At Unpop Culture, I talk a lot about the pornification of entertainment. It’s a reality sometimes recognized more readily by secular culture than by those within our Christian subculture. It’s a reality I will continue to point out in the years ahead.
One item I haven’t talked about is the relationship between a porn mindset and the internet as a whole. To help us better understand this connection, cultural commentator
has argued that the internet doesn’t just contain pornography—it is “pornographically-shaped”:[T]he Internet is an ecosystem that treats everything like a kind of pornography. Separated from physical reality by the screen, the digital user encounters all of existence as a consumable substance, a substance that often distorts the true nature of the thing being depicted. Our relationship to life via the Web is very similar to the porn addict’s relationship to sex. Over time, the substitute becomes preferable to the real thing, and we consume our way through the world via videos and images and posts that simultaneously arouse our appetite for further consumption, and discourage our instinct to go seek out the reality whose pixelated form we are consuming.
This is just one of the dangers of how the internet functions. And it is just one aspect of the internet that James explores in his new book, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age.
I was privileged to interview James about his book for The Christian Post. We talked about how followers of Christ can better discern the inherent logic of our digital landscape, as well as utilize and respond to it in a way that reinforces our commitment to the superior logic of the gospel. Some of the questions we explored include the following:
What is it about being online that causes us to lose our grip on biblical wisdom?
Is there a relationship between internet culture and “cancel culture”?
If the internet is inherently pornographically-shaped, should we even be using it at all?
In all probability, the internet will continue to be a reality-defying and reality-defining presence in our world. Christians would do well to understand and reject the presuppositions inherent in our digital technologies. Readers who want to explore these topics more may want to pick up a copy of James’ book. Digital Liturgies is available for purchase online and at your local bookstore.
Click here to read the full interview with Samuel D. James.