Toward a Truer Charity
Toward a Truer Charity
Tolerance in an Age of Network Media
This chapter considers expressions of prejudice that persist in the movement. The virtual ekklesia has allowed people to create enclaves based on highly idiosyncratic interests, such as the End Times, because the Internet allows them to locate each other without reference to geographic location. As a result, digital communication technologies enable them to create virtual communities that foster beliefs that more diverse communities would reject. However, when a group of believers can express intolerance without facing resistance, prejudices can persist. If radical certainty fuels those views with a self-sealing ideology, people may cling to them even when doing so does them harm. They risk being harmed if they retain these beliefs at the cost of alienating themselves from the values that support mainstream discourse.
Keywords: vernacular Christian fundamentalism, religious movement, prejudice, participatory media, intolerance, virtual ekklesia, digital communications
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