In Theory: Is Mark Zuckerberg right in his assertion that Facebook is like a church?
In a June 22 speech widely covered and at turns derided by the media, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg compared his company’s social network to a church. Yet as the site surpassed 2 billion users, Zuckerberg said at a Community Summit in Chicago he would like users to feel part of “a more connected world.”
“People who go to church are more likely to volunteer and give to charity,” Zuckerberg said, “not just because they’re religious, but because they’re part of a community.”
In a contradictory op-ed published in the Guardian, journalist Peter Ormerod writes, “Churches offer a perspective on life fundamentally opposed to the culture Facebook encourages and upon which it feeds.” He suggests that churches provide a place of spiritual transcendence one can’t gain from logging onto a website.
Q. Is Facebook’s “new mission” a troubling one or a positive step? In what ways are churches different than the “community” provided by social media?
“The church,” as the Bible defines it, is the sum total of all people who by heartfelt faith confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the son of God who died on the cross to pay for our sins and then rose on the third day. “The church is subject to Christ” says Ephesians 5:24. Jesus Christ is “head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:8). “His [that is, Jesus’] body … is the church” (Colossians 1:24). “The church of the living God [is] the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). “The church of God [consists of] those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours” says Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:2.
Facebook is none of those things, and it never can be. Facebook can imitate some things the church does, like helping people be connected with others, but by nature it will always be a completely different entity with a completely different origin, goals and destiny. It’s interesting that Mark Zuckerberg would compare Facebook with the church. The lesser often tries to compare itself to the superior, the imitation to the original, in an effort to heighten its own sense of importance.
Christians volunteer and give to charities and love others in tangible ways because Jesus Christ first gave to and loved us. Our motives are unique. The word we translate as “church” literally means “called out ones” in the New Testament’s original language, which points to its divine origin. People belong to the church because God himself personally called them into it.
The most troublesome thing about Facebook being likened to the church is that the church has a Lord, the object of our worship. If Facebook is a replacement for the church, then who is being set up as the Facebook members’ object of worship? Its founder? Its members? Its collective identity?
Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank
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I’m delighted that Mark Zuckerberg is putting so much thought into the responsibilities his company has in and to the world. That he is doing so helps to balance the feeling I so often have that digital technology has become its own rolling stone, no longer guided by anyone, nor governable by ethics.
And I’m intrigued by the direction in which Zuckerberg is thinking — that by empowering the establishment of meaningful groups, Facebook can counteract social media’s trend toward homogeneity. It’s been alarming to have a community decided for me, by ‘someone’ in cyberspace — a community of Stepford-Friends that likes what I like, follows what I follow, and panders to my agenda of interests and opinions, with those who don’t ‘Like’ what I say often enough slowly being hidden from my view.
I like that Zuckerberg says now that Facebook has done such a good job connecting friends and family, it’s time the network uses its powers for further good, by connecting those who might not otherwise connect. I have no idea whether the new groups thing will actually accomplish that, but I hope very much that it does.
Of course, digital networks can’t replace the church-going experience of the face-to-face community, nor certainly the experience of public worship; but Zuckerberg doesn’t claim such things. He only hopes that FB can help to reconnect communities who are no longer going to church anyway and so have lost the connecting center that churches and service organizations used to provide.
(Insert your own imagined praying hands emoji): Here’s hoping and praying he’s right.
The Rev. Amy Pringle
St. George’s Episcopal Church
La Cañada Flintridge
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I’m always interested when secular entities reflect upon religious ones to generate ideas on how to meaningfully bring people together. I think the Church has looked with vested interest at the same in reverse. How does a church draw people into its fold with the same degree of interest and impulse that something like Facebook generates on a daily basis? Zuckerberg’s baby is utilized by saints and sinners alike, and both find it simultaneously useful and aggravating.
I suppose in a world where the current generation is arising out of an aging population of parents who left religious training up to their children, the vacuum is being filled by online connections like what Facebook offers. If you’ve wondered why church attendance is lower in 2017 than it was a few decades ago, think about how much Christianity has been taking a hit by the unchurched, by the media, by a lot of the emerging, pagan, American culture.
People haven’t been taught biblical values, haven’t experienced the personal, face-to-face connection with others in the godly quest, and yet they are still made in the image of God, have God-given consciences and desire to make their lives meaningful.
What to do? What they have left to them is Facebook. It won’t save their souls, won’t likely bring them closer to God, won’t spread Christian faith and morals (the goals of a genuine church) but it will give them access to introspective thoughts, to communities (albeit virtual) and it will apparently provide them opportunities to help their fellow man by joining charitable causes. We in the church need to rethink how we may reach these people to show them that this is the very stuff we offer, and we do so in a far more personal and important way. I almost feel like the church has become akin to the classic corner hardware store in a neighborhood that’s building a Home Depot. We may not have all the technological bells and whistles to satisfy this “Uber Me” generation, but we can still offer personal service, hands-on friendship, everlasting significance and the absolute promise of heaven. That’s not Facebook, that’s Holy Book. Therefore render to Zuckerberg the things that are Zuckerberg’s, and to God the things that are God’s.
The Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga
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The Guardian’s contrarian take on the church versus Facebook debate comes as no surprise to me — if Zuckerberg had announced he was supporting churches because of their pursuit of community, the Guardian no doubt would have voiced opposition, which is why I like reading that newspaper.
Zuckerberg is suspected of playing a long game aimed at high political office. It does seem that anyone truly can be president now, growing up optional. One of his big talking points is that community is declining is the United States. Many have jumped on this bandwagon since Robert Putnam wrote his 1995 essay titled “Bowling Alone,” which used the example of the decline of bowling leagues to argue that our social cohesion had faded.
Putnam was criticized for focusing on white, male, blue-collar groups, and I think that is a fair point. I personally know of lots of diverse women — including myself — participating in book clubs, choral singing and craft groups. I always wondered if Putnam included such groups in his tabulations.
Can Zuckerberg be looking at the same Facebook as I do when he envisions it as a place of deep connections? His “new mission” will be an uphill climb, I fear.
I enjoy Facebook for its ease of connecting electronically with real life friends and family, but a piece of software is unlikely to create genuine community absent the human urge to connect and people making a genuine effort. That does not come easy in any group, churches included.
Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose