If there was ever a social experiment that defined the beginning of the twenty first century, it would be Wikipedia, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week. Whether you like the broadminded enlightenment rationale that logical humans can join together and answer any and all questions, or the postmodern notion that truth is found within the stories of the community, the anybody-can-edit-any-entry-encyclopedia scratches your itch. And in an article over at Slate, we have a relevant retrospection for us here at Mockingbird – a history of the Wikipedia entry on Jesus. An excerpt from the Slate article:
Wikipedia Jesus was vandalized for the first time on Nov. 6, 2002, when an anonymous user replaced the entire page with the repeated phrase “bla bla is all I hear.” Jesus existed in such a state for five minutes before another user rescued him. In the new year, he got a photo. It was removed three days later. By his second birthday, he had a seven-chapter entry covering his teachings, roles in various denominations and other religions, and historical footprint. By this point, he was gathering disciples, with a small number of Wikipedians emerging as the primary scribes of Jesus’ teachings and legacy. (Some made edits to the page six or seven times a day.)
The whole article is fun and lighthearted, and the author wants us to view the development of Wikipedia through the Jesus article. But we also find a few insights in the article worth discussing here on Mockingbird:
- 2000 years later, the world still can’t figure out how to deal with Jesus. Is he, as the Slate article describes, “a” central figure in Christianity, or “the” central figure in Christianity? Should we link him to Jews for Jesus or list him as an adviser to President Bush?
- Wikipedia, though an open source anybody-can-edit encyclopedia, has put in place a “security detail” for Wiki-Jesus, to keep his page away from vandals and trolls (trolls: an internet term for users who post inflammatory, offensive, off-topic, or extraneous messages for the purpose of exciting an emotional response in an online community). Does it speak to the flawed nature of Wikipedia’s view on human reason or cooperation that such a security detail needs to exist?
- The last line of the article says it all: Meanwhile, the vandals circle, waiting for the moment when that protection comes down. Is it anachronistic to think that after 2000 years, people are still looking to shut Jesus up? I imagine that efforts to discredit his Wikipedia page are more closely tied to hurtful church experiences or arrogant exercises in self-importance. Changing the page to “blah blah blah is all I hear,” or replacing the article with a link to the now defunct tubegirl.com isn’t much better than the witness he got at his trial before the Sanhedrin either.
Perhaps most distressing about the situation is the lack of grace and forgiveness in the actual Wikipedia article of Jesus. The Slate article notes that the current edits to Wiki-Jesus are smoothing rough edges instead of paradigm shifting vandalism. There’s a lot of talk about Jesus and table fellowship, Jesus and his moral teaching, and Jesus vs. the “historical Jesus.” But notably, ideas like “grace” and “forgiveness of sins” are barely mentioned in relation to Jesus’s purpose. Instead, ideas like “eternal life” and “going to heaven” permeate the article, which are of course true, but are the devoid of meaning when separated from the atonement and reconciling work of Jesus.
Wikipedia, like much of the rest of the American Church, can explain to you in great detail what Jesus did, but cannot seem to fathom why Jesus might do it. Wikipedia gives you a theology of glory where Jesus inaugurates the theology of the cross. So much, then, for crowd-sourced truth.
And this, my friends, is why you shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source on your seminary papers.
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COMMENTS
5 responses to “"Who Do You Say That I Am?" Jesus of Wikipedia”
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Hi Bryan. I looked on the Wikipedia site to see if they had a philosophical/theological statement, but couldn't find anything. (I found the "Five Pillars," though. Love that name! The Pillars seem mostly theology-free to me.) In any case, it seems to me that Wikipedia is in fact working pretty well as a cooperative venture, as many open-source projects are that didn't exist even a decade ago. There's tons of free and open-source software out there in use everywhere and every day. Certainly none of this is perfect – but it really ain't bad, either.
In re your last bullet point: I'm fairly sure Jesus would be viewed as cool and counter-cultural (which he is) if the "religious right" hadn't been trying to take over the American government for the past 30 years or so. People who don't know anything much about Jesus – and that's a lot of people – can only repeat what they've heard from others. And that's quite a lot about "going to heaven" and "the sanctity of marriage" – and very little about "grace," I'm afraid.
The attempt to control others via political power does, in fact, result in reaction, every time it's tried – it just so happens that Christianity itself seems to be a political party itself this time.
Jesus IS countercultural – a fact that should actually be very appealing to the Wikipedia crowd. Unfortunately he's been made into a favor-dispensing good-luck token and political advisor (as you rightly note) in our era. And he seems to be allied with one "side" alone – that's been the actual claim, in fact.
I would very much like for the Wikipedia crowd – that's my crowd – to be more interested in faith. I can't really blame them that they're not, though; they've been given an entirely wrong impression of what faith entails, in my opinion. I'm hoping to work to remedy that.
Probably you're right that seminary students shouldn't use the "Jesus" entry, though….! 😉
bls,
I wholeheartedly agree that the shadow of the political Jesus does hang over the wikipedia article… I might add to that shadow the Westboro Baptist Church and the guys who tried burning a Qur'an last year. The squeaky wheel tends to get the grease, and for us that translates into the news cameras pointing at the abnormal fringe instead of the quiet faithful.
Don't get me wrong- I'm a *huge* fan of open source everything. I use the wikimedia commons for creative commons photography all the time for my job. The point of my post was more epistemological in nature- trying to reconcile wikipedia's quest for truth with original sin. Though I guess that same problem would apply to a regular encyclopedia too, I would much rather trust open source projects like open office, audacity, or joomla than open source truth.
But you are correct that, at the end of the day, it really ain't bad, and it's getting to be pretty exhaustive (where else can you find a list of fictional raccoons in the world? I contend nowhere.)
Glad to hear the Wikipedia crowd is your crowd- and that somebody from that crowd appreciated my post enough to chat about it 🙂
Wikipedia isn't a good source on any papers…although it is nice if for looking up things you've never heard of. Coming from this perspective, it seems to me that a Wikipedia "Jesus" article is about the most useless thing ever.
Jameson, I would agree. This week at regular New Testament Seminar for PhD students, the speaker mentioned some very obscure German theologian. Within 3 seconds, the two PhD students sitting next to me both brought up his Wikipedia page. This confirmed the professor's brilliance, our own ignorance, and Wikipedia's stunning breadth.
"Fictional raccoons"! I love it.
(I can't think of any, myself – oh, wait: Rocky! – but I know where I find out. And I will be finding out, in about 4 seconds….)
😉
Thanks again, Bryan – this post has given me a lot to think about. Always a good thing….