the sound & the light

Within each successive state of media evolution, the church has undergone a dramatic transformation, due in great part to its relationship to the spoken and written word.

This visual essay explores consensus and contradiction among Christian utterance. An Eastern Orthodox Archpriest (Fr. Justin Frederick), Catholic Priest (Fr. Kyle Walterscheid) and a sign-painting layman (Warren Lunt) offer their wisdom, critique and reflections on the attenuation of civil discourse, and how the church can promote redemptive speech through dialogue in the public sphere.

As a capstone project for the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism, this documentary serves as introduction to a graduate thesis on the mediatization of religion: media as an agent of religious change, media taking on the function of religion. The internet and online storytelling has a powerful decentralizing effect on authoritative religious structures. Media serves as a bridge to ecumenism for many across the denominational or religious divide, and for the seeker, a backdoor to faith. The thesis tests Marshall McLuhan's theory that in the electronic age, global oral/aural testimony would "unite the church as never before.”

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the church into a single space online. With parishes unable to meet in the flesh, masses and services were held virtually, many for the first time. Ironically, at a time when the church became most inaccessible, it became the most visible. Thrust out from behind four walls, the public could sit-in on church. Various theological interpretations over the pandemic highlighted existing divisions and begged many to ask the question: "What is truth?"

Moments before being crucified, Pilate asked Jesus that same question. Jesus said: "Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." Christianity is a faith that "comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of the Lord,” according to St. Paul.

Christianity has arrived at another Gutenberg moment.

Just as the printing press shifted man’s orientation toward speech, fostering individual interpretations of text, the internet has revolutionized the way man assimilates information. Here, sound-based mediums like video-streaming libraries and chatty social tools produce collective resonance and tribal unities. Yet these instruments may also produce discord and division, as the tongue - void of conversation and the presence of the other - may become untethered and destructive. Online, people tear each other apart with words, as the letter, locked in space and dissected from all sides, tempts man to push "delete" and silence speech.

The acoustic quality of the internet envelopes us and we find ourselves in a chorus of voices. How will the presence of God's voice, in stories of miracles shared online, effect the church, and the world? What are the limitations of electronic media in conveying a traditionally spoken, flesh-and-blood faith?
For the church, the answer may come as a double-edged sword. In Christian theology, unification cannot come without purification. Through persecution, Jesus prayed that believers would be made one through the word of their testimony, and that such a testimony could solicit faith in the world.

With the future of media being increasingly sound and event-oriented, Christianity looks to capitalize. Just as the first newspapers began through Christian conversation at pubs and coffee house, metaphysical matters have once again entered into the public sphere through podcasting, streaming services, and other non-textual media. Websites like www.movingworks.org host a library of real-life miracles, captured in documentary form. Popular podcasters like Justin Brierley, Jordan B. Peterson, and Joe Rogan, serve as host to the divine, and questions concerning God receive unprecedented airtime and acclaim.

When Facebook began in 2008, architects had to come up with a word to describe the type of space it represented. They called it the "E-gora," referring to the ancient Greek Agora, or public square. The Agora was a place of exchange, both for commodity and ideology. The kind of sound the church is making in these spaces matters a great deal for the religious landscape of tomorrow. To have all knowledge and all wisdom, but lack love, says St. Paul, is to be a "noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."

As McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.” Whether online or in the flesh, the way something is communicated will determine what is communicated.

Can a return to physical space, of confronting the voice and the breath of man, facilitate the potential for civil discourse that transforms public opinion? Here, in the coffee shops, pubs and markets, the word takes on flesh and dwells among us.

As the church begins to have a dialogue with its own, publishing testimony and hosting salubrious debate, the world has an opportunity to overhear a conversation and draw near to hear, rather than tune-out the unsolicited white noise of monologue.

In speaking about the message of the faith, Jesus told a parable about sound and light: “No one lights a lamp and hides in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore consider carefully how you listen” (Luke 8).

Every inward reality will manifest itself outwardly in the world. The private meditations of the heart will have demonstration in the streets and squares.

Sound reveals interiors, and sound shapes exteriors. What is inside the person will be known by the sound of their voice, and by the effects of these words on the environment. When words are truth, they are light shining in the darkness. How one speaks and listens to their fellow man – whether in humility or pride – determines whether eyes will see for the light, or stumble for its absence.

In the proclamation of its own story, the church re-members as the body of Christ. In speaking with gracious lips, it preserves truth as a life-giver to the world.

-Tyler Cleveland (Producer)