a myth saying that when the Spanish came to Hispaniola (the small island shared between the Dominican Republic and Haiti) they surrendered Haiti to the devil in order to dedicate the Dominican Republic to God. Maybe it helps deal with the pain of being a slave nation, that once they threw off the chains of slavery had the US lead a worldwide trade boycott of them and France force them to pay them pack for loss of slave revenue, and then who struggled to survive under that debt, and then were occupied by the US military in 1915 who slaughtered thousands of peasants, stripped their forests of valuable wood, and left the country barren, and who had to deal with the IMF and World Bank funding dictators who destroyed their country and left them with debt that was only forgiven a couple of months ago, and then another US occupation in 1994, and then with trade stipulations and tariff-free US goods that have destroyed their local economy. I would try to create a myth to explain away all that oppression too. But to twist it and say the Haitians deliberately sold themselves to Satan and are now being punished for their own sins (like emancipating themselves from slavery), just shows how out of touch you are with not only reality but with Jesus. When asked whose sin made a man blind, Jesus replied that no one had sinned but that this was a chance for him to be light to the world – to restore sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free. So get your history straight, or at least get Jesus straight and use this opportunity to be a light to the world instead of another harbinger of darkness.

But then I see the wonderful outpouring of aid to Haiti juxtaposed against the fact that most of it will never reach the actual people who need it most. The government in Haiti is so corrupt that most aid that is sent to the country gets funneled into special-interests groups. The privileged just keep getting richer while the poor in Haiti are making mud cookies because they can’t afford food. So I want to just beg everyone to be careful where your money goes. Any relief that has to go through the Haitian government won’t reach the people. So support organizations that are on the ground with the people in Haiti. We’ve partnered with New Life for Haiti before – a group that works to build schools and clinics in the Marfranc region of Haiti. They are seeking aid now to help rebuild homes that collapsed in the earthquake. Bread for the World has also created a list of trusted agencies working to help the people of Haiti. The system needs to be fixed. We can’t put a bandaid on this wound and hopes it goes away. Unless we push for real change, more people will die, children will start being rounded-up and trafficked, starvation will slowly overtake the country, corporations will seize land from its rightful owners, and the 4,000 troops we are sending in will make Haiti a US occupied territory for the third time in a century. Haiti is the only country to successfully stage a slave-rebellion in the name of freedom. We need to help them be free – free from oppression, free from hunger, free from exploitation, and free from poverty.

My heart is breaking over Haiti. I see the state of Christianity in our country and I despair if with our shallow faith and judgmental hearts we can work for good in this world. But as messy and as hopeless as it all can seem, I realize I have no choice but to have hope.

What You Can Do To Fight Human Trafficking

Posted on January 11, 2010July 11, 2025

Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. There are some 27 million people held in slavery in our world today – many of them kidnapped and trafficked victims. Children stolen from their families to work in the cocoa fields. Young girls who know of no other life than give sex to men – girls as young as 5 or 6. Women promised a decent job who end up locked inside some rich persons house without papers forced to clean, cook, and provide sex for the husband. People are used, people are treated as objects to make our life easier or more pleasurable. We all participate in the system. Even if we don’t pay for sex – our cheap produce was picked by slaves, our clothes were sewn by slaves, our dishes were washed by slaves. We are all funding systems of slavery and human trafficking. We are all pimps.

If that pisses you off – it should. Don’t roll your eyes, or say it’s preposterous. Get over yourself and deal with it. Truth is truth even if it hurts.

So be aware. Be responsible. And help put an end to oppression.

Here are just a few really basic ways to get started fighting human trafficking and modern day slavery.

Encourage lawmakers to stop punishing prostitutes and illegal immigrants. Most trafficked people in the US are afraid to speak up or escape because they fear the government – with good cause. They need to have the freedom to escape from bondage, and we need to be there to help restore them – not punish them.
Stop buying/downloading porn. Statistically a majority of the people who read this site do. Stop encouraging a system that objectifies women and feeds the idea that they can just be used for men’s pleasure.
Encourage feminism. Many of the girls sold into sex slavery are the unwanted girls of families in cultures that value males. Selling them is easier on the family than feeding an unwanted mouth. If women were seen as equals everywhere, less men would use them as mere objects.
Buy only fairly traded clothing and food. Slavery exists in sweatshops and farms. Recently the U.S. government has rounded up slaves in New York clothing factories, Florida tomato farms, and among Katrina clean up crews in New Orleans. Tell companies with your dollars that you only support practices where employees are treated and paid fairly – and allowed to be a free human being.
Support microloans and charity for education. Desperation and lack of education create the conditions for slavery to thrive. Those conditions must change if slavery is to end.

Or check out sites like What’s Your Response?, Or IJM, or Not for Sale, Or Stop the Traffick. Get informed and start working for change. The truth is if we aren’t doing crap about this – we are complicit in supporting slavery. Let’s follow Jesus and release the chains of oppression instead.

The Parable of the Good Princess

Posted on January 10, 2010July 11, 2025

My seminars at Urbana focused on the idea that mission isn’t something that we hope to do in the future, but that it has to be part of how we are living right now. Too often students believe that someday they will enter the missions field, and when (for whatever reason) that doesn’t end up happening, they give up on the idea of serving God. I knew I used to think that way and when missions agencies told us to “wait awhile then reapply,” that life option got pushed further and further away. It took a long period of transformation to realize I had it all wrong and that mission should simply be an integral part of my daily life. To set up that idea, I started my seminars by telling the following story, inspired by both Pete Rollins’ parables (but nowhere near as good) and my preschooler’s obsession with princesses. It’s a bit cheezy, and not exactly subtle, but it reflects a bit of my story at least.

The Parable of the Good Princess

There once was a beautiful Princess. All over the Kingdom the people proclaimed that never before had there ever been a sweeter child. Her smile warmed even the coldest hearts and her laughter had an infectious quality. Every day her mother and father, the king and queen, would instruct her on what the qualities of a good princess were. Soon she knew these qualities by heart. Good Princesses are kind – they always extend grace to the hurting. Good Princesses are strong –they lead the Kingdom into times of peace and plenty. Good Princesses are fair – directing their people with justice. And Good Princesses are courageous – they do not fear making the hard choices to protect the Kingdom.

And so our young princess grew up hearing these qualities repeated to her day after day and she dreamed of the day when she would live up to these hopes and dreams of her parents. She wanted nothing more than to become a good princess and would talk with whoever would listen about what she would do as a good princess. Her parents were proud of her ambition, and everyone commented that yes, she would be the best princess there ever was.

As the years went on, her desire to be a good princess stayed strong. Princes from neighboring Kingdoms would come to ask her hand in marriage, but she would politely turn them down, saying she was still preparing to be the best princess she could be. “Someday my prince will come,” she would laugh, “but first I must become a good princess.” They would smile and ride away, planning to return in a years time.

As she grew even older, the townspeople who she had charmed with her smiles and laughter remembered her commitment to be a kind and fair princess. They would travel from far away to bring their troubles to her, knowing that a good princess could help them. But as they told her of their plights, she would look at them sadly and apologize, saying, “I’m sorry, I would love to help you, but first I must become a good Princess since those are the sorts of things good Princesses do.” And the townspeople would walk away sad and a bit confused. Soon they stopped coming at all.

As her parents, the King and Queen grew old and infirm, more and more of the official decisions of the Kingdom were presented to the Princess to consider. What treaty to sign with a neighboring kingdom? Where to dig new wells or put in new dams? What merchants were permitted to sell their wares within the walls of the city? But with each decision, the Princess deferred her answer saying, “I wish I knew how to help you, I’m sure I will once I’m a good Princess, but for right now I can’t do anything for you.” And she would walk away repeating to herself the qualities of a good Princess – “good princesses are kind, they are strong, they are fair, they are courageous. Someday, I will be a good Princess.”

With the death of her parents, many expected her to live up to her lifelong training of being a good princess and bless the kingdom not just with her beauty and laughter, but with her leadership. But on the day of her coronation as Queen, she handed back the crown, saying only a good Princess can become a Queen, and she hoped that one day she would be honored and ready to be able to accept such a role.

Inevitably, the Kingdom started to unravel. Petty disputes became bloody conflicts. Crops dried up and food was scarce
because of lack of available water. Merchants took their goods into other Kingdoms. Raiding parties disregarded long ignored treaties as they encroached upon her borders. The poor starved without a kind hand extending them care. And what was once a Kingdom filled with joy, peace, and prosperity became a home of the desperate trying to simply make it through the day. But the Princess barely noticed so intent was she on becoming a good princess. Nor did she notice when the suitors stopped coming, or the treaties stopped being offered. She didn’t notice that her smile no longer warmed the hearts of her people or her laugh spread joy. She just wanted to be a good Princess.

It was as an old woman on her deathbed, that she finally looked at the small group of castle staff gathered around her that she broke down in tears. “All I wanted my whole life was just to be a good Princess,” she cried, “I knew I could be the best Princess there ever was, but now it’s too late, I will never be a good princess.” No one knew what to say to her, and just let her cry and then breathe her last breath. Upon her death, they all just sighed and quietly left the room wishing that she had actually been a good princess.

Emerging Church Death?

Posted on January 8, 2010July 11, 2025

So at the moment, I’m really not feeling the need to explain why the emerging church isn’t over just because a few more people want to take their ball and go play elsewhere. As my husband has pointed out, we’re not actually really going to let you guys leave anyway, but keep inviting ourselves to your parties and wanting to dialogue and learn from you.

That said (and I know I’m a few days behind here), Danielle Shroyer’s post What Do You Do When A Revolution Isn’t Sexy Anymore is a must read. She really captures the day to day work most of us are doing to help make following Jesus not just relevant and meaningful, but possible in today’s culture. Thank you Danielle.

Book Review: Manifold Witness

Posted on January 8, 2010July 11, 2025

So the awesome folks at Abingdon sent me a copy of John Franke’s new book Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth awhile back and while it’s taken me forever to get around to doing it, I wanted to post a few thoughts about the book. Like I mentioned in my year’s end list of all the books I’ve read this past year, Manifold Witness was one of the ones that I couldn’t help but mentally return to over and over again. Franke does a great job at getting his message across in an accessible way that I think will help define and clarify the conversation about the nature of truth.

While the topic of truth gets a lot of air-time these days, few actually take the time to define what they are talking about or move beyond critiquing the “other side.” Franke though stays true to an evangelical affirmation of truth while at the same time thoughtfully engaging with the reality of pluralism. His nuanced approach to the discussion doesn’t rubber-stamp any extreme, but admits the complexity associated with faith and truth. And for that, I found his work to be refreshing. He admits upfront that “the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist” (7). But this isn’t an in-your-face assertion that must be swallowed whole; it is instead the idea that the whole book seeks to unpack and explore. With a faithful commitment to scripture and a tender compassion for the reader, Franke demonstrates how pluralism is not something to be feared or fought but is instead simply a beautiful intrinsic aspect of not just our faith but all creation.

I appreciated how Franke in his discussion of truth quickly moved beyond the absolute and relative dichotomies. Neither accurately represents truth as the first tries to commoditize it for the sake of power and the second deny it in the name of tolerance. Pluralism and truth are far more complex than the extreme camps allow us to admit. Our world is diverse, as is our faith. And Franke rightly points out that culture and our faith is always changing, God never leaves us where we are at, but is constantly transforming us with the gospel. The constant renewing of our minds allows us to faithfully claim traditions in the church as well as celebrate the new things God is doing. The celebration of plurality affirms the “importance of multiple perspectives in the apprehension and communication of truth” (40). Just as The Father, Son, and Spirit are one even as they are different, the church can be one while living fully into our own diversity.

I also was grateful for Franke’s assertion that we can never let our particular cultural setting trump our commitment to truth. We are situated in culture, but when we start to assume that our cultural habits are the only way to present truth, we are in fact limiting God and truth. Scripture and God cannot be subject to cultural assumptions, but must be celebrated in their plurality. Similarly, we should remember that God doesn’t seek to assimilate the Other and make us all the same either. Franke brilliantly reminds us that we can be silencing God when we do not listen to voices that might not fit our accepted cultural theological norms. He writes, “theology is not a universal language. It is situated language that reflects the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of a particular people, a particular community” (94). If we are to affirm the plurality that God affirms, we must thoughtfully seek out the diversity of theological voices. This was a poignant wake-up call for me as I too often only listen to the voices of those similar to me. I need to be striving to affirm God by affirming the truth of the many legitimate inculturations of the faith.

Manifold Witness is accessible, but it is also challenging. Franke goes places that others have avoided – not for the sake of controversy, but out of a deep desire to be faithful. His commitment to loving and serving God is apparent on every page of this book making his exploration of the plural nature of truth a gift to the Christian community. I highly recommend this book not just for those caught up in the discussion of truth, but to all Christians eager to celebrate our expansive God in the full diversity of his church.

The Missional Church and Worship

Posted on January 6, 2010July 11, 2025

So while at Urbana, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on “The Missional Church and Worship.” I didn’t know much about it going into the discussion, and I quickly discovered that most of the participants were using the term “missional” simply to mean “people who boldly proclaim with words the name of Jesus.” I wasn’t surprised, but I tried to give my perspective on how being missional involves following Jesus in word and in deed.

In my introductory statements on how I see mission and worship as being one and the same, I brought up what the Bible says about justice and worship. In Isaiah 1 God says he hates our worship gatherings – finds them meaningless and detestable – if we are participating in injustices and not seeking justice for the oppressed. And in Isaiah 58 we are told that the sort of worship practices God desires are those that “loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free, and break every yoke. To share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood.” Worship has to be about serving God by serving others. Worship is mission which is seeking justice for the oppressed. The Bible is very clear about that and I think we have strayed far too far in the modern church from this biblical conception of worship. While most Christians might admit (hopefully) that worship isn’t just the singing of songs, I think very few realize that feeding the hungry is an act of worship and devotion to God. It is something the church must reclaim.

So I made my assertion that a missional church will be seeking justice as an act of worship and I got an interesting response from the audience in return. One man said that these days he sees certain students caring so much about serving others that they neglect the acts of piety like doing devotions and praying so we need to be careful about encouraging things like seeking justice. I actually didn’t get a chance to respond to the statement as one of the other panel members jumped in and claimed that practices of piety should always be at the center of our worshiping practices. My first thought though was, “did this guy miss the part in the Bible where God says he DESPISES our acts of piety if we are not seeking justice at the same time???” But my next response was to feel heartbroken at how in the American church we have so equated worship with cultural habits that we fail to see how biblical worship is even worship at all.

I know I probably don’t score very well on the typical evangelical worship meter. I don’t do the singing endless praise choruses thing. I don’t put “Praise the Lord!” in my Facebook status update at least once a day. I don’t do fill-in-the-blank “bible studies.” I don’t read spiritual devotiony sort of books expecting a paragraph or two of religious sounding words to fill me up each morning. I don’t meet for marathon prayer sessions where I have to pray for someone’s neighbor’s cat or something. I know all those things work for some people to help them celebrate God, and they used to work for me too, but I’ve realized that I cannot limit worship (and God) by insisting that those cultural habits are the only or best ways to worship God. Sure, I dig deep into scripture, I pray, and I celebrate God, it’s just that my acts of piety don’t fit the 20th Century American Evangelical Contemporary Christian Subculture box. And because of that I’ve been accused at times of not being a Christian. Or at least reminded of what my faith and worship habits should be looking like.

So when I hear a pastor warn against following scripture in order to encourage these cultural habits, I get uneasy. Worship cannot be confined to a box – be that the box of evangelical devotions or praise music or reformed liturgy or Catholic Mass. And following the biblical mandate to worship God through seeking justice isn’t in opposition to, but is instead part of personal piety and devotion to God. We are loving God, celebrating God’s greatness, and reflecting God’s glory by participating in the acts of service we are instructed to do. It isn’t that I seek justice some days and worship on others – it is all worship. How I meditate on God’s word and how I seek justice for the oppressed will of course look different than how others do it – but we are all still worshiping.

Worship is much bigger than ourselves, and I think to truly be a missional church we need to get over ourselves and our allegiances to cultural habits and start integrating what God said he wants from our worship into what we do.

Why N.T. Wright is Wrong About Social Media

Posted on January 5, 2010July 11, 2025

The Out of Ur blog recently posted a video of N.T. Wright going off on the dangers of social media. He warns that blogging and the like will stand in the way of real communication with others and he calls the popularity of social media “cultural masturbation.” Now it’s nothing new to hear some voice or other going off on modern technology, putting their own particular “it’s the end of the world as we know it” spin on the matter. And on many issues I truly love and respect N.T. Wright, so I was disappointed to hear someone so knowledgeable about history and faith jump on the “caution people about the perceived dangers of the Internet” bandwagon. Admitting the irony that his video was posted on a blog to be discussed on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, let me just rant for a moment about why I am tired of this discussion.

Let’s just get it out of the way: The warning that Wright and others give is that social media takes people away from actual face-to-face interaction. If we spend too much time blogging and tweeting, we will reduce our time spent with huggable (Wright’s term) people. The problem is — that just isn’t true. A recent Pew Study busted that myth. It reported that, yes, about 6% of the population are isolated and asocial, but that is a number that has stayed steady since 1985 — before the widespread advent of the Internet. The study also found that people who spend time on the Internet are actually far more likely to go out and be with real live people than those who don’t use the Internet. The point — social media actually builds community, even of the huggable people sort. Not only that, but that community is actually more diverse than the communities of those who don’t use social media.

Now I admit, there is the temptation online to not present one’s true self to the world. I think using the Internet for role-playing and gaming is one thing (come on, you can freaking FLY in Second Life!), but aside from people who are already social deviants, I see most people being themselves online. For example, I recently decided to alter my blogroll to a list of people’s names. Aside from group blogs and the occasional anonymous blog, most people are known these days by their true identity and not just their blog name. That wasn’t the case when I first started blogging or interacting online. Back then, most people hid behind cute avatars and handles. Most of the blogs I read, especially those by women, were anonymous, but over the years people have moved towards being themselves by using their real name. Same thing with e-mail addresses. It used to be that everyone had some personal descriptor/alter ego as their e-mail — like JesusGirl98 or SurfrBoy123. And yes, my first email address was [email protected] (ah, the musical obsessed highschool girl demographic). I still cringe a bit when I sign into a site I’ve been on for a long time (like The Ooze) and have my user name be some variation of MaraJade. Back then, I assumed that the internet wasn’t real community and that I could hide behind my username, but I’ve come to realize that I have to be true to myself. And that involves using my real name and only writing the things I am not afraid to own up to.

So as I present my true self to the world and see others doing the same, I get more and more annoyed with those that accuse online communication of not being real communication. I’m sorry, but how is it not real? Communication of this sort has existed for ages; blogs and Facebook and Twitter are just its newest forms. Back in college we had message boards and blog posts — only they were of the paper and pen variety. Someone would write out a few paragraphs or pose a question and tape that paper to a wall in the student center or even in a bathroom stall. We would add our replies with pens. Same thing in grade school. We would fill notebooks with Facebook-esqe questions like “What are your favorite bands?” or “Where do you want to live when you grow up?” and pass them around class getting everyone’s responses. And go back a few hundred years. You have Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door. You have pamphlets being printed to disseminate ideas, and counter-pamphlets appearing in return. Sure, it took longer, but it’s the same idea as blog posts. Or the way letters to the editor used to function as a forum for discussion. Or even the popularity of pen-pals one would never meet. Communication of this sort has all happened before, so why is it that this time it isn’t real?

Social media doesn’t destroy or hinder community, it builds it. As a fairly extreme introvert, I had far fewer friends before I started connecting through the internet. Because of online connections and discussions, I am now spending much more time with flesh and blood huggable people. Like any community or form of communication, the online world has its flaws — no one is disputing that. But I am tired of being told to fear something for dubious reasons. So Wright can call this age-old form of communication cultural masturbation if he wants, I’ll just send him a virtual pint on Facebook and have fun discussing his ideas with my friends — both on- and offline. Because that’s real community.