PostLiteracy and Secondary Orality

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Post-Literacy and Secondary Orality
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More and more we are knowing less and less about
the printed tradition, said Christian apologist
Ravi Zacharias. Zacharias concludes that we are
now in a time where there is a humiliation of
the word and an exaltation of the image.
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Professor Jim Dator of the University of Hawaii
concurs. Reading and writing are clearly dying
arts, Dator said, something which fewer in the
world are doing. Most people in the world,
even most of the literate people in the world in
fact, do not get much of their ideas about the
world from reading, Dator said. They get them
from watching television, going to the movies,
listening to the radio, and other forms of
audio-visual communication.
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CEE Media Research Report

• Descriptive Analysis - 2002

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(No Transcript)
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Media Diffusion 16-25 Year Olds
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Television Habits
The average youth in our survey describes himself
as watching four or more hours of television per
day.
Girls watch slightly less TV than boys.
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• Reading Habits
• Youth in CEE are not habitual newspaper readers
  with 40 saying they only occassionally read the
  newspaper.
• Of those with the newspaper reading habit 36 of
  them describe themselves as reading a newspaper
  1-3 times per week.

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Top Preferred Print Media of 16-25 year olds

• Magazines 68

• Books 51

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Welcome to the 21st Century! The farther ahead we
go, it seems, the further behind we get!
Technological advances over the last few decades
have catapulted us into a time reminiscent of an
era where illiteracy was prevalent.
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Pritish Nandi, former publishing director of The
Times of India said, You can dispense with
writing entirely In fact, with this whole idea of
literacy. The spoken word will take over from the
written word and no one will ever need to know
whether you or I are actually capable of putting
pen to paper. In other words, he said, this
new technology could well usher in an age of
illiteracy.
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Dator said, The post-literate (or, as I hope
they will become, media-literate) cultures
emerging around us in the present and looming
vastly larger in the future, are as different
from cultures based on print as print cultures
are from those of oral societies.
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Since we live within the envelope of the dying
(or marginalizing) print cultures and the rise of
audio-visual ones, those of us who have been
conditioned all our lives to think like a book
usually ignore, disparage, or simply cannot
understand those who may learn to think and to
express their thoughts through moving holographic
images.
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Being so (literally) brainwashed by print, we
can no more truly understand the new cultures
that are overwhelming us than we can truly
understand the savage mind of pre-literate
societies we distorted or destroyed.
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To summarize Walter Ong (father of the concept
of secondary orality), secondary orality is a new
type of communication preference dependent upon
literacy but expressed by way of audio-visual
means. This now extends into our digitally based
convergent world of the modem, satellite, and
computer.
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This secondary orality, now endemic in our world
today, is causing us to think, process
information, make decisions, and socially
organize ourselves more and more like oral
peoples rather than literate ones.
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Christian researcher George Barna, in his book
The Second Coming of the Church A Blueprint for
Survival, said 1) Americans have greater access
than ever to advanced education -- yet,
increasing numbers of people lack the skills to
comprehend Gods Word 2) technology and the mass
media have forever changed the ways in which we
process information -- churches have yet to catch
on to the new forms and style of communication
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3) the inability to systematically apply
scriptural truth produces a spiritual
superficiality or immaturity that is reflected in
behavior and 4) we must develop new forums and
formats through which people will experience,
understand, and serve God.
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The vast majority of Christians do not behave
differently because they do not think
differently, and they do not think differently
because we have never trained them, equipped
them, or held them accountable to do so, Barna
said. For years we have been exposing
Christians to scattered, random bits of biblical
knowledge through our church services and
Christian education classes.
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They hear a principle here and read a truth
there, then nod their head in approval and feel
momentarily satisfied over receiving this new
insight into their faith. But within the space of
just a few hours that principle or truth is lost
in the busyness and complexity of their lives.
They could not capture that insight and own it
because they have never been given sufficient
context and method that would enable them to
analyze, categorize, and utilize the principle or
truth.
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Dr. Rodrick K. Durst, Professor of Historical
Theology and Vice President of Academic Affairs
at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, said
we are currently experiencing the convergence of
three phenomena that are having significant
effect on contemporary Western and global
cultures and, subsequently, on how we convey
truth.
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These phenomena are 1) postmodernism 2)
narrative theology and 3) orality and narrative
storying. Postmodernism can be described in four
words experiential, participatory,
image-driven, and connected narrative theology
as an un-organized but aggressive approach to
theology and orality and narrative storying as a
viable and respected pre-modern and postmodern
method for communication and retention of
information.
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In the postmodern world, to be a storyteller
is no longer a euphemism for someone with a loose
grip on truth, Durst said. The storyteller is
becoming again the person of wisdom who knows the
good telling stories that make and maintain
community and meaning.
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Leonard Sweet chooses to see pastors as story
doctors, who use the truthing of biblical
stories to heal the dysfunctional stories
confining and confounding peoples lives.
Analysts of contemporary culture indicate that
ministry to the emerging generation will be
magnified to the degree that narrative is
applied.
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In his book The New Testament and the People of
God, Wright said, Stories are a basic
constituent of human life they are, in fact, one
key element within the total construction of
worldview. Wright continued, The stories which
most obviously embody worldviews are of course
the foundation myths told by the so-called
primitive native peoples of the world to explain
the origins of the world in general and their
race in particular.
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Stories thus provide a vital framework for
experiencing the world. They also provide a means
by which views of the world may be challenged.
Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at
modifying or subverting other stories and their
worldviews. Where head-on attack would certainly
fail, the parable hides the wisdom of the serpent
behind the innocence of the dove, gaining
entrance and favour which can then be used to
change assumptions which the hearer would
otherwise keep hidden away for safety.
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To change their story, Wright implies, we must
give them a better story, and what better story
is there than the Word of God!
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Tommy Jones, author of Postmodern Youth Ministry,
urges those who are involved in ministry today to
tell stories. Narrative is becoming the primary
means of telling beliefs, he said. Since
propositional logic has fallen on hard times,
stories carry more weight in carrying
truthsabductive reasoning. As opposed to
deductive or inductive methods, when you tell a
story, you abduct listeners from their known
worlds into another world.
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If a truth cannot be imagined, Durst argued,
how then can it ever be retained? If it cannot
be retained, how can it transform? But if it
could transform the individual through the
imagination, how could it ever be forgotten?
Somehow the now passing modernist generation
abandoned story telling as childish at the same
time it abandoned access to the human imagination
as a participatory means of conveying truth.
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The modernist preacher speaks the sermon
illustration as the icing while the
postmodernist hears it as the cake. Postmoderns
simply lack trust and interest in modernist
philosophical propositions. Tell them a story if
you want to hold their attention and empower
their retention.
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William J. Bausch, author of Storytelling
Imagination and Faith, seems to be in agreement
with both Durst and Egan. storytelling is so
natural to human beings it suggests a definition
we are the creatures who think in stories. But
you would never know it, he said.
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We are trained to think rather in propositions.
Analytical thinking in our computer age is the
ideal, an idea that is amply rewarded. Yet in
all areas of life, there seems to be a reaction
setting in. More and more we hear about the
imaginative. More and more the art of
storytelling is making itself felt and is
undergoing a revival in our day.
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Our literacy has taken us to such technology as
computers and beyond, yet it has also created
within us the need to return to an age of orality
where experience, understanding and meaning
reign.
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George Stroup, in his book The Promise of
Narrative Theology, sets the challenge before us
narrative theology appears to open new channels
of communication between the systematic
theologian, the biblical scholar, the social
scientist and, most importantly, the layperson
who long ago has given up on the theologian as a
resource for understanding the Christian faith.
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Richard Jensen, in his book Thinking in Stories
Preaching in a Post-literate Age, said, Nearly
all the experts in communication agree that the
world has experienced three communication eras.
The first era was an era of oral communication
the second began with writing and continued with
print the third is the era of electronic
communication which is now coming to birth. The
unique reality of our generation is that we are
living on the forefront of a shift from one
communication era to another.
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We are living on the boundary between the print
era and the electronic era. We must understand,
therefore, that we are living through
revolutionary times. A shift in communication
media has occurred only once before in human
history. That was the shift from oral
communication to print and written communication.
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Today we move from the world of print to the
world of electronics. This is a revolution. It is
a revolution that calls upon us to seriously
re-think most of what we do. It is certainly a
revolution that calls us to reinvestigate
preaching in our time.