embrace the fruits of modernity in technological progress while the older style of
Liberalism remains largely aloof,
The use of the mass means of data-gathering, accounting, disseminating,
broadcasting, and communicating by fundamentalists suggests an at-homeness
with modern technology. Most religious liberals and humanist philosophers have,
on the other hand, greeted such communications technology warily if not
critically. In the spirit of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, who stressed the
importance of `I-Thou' as opposed to `I-it' relations, many liberals have been
suspicious of the ways technology `uses' people, dehumanizing them, robbing
them of spiritual freedom, making them objects. Even faith, they have feared,
might become a consumer item, a commodity; prospects for conversion would be
manipulated and deceived; mechanization might substitute for community in
circles of faith. What Protestant thinker Paul Tillich called `technical reason,' it
was feared, would prevail at the expense of the distinctively human.
Romantic thought in modern culture has not willingly embraced technology, but
order that society may absorb technological advance.
but can be controlled by the Christian worldview. The idea that technology can have a
life of its own or produce unintended consequences seems lost.
Technology is not neutral or the medium is the message
Evangelicals undermine their own message by arguing that Christians should use
can. The more tools you have, the better it is."
that because Christians employ new technologies they have automatic control over them.
This reflects failure in the Evangelical understanding of the nature of modern technology.
The notion that technology is neutral controlled by its users mirrors the nineteenth
century understanding of the world that believed mankind controls its own destiny
through the moral use of technology; from this assumption comes the identification
between technological development and the advancement of the kingdom of God. In the
nineteenth century this took the form of postmillennialism. In the twentieth century this
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1966); Idem, The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine
Volume Two (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970).