In a recent conversation among my community of friars, we discussed Pope Benedict’s 2012 address on World Communications day, The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in the Digital World.
One of the older friars asked, “Why just the priests? Why not everyone? Why not lay people? Why not young people?”
Putting aside the fact that this was a document specifically for priests in the “Year for Priests,” and putting aside the fact that Pope Benedict has, on numerous occasions, consistently reminded young people to be the first missionaries online, there are some thoughts that I could quickly add.
Facebook, WordPress, & Youtube are not the only place for the New Evangelization… there’s also tumblr!
The Los Angeles times reports that Tumblr has now become one of the top 10 social network sites. At this point there are some 168 million users.
Considering on how frequently YouTube, WordPress, and Facebook are mentioned as places for ministry, presence, and the New Evangelization, I thought I would balance the discussion.
In some ways, much of the discussion about being online missionaries seems to overlook several persistent obstacles that exist on Facebook.
Media blogging
Like retweeting on Twitter, people reblog on tumblr. As a result, viral posts must be brief and to the point, meaning the pictures, memes, gifs, and images with text or dialog tend to be most prevalent.
The content of most young Catholic tumblrs are not their own. They reblog images of Marvel’s Avengers, Disney Princess, beautiful old Churches, and, most importantly, Christ. It is indeed evangelizing by making the Gospel of Christ and the Catholic faith viral.
This is more common and acceptable than writing three paragraphs, the standard of any blog. If I were to pinpoint my most viral posts, it would be the ones that have fewer words, like images of Christ in Graffiti Art or quotes from Saint Augustine.
One of the best examples of this was a recent post What if we treated our Catholic Faith like a Fandom. This has to be one of the most brilliantly crafted and humorous posts from an already brilliant and effective use of tumblr as a medium for evangelization, as well as encouragement to young Catholics. WhatShouldCatholicismCallMe.tumblr.com typically uses a phrase to describe the humorous aspects of living as a Catholic, followed by an effectively place-animated gif image.
Online Babylon
A friend of mine who’s my age recently told me that she started a tumblr because it was the slum of internet sites (compared to WordPress or Blogger). I agreed. It was the same reason I chose tumblr in 2009.
I had a hip hop ministry that was burgeoning, without the capacity to post my content online, and so decided to create a blog that would lead up to my musical release. In effect, I would also connect people to the wide array of positive music out there, as I was so often tearing down all the pop-rap stuff that people were familiar with. Tumblr made much more sense than any other site. I followed a few people who put up Christian type images.
When word got out by way of Father Shane, my page went viral. I think you can prove as fact that the overwhelming majority of my hundreds of followers have no interest in any of my hip hop content whatsoever.
Young Catholics on tumblr
I have found that young people have been working in the Spirit to glorify Christ on tumblr for years. As I mentioned, my followers kept shooting up because people wanted to follow a Consecrated Religious. There is a strong community of Catholics on tumblr that support each other, pray for each other, debate each other, reblog each other, share a fandom.
There is a whole world on tumblr that revolves around a variety of things, most of these young Catholics are in the thick of it. A lot of what happens on tumblr makes no sense to me, and it is not because I actually do the tumblr thing effectively that I get followers. Perhaps if I tried too hard to do the tumblr thing effectively, people would find it weird that a consecrated religious, 29-year-old man was speaking or acting in this way (as I know I certainly would).
Not only are many of these kids using their tumblr to publicly glorify Christ, they have become a support system to one another. Many of them have no community of young Catholics to turn to in their parish. Many of them find vitrol, hateful, trollish posts from anonymous detractors, spited for the sake of Christ. Privately, several of them make themselves available for praying with others across the digital content.
Check them out and see how unusual they are as devout Catholics and teenagers. In addition, these young people also provide an example to other young Catholics on tumblr: All For His Greater Glory, Catholic Love, Catholic Geek, I Am Charles Bingley, and Eternally Adoring.
I could go on, but I think the evidence is clear: the Spirit is moving.
Copyright © 2012, Mark Menegatti
Mark Menegatti
Brother Mark Menegatti is a Friar with the Order of Saint Augustine. He is a hip hop beatmaker & lyricist for the New Evangelization. Under the patronage of Saint Ephrem of Syria, he integrates theology, mysticism, and hip hop in his blog and in all of his music. He is currently in his fourth year of Theology in Chicago, and looks forward to ordination to the Priesthood. You can find his writings, theological reflections, chastity exhortations, and original music on his tumblr. He’s also found at Bandcamp music page, Twitter, and Facebook.
3 responses to “The New Evangelization on tumblr”
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I think tumblr is understood only by young people. I looked at your examples and can see how the content and graphics appeals to teens and young adults, of which I am neither. My daughter had a blog and now a tumblr; I prefer blogs as I don’t understand where all the tumblr content comes from. Maybe you could give us a tutorial on how to use tumblr to reach that segment of the population it appeals to? I would like to understand it better:)
Thanks for reading, and for the reply. If I wasn’t clear in my own post, I find using tumblr challenging. I think you are totally right, a lot of it only appeals to younger people. Like I said, if it weren’t for the grace of being in religious life, I doubt many of the young people would subscribe to my page.
Were I to sum up a few things about tumblr:
1. Less words, more images, or images with a few words on them.
2. Humorous images.
3. Extensive knowledge of pop culture.
4. Subscribe to a few thoroughly catholic tumblr pages, and occasionally reblog their images, as well as some of your own original similar content.
What I did want to signify here, whether or not people in the Church are reaching youth, for years, Catholic youth have been using tumblr to reach out to other youth.
I referred to a few tumblr pages from teenagers, I could probably include a list of hundreds of more teenagers and young twenty-somethings who use tumblr effectively for the New Evangelization, but then it would be tedious.
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