Tech

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From social media to stocks: How are religious conservatives punishing Big Tech?

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From social media to stocks: How are religious conservatives punishing Big Tech?

Part of getting the good religion story involves thinking ahead. Once the social media platform Parler got shut down, the question was where religious conservatives are going to go next.

Whether we’re talking evangelicals or Pentecostal/charismatics, Latter-day Saints or conservative Jews, these groups together number at least one-fifth of the American populace, so the question is an important one.

Oddly I’ve seen no stories about this.

The shutting down of Parler set off major alarms. I’ve been writing about Pentecostal prophets a lot in recent weeks and nearly everyone, when posting on places like Twitter or Facebook, darkly warn how this may be the last time you read them and to please get used to calling up their web sites instead. They don’t need to get warned twice.

Enter alternate social media platforms. Ever hear of Jesus.Social, ChristiansLikeMe.net, or SocialCross.org along with Minds, Gab, MeWe or Rumble? Or Xapit, the network sponsored by the prophetic web site ElijahList?

I’d like to see some stories on where religious folks are going. We know they are signing up by the millions on alternate sites.

Another angle is the depth of anger some feel toward the Big Tech folks that pushed Parler off the air. One reason Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is going to outlast the current controversies he’s involved in is that he’s concentrated on Big Tech and media censorship during his short career and those are issues a lot of people care about.

Fox Business News calls this the danger of “woke religion” taking over the internet.


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Beyond lingo, journalists must keep current on the frontiers of sexuality and reproduction

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Modern sexuality poses continual challenges for writers as they navigate changing sensitivities on verbiage. One example broke into the news last week when Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was chastised for assuring a U.S. Senate hearing that she "would never discriminate on the basis of sexual preference."

Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono accused Barrett of uttering an "offensive" word. Barrett responded that she never meant to offend and "if I did I greatly apologize." Immediately, Merriam-Webster, a standard arbiter of proper word usage, announced that "preference" is now labeled "offensive" because it suggests "a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to."

When the all-consuming U.S. political campaign has ended (thankfully!), the media need not only to ponder such evolving word choices, but to keep current on the frontiers of human sexuality and reproduction in science, ethics and politics, such as the following potential story themes. All of these issues raise moral issues that will cause discussions, debates and even conflict in various religious traditions.

Fertility equality — The New York Times has surveyed at length this new movement, a.k.a. "the right to a baby." This is an extension off of "marriage equality," that is, legalized same-sex marriage. Exponents now contend that the ability to have children and create a family should no longer be determined by "sexuality, gender, or biology."

Same-sex couples or singles who cannot conceive offspring biologically are said to suffer "social infertility." Instead of adopting children, they may hire surrogate mothers or employ in-vitro fertilization and newer reproductive technologies to have children who perpetuate their own genetic heritage. This movement works for the end of legal limitations and for public funding, since these processes can be expensive and are not normally covered by medical insurance.

Advocates include Men Having Babies, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Fertility Within Reach and Affordable Families. For global contexting, see "The Pink Line: Journeys across the World's Queer Frontiers" by Mark Gevisser.

There's interesting hostility from some feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Deborah Glick, the first lesbian in the New York State legislature. They oppose legalization and liken the purchase of surrogate births to slavery as patriarchal exploitation of women that lowers their status.


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Podcast: What did those Big Tech hearings have to do with religious life in America?

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There have been some wild clashes between religious groups and the czars of the Big Tech institutions that have tremendous power in American public discourse. Certainly there have been more important skirmishes than Twitter shutting down that inspirational Tim Tebow mini-sermon the other day.

Many of my friends — as an Orthodox Christian layman — started paying close attention to this issue back in 2015 when a strategic set of cyber-lords informed these believers’ priests, all of a sudden, that they couldn’t put “Father” in front of their names on their Facebook pages.

This was part of a general policy about honorary titles of all kinds. But the title “Father” plays a different role in the lives of people in ancient Christian flocks. It’s not a professional title, it’s a sacramental title.

My own Orthodox godfather — the popular online scribe Father Stephen Freeman — responded by putting “(Father Stephen Freeman)” after his name. Other priests found clever ways to add their identity to the top of their Facebook pages. That, of course, doesn’t help people find their sites with searches for their actual names, including the word “Father.”

Like I said, there have been more consequential clashes between the Big Tech czars and religious believers, but that one was symbolic.

The key is that faith is part of daily life, for millions of folks. These days, social media software has a massive impact on how people live their lives. Thus, Big Tech is a powerful force in the lives of believers and their families. That’s why “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about this week’s Big Tech Congressional hearings, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

So what were these hearings all about? Apparently, the answer to that question depended on one’s political ties. As I wrote the other day:

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives.

So what happened, when the mainstream press covered the Hill showdown with the glowing digital images of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?


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News story? Twitter algorithms cancel Tim Tebow, just ahead of Big Tech showdown on Hill

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Growing tensions between Big Tech and the U.S. Congress has to be one of the biggest news stories in America right now, even as coronavirus statistics soar and shadowy activists keep setting fires at strategic locations in American life.

Think about it: How many Americans get their “news” about COVID-19 and the events swirling around #BlackLivesMatter through sources controlled by these czars of Big Tech — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives. Here’s a bite of preview material from The Washington Post:

Some Republicans, meanwhile, plan to revive their assertions that major social media sites exhibit political bias. Party leaders have ratcheted up their attacks in recent weeks after Facebook and Twitter began taking action against President Trump for his incendiary posts. But GOP critics often have provided scant evidence of their bias allegations, which tech giants fiercely deny and Democrats have decried as a distraction.

“If a platform is dominant in the marketplace and is discriminating against a particular political point of view, [then] anti-competitive behavior coupled with bias is concerning,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), a member of the antitrust panel.

As the old saying goes, it’s not bias — it’s just bad algorithms, over and over.

Now, if journalists were looking for a clickable story to illustrate this side of the Big Tech wars, perhaps a story involving a symbolic person in American life who drives big numbers in social media, why not cover a big tech conflict involving Tim Tebow?


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QAnon in pews: Two online conversations with evangelicals concerned about the surge

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Way too many churches have never been all that effective, when it comes to helping the faithful deal with the challenges of daily life in the modern world — especially those linked to technology and mass media.

Back when I was teaching at Denver Seminary, in the early 1990s, we were struggling to help future pastors and church leaders cope with cable television all of those TV screens in the typical family home.

Frankly, many people couldn’t grasp how this was linked to pastoral ministry and preaching. I kept asking: How do your people spend their time? Spend their money? Make their decisions? These questions are at the heart of discipleship and they point to the powerful role that mass media play in modern life.

Now there is the Internet. Those TVs still exist, but they are surrounded by dozens of other screens that serve as doors into cyberspace.

It appears that we may have a topic that has some — repeat “some” — church leaders concerned about all of those screens. They are beginning to hear from pastors who are concerned, scared even, about the rising presence of QAnon dogma in their pews. Many saw the important essay in The Atlantic that ran with this headline: “The Prophecies of Q — American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.”

In an “On Religion” column about QAnon, I stressed that church leaders need to wake up and realize the role that mainstream and alternative news sources are playing in dividing their people — period.

The bottom line: Many newsrooms are producing slanted, advocacy journalism that millions of consumers consider a kind of “fake news.” This is pushing readers away from mainstream news and deep into online niches packed with folks pushing QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Thus, I wrote:

The question, as pandemic-weary Americans stagger into the 2020 elections, is how many believers in this voting bloc have allowed their anger about "fake news" to push them toward fringe conspiracy theories about the future of their nation.

Some of these theories involve billionaire Bill Gates and global coronavirus vaccine projects, the Antichrist's plans for 5G towers, Democrats in pedophile rings or all those mysterious "QAnon" messages. "Q" is an anonymous scribe whose disciples think is a retired U.S. intelligence leader or maybe even President Donald Trump.

The bitter online arguments sound like this: Are these conspiracies mere "fake news" or is an increasingly politicized American press — especially on politics and religion — hiding dangerous truths behind its own brand of "fake news"?

"A reflexive disregard of what are legitimate news sources can feed a penchant for conspiracy theories," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

A few lines later, Stetzer added:


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Rank these stories: Falwell rolls dice with virus or potential collapse of some small colleges?

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What we have here are two stories about Christian higher education during the coronavirus crisis.

One is set in a rather remote part of America, but it involves — kind of — Citizen Donald Trump. The other is a national-level story with news hooks that will affect institutions (and thus newsrooms) in several hundred communities spread out from coast to coast.

So which of these two stories is grabbing national headlines, including chunks of time on TV news?

That isn’t a very hard question, is it?

Here is the main New York Times headline on the latest chapter in the saga of Jerry Falwell, Jr., and his mano y mano fight with the coronavirus: “Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too.” We can expect all kinds of updates and national coverage about this issue, of course.

LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

“We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. Another eight were told to self-isolate.

Note that Falwell is an “influential voice” in “the evangelical world” — as opposed to one corner of a large and complex movement. At the very least, this implies that he is an “influential voice” in the larger world of evangelical and conservative Protestant higher education — which is a hilarious statement. He’s “famous,” for sure. “Influential?” For some people, yes, but for most evangelicals — statistically — the answer is “no.”


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Podcast: Stop and think. How will coronavirus affect nurseries, worship and last rites?

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At this point, it’s clear that the coronavirus story has moved past concerns about whether members of ancient Christian churches can catch the disease from wine in golden Communion chalices.

People will debate that issue for one simple reason — people have researched that issue for centuries and argued about the results. That story is the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to reporting on how religious congregations — past and present — have reacted during times of plague.

So read up on the “common cup” issue and then move on. Oh, and resist the temptation to spotlight the inevitable proclamation from the Rev. Pat Robertson. And there will be more to this story than Episcopal bishops turning a scheduled meeting into a “virtual” gathering.

That’s the message at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). And while many journalists tend to focus on Catholic churches — lots of people in sanctuaries that photograph well — I think that editors and producers need to consider how this crisis could impact highly independent Protestant megachurches and institutions linked to them. Mosques and synagogues will be affected.

Everyone will be effected. Reporters will need to focus on specific facts and broad trends.

While we were recording the podcast, I told host Todd Wilken that journalists may want to note that spring break is not that far away. In addition to sending legions of young people to jammed beaches and crazy watering holes, this is also a time when churches and colleges organize short-term mission trips to locations around the world. Sure enough, I saw this notice on Twitter a few hours later, from a campus in Arkansas:


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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

One good reason to buy a costly ($189 a year) subscription to The Economist, Britain’s international weekly, is regular coverage of science developments like American newsweeklies used to provide.

Journalists should be alert to a significant scientific scoop in the Nov. 9 edition. Sometime in 2020, the Genomic Prediction Company of North Brunswick, New Jersey — GenomicPrediction.com — plans to fertilize donor eggs with mixed sperm from two gay fathers in California. This couple will then pick embryos to be implanted in a surrogate mother on the basis of purported lower health risks identified through SNP tests (single-nucleotide polymorphism or “snip”).

If successful, such experiments could launch a relatively smooth new path for “playing God” to create human “designer babies.” Not long ago this sort of thing was the stuff of sci-fi novels by H.G. Wells or Aldous Huxley. Now the human species itself enters the public furor over animal and vegetable GMOs and “Frankenfood.”

Writers pursuing this should start with The Economist’s three-pager (behind pay wall), which details the biological complexities of SNP that The Guy must bypass here. There’s also this accompanying editorial. Genomic Prediction’s Web site has further explanation, and you’ll want to keep in contact with the company for the news pegs (973–529-4223 or contact@genomicprediction.com).

Of course, environment and behavior also affect health outcomes. Proposed disease prevention would provide what seems to be a benign start for the Snip Era, but we can likely expect eventual efforts to pick embryos for implantation on the basis of, say, height or intelligence, as humanity veers toward the breeding of a super-race. Applications will inevitably be tilted toward affluent parents, posing a moral quandary.

Also, The Economist reports, eventual efforts to maximize scores that enhance brainpower and such could “increase the risk of genetic disorders” through spillover into a DNA malady known as pleiotropy. SNP has already been tried for animal husbandry with other species of mammals. Since 2008, it has proven to boost milk yields in dairy cows. But, The Economist says, these experimental cows “have become less fertile and have weaker immune systems. … Genetic tinkering may sometimes improve things. But by no means always.” Humanity beware!


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The Atlantic profiles Jeff Bezos's 'master plan' with nary a hint as to moral and spiritual sides

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Recently, the Atlantic published a cover story on Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, with a worth anywhere between $112 billion to $137 billion (it varies). The gist wasn’t so much Bezos’ money but how his use of it has made him the most powerful man in American culture.

The scary part isn’t so much the money part but how Bezos’ Amazon.com controls so much. Although the reporter wanted to know what makes the 55-year-old behind it all tick, he didn’t talk about Bezos’ spiritual-moral-ethical side at all or whether he even has one.

In the past, Bezos has sold himself as a values kind of guy, enjoying breakfasts with his family, doing the dishes every night and never scheduling work sessions before 10 a.m. according to this 2018 Wall Street Journal report that was based on a YouTube video (see above). At the time that story ran, Bezos’ extramarital affair was in full flower and one wonders if the tech exec was simply lying when he spoke about his supposedly serene domestic life.

Back to the Atlantic piece:

Today, Bezos controls nearly 40 percent of all e-commerce in the United States. More product searches are conducted on Amazon than on Google, which has allowed Bezos to build an advertising business as valuable as the entirety of IBM. One estimate has Amazon Web Services controlling almost half of the cloud-computing industry — institutions as varied as General Electric, Unilever, and even the CIA rely on its servers.

Forty-two percent of paper book sales and a third of the market for streaming video are controlled by the company; Twitch, its video platform popular among gamers, attracts 15 million users a day. Add The Washington Post to this portfolio and Bezos is, at a minimum, a rival to the likes of Disney’s Bob Iger or the suits at AT&T, and arguably the most powerful man in American culture. …

Since that time, Bezos’s reach has only grown. To the U.S. president, he is a nemesis. To many Americans, he is a beneficent wizard of convenience and abundance.

The story then sketches out a Brave New Worldesque kind of control that the Amazon founder will soon have over us all in an era when it and Google, Facebook and Apple have become the new robber barons of our age, monopolizing vast portions of the American economy.


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