Listening In preview - Jeffrey Bilbro

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Coming up next, a preview of Listening In.

This week, host Warren Smith talks to author and English professor Jeffrey Bilbro.

Our access to information has advanced a lot over the last twenty years, thanks to technology.  We’ve been able to keep up with more personal connections with new media.

But we know the downsides: distraction, anxiety, noise, information overload, and a breakdown in meaningful communication.

Jeffrey Bilbro believes the church must step into the void. Here’s Warren.

WARREN SMITH: We’ve got to live in community with one another. If we’re consuming media, whatever it is—social media, news media, whatever—in ways that are militating against us living in community with one another. That’s a real problem isn’t?

JEFFERY BILBRO: Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, I started writing about this a couple years ago. And I think it’s only more apparent now: the ways in which the media that we consume—and are formed by—is shaping us to be in real conflict with our neighbors. And it’s very atomizing and fragmenting. And the challenge, I think, is that we don’t always realize it’s the very medium that we rely on to stay informed, often, that has that result.

And part of what I wanted to talk about was how the patterns of attention that form our lives, are going to inevitably play a big role in shaping who we imagine ourselves belonging to, and who we imagine ourselves sharing life with. And that’s why the church has historically made some big claims on our attention through worship and through regular gatherings together and shared meals. But if we replace those kinds of ecclesial practices with, you know, media consumption, then that the corollary is going to be that our sense of belonging shifts from the church to our sort of whatever however, we imagine our tribe of fellow news junkies.

BASHAM: That’s Jeffrey Bilbro talking to Warren Smith. Look for Listening In tomorrow to hear the whole conversation. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

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