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Thursday, July 9, 2009


A recent article in the New York Times had a great quote in it. The article looks at twitter and its use in churches. One of the churches in the article, Trinity Church in Manhattan, opened up their Good Friday service to twitter, and displayed the twitter messages live during the service. As it happened, there was some ‘mischief’:

“The trouble began in the second hour.

Twitter’s interactivity — its essence — made it easy for an anonymous text-messager to insert an unscripted character into the Passion play: a Roman guard who breezily claimed, “I’ve got dibs on his robe.” When another texter introduced a rogue Mary Magdalene, the intrusion only confirmed the obvious: Twitter’s trademark limit of 140 characters per message is no bar against crudity.”

Here is the church’s excellent response:

“If someone chooses to interact with us mischievously, that’s fine,” said the Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee, the church vicar. “The opposite of engagement is not mischief, but apathy.”

What a great answer.