The Cathedral Hosts a Bazaar: Free Culture and the Digital Evangelical

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Philosophy, Theory, and Critique Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This paper explores emerging norms in regard to copyright in American evangelical culture. Employing an ethnographically-informed close reading of the discourses of an influential group of evangelicals, that I call “digital evangelicals” and conceive of as a counterpublic (Warner, 2002), I take the most prominent institutional leader of this movement, LifeChurch.tv, as my main case study. These evangelicals espouse a free-culture ethic that mirrors that of the FOSS and Creative Commons movements, but is sharply contrasted with previous norms in evangelical media use. I interrogate the question: How does the emerging Christian understanding of free culture online intersect and diverge with the secular understanding, and what do these intersections and divisions reveal about the social imaginaries (Taylor, 2002; 2004) that inform these movements? Furthermore, what do they reveal about the social imaginary of the internet in American culture, broadly conceived?

Author

• Corrina Laughlin, The Annenberg School for Communication/ The University of Pennsylvania