What follows comes with a warning. I was born in 1961. I am certainly not a ‘digital native’, in fact even for my own generation I am something of a luddite, preferring to stick with what I know rather than embrace the new just because it is new – there my suspicion is out in the open. Thus while others embraced typewriters for essays, I stuck to my trusted fountain pen. However, through long exposure to student generations, and through the stimulus of my own children, who belong to what is referred to as ‘generation Y’, I understand the vital importance of appreciating contemporary culture if one is to engage in meaningful dialogue.
Social media, in all its, forms has become inescapable. One hardly ever sees a student sitting alone just staring into space; instead there will be some device in hand as if to reassure on-lookers that she or he is not really alone but connected to a vast world of (virtual) friends. Unless chaplaincy is connected to this network of conversation not only will we appear invisible to it, but we will miss out on much of what is being communicated (even if the news that someone has just decided to wear blue socks leaves one mildly unmoved). Positively, the urge to keep in touch with friends and family is a privileging of relationship that has important theological resonance. But I am not the only one to worry whether many of these relationships are not rather attenuated, at risk of losing their living connection to the face to face encounter on which they are ultimately dependent for meaning.
“Technology [social media] provides a way of revealing beings to one another, however fleeting. But its overwhelming mediating presence tends to eliminate other human modes of sociality, leaving us more isolated from one another and dependent on surrogate forms of intimacy.” (Hong, 2013, p.237)
Virtual reality can offer the ultimate form of the reduction of the other. In making an internet purchase, for example, one is reduced to disembodied desire, credit card number and delivery address. In this regard it is also helpful to reflect on what one would not elect to purchase in this way. I play bass guitar, but however tempting the potential cost saving by buying on-line, before purchase I would need to submit the instrument to an essential tactile examination. Such reflections reveal how inescapably embodied we are and how ultimately impoverished are other modes of communication. For a faith with incarnation at its centre, this must surely be an axiomatic assumption.
Yet chaplaincy finds itself operating in a context where physically gathering people together has become highly problematic. It is not space that is lacking, but what we might term common time. The changes required in the shape of the university day to cope with both expansion of numbers and a diversity of courses of study means there is little or no shared timetabling. Even those on the same degree programme, but following different options, can experience markedly diverse commitments. Add to this the need to engage in part-time employment or to sustain caring relationships and what emerges is a set of largely individual rhythms with little common overlap. Consequently, what hampers a chaplaincy’s ability to sustain a worshipping community, or discussion groups, or residential times away it is not just a general lessening in commitment to such activities over time, a trend running in advance of the decline of participation in public Christianity witnessed in the population generally. The more significant obstacle is precisely this lack of time in common for such activities. Thus even when one has an excellent programme of events on offer, and a potentially eager set of participants, the results can be disproportionally disappointing. In such a situation, virtual means of communication do offer an advantageous flexibility. Those watching an on-line refection in the course of a week can far outnumber those who might have attended a single event in person. But while one gains in numbers there is an inevitable price to pay in the diminishment of the quality of interaction so facilitated.
There is, however, a more general issue. One of the challenges facing Chaplaincy in an age of multiple and instant communication is, ironically, how to communicate; that is how to get one’s message heard. A poster on a bare wall stands out; a wallpaper of posters registers only as background. Though such communication tools as Facebook promise the ability to get one’s message directly to those who have shown at least minimal interest in receiving it, the message, targeted though it is, arrives as just one among an avalanche of others.
One gain that virtual communication has secured, however, is to encourage a greater willingness to make a (semi) public statement about one’s emotional state. Thus tweets, status updates and uploaded photographs can be quite enlightening. Sometimes it will be appropriate to make a pastoral response to what has been revealed. Yet, to be really meaningful, the pastoral encounter needs to break out of virtual mode and into physical communication. Frustratingly, this is not always possible. Texting can be used in a more anonymous but parallel way and suffers from the same limitations. An example: after an exchange of texts, essentially concerning the guilt someone felt from unfaithfulness to a relationship, I was asked to give absolution – also via text. I declined; but the offer of, what I felt was the necessary meeting, was also turned down. The conversation came to an unsatisfactory close.
The limitations of new forms of communication are also illustrated in another way. Thanks to my colleague, David Stroud, the chaplaincy team developed a smart phone app(lication), accessed via a QR-code in the form of Jesus’ face, to provide immediate access to our information and services, as well as to an interactive map of the location of key University buildings. While this acts as an important demonstration of our willingness to communicate with students in terms they understand, one could not honestly say that it has made any measurable difference to those accessing our services.
Where physically expressed community does exist, for a significant majority this includes expression through a culture dominated by drinking and clubbing. This perception is confirmed by the experiences of those who self-describe as Christian as viewed through the lens of Guest et al (2013). Meaningful participation in such activities on the part of chaplains can be a testing, though the relatively recent advent of ‘Street Pastors’ and forms of ‘Tea & Toast’ ministry to those out drinking do provide culturally relevant avenues for the expression of Christian care and concern.
One must be very wary of general profiles, but the characteristics that are thought to typify ‘Generation Y’ (born after 1980) over against their predecessors appear to shed a recognisable and informative light on the cultural traits of our traditionally-aged students. Because the following sketch only highlights points of contrast it may seem unduly negative, and allowance needs to be made for this distortion. It also reads disconcertingly like a horoscope! For more details see Mayo et al (2010).
‘Generation Y’ has less contact with churches than any previous generation in living memory. For them the idea of belonging to organised bodies seems to have lost its appeal. While this generation privileges friendship, and the importance of family, it is less sure about its commitment to wider society. Outwardly confident and ambitious, its members combine a paradoxical mixture of maturity (they are ‘street wise’ and globally aware) with immaturity (typically ‘me-focussed’, with poorer self-awareness and emotional intelligence). Decisively, however, they expect high quality communications that retain their attention. For ‘Generation Y’, if it is to escape deletion, it must be to the point, visual, speedy and entertaining.
Generation Y’s reception of Christianity is bound to be unlike those of generations before. As most chaplains are drawn from the previous generation, we need to be particularly careful not to impose our own perspectives onto those freshly encountering the claims of Christ. Yet, as this discourse will convincingly demonstrate: this is not easy. What is required is a mutually modifying dialogue in which the gift chaplains bring is a set of questions born of an alternative understanding, and the gift students bring is a perspective that challenges our preconceptions.
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