A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Cyberspace
By Dr. Ronald Hecker Cram
Ron is president of the Religious Education Association and Associate Professor of Christian Education at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He is Roman Catholic and a member of Emory University Catholic Center. An article on implications for adult religious development of childhood bully experiences will be published "on paper" this summer in the journal Religious Education.

I was born in 1953, one of the "Boomer" generation. I grew up in a Southern California home that was part of a new suburban housing tract. A lima bean farm surrounded my boyhood home, and there was plenty of room to play, and to explore. My father, born in 1902 in the state of Maine, had grown up on a farm. My father could remember his grandfather talking about Napoleon. My grandfather drove the first automobile in his little New England town. There was a sense of time that was generational. My father refused to have a television in our home when I was growing up. He said, "It's just a fad. Who would sit in front of a machine and watch pictures?

This last semester, Columbia Theological Seminary, Candler School of Theology, and the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, offered a course entitled, "Changing Trends in Christian Education." It was a great course. I was responsible for teaching the first session-on the topic of technology! I told my colleagues that I knew almost nothing about the topic, but they encouraged me to go forward. I had a contact at CNN, so I made arrangements for the class to see how CNN was relating its work to the public school. Then I had the pleasure of meeting Ray Carter, chair of the ABC news affiliate advisory board for the United States. I began to understand two things as a result of this course: as a Christian educator, I was basically unaware of the vast electronic resources available for educators; and I was totally unaware that cyberspace was a new context for Christian educators to take seriously.

Cyberspace a context? Atlanta is a context in which I work and play. Asia is a context. Europe is a context. But is cyberspace a context? Yes, cyberspace is a context-one which has never before existed in human history. There are virtual churches in cyberspace in which people-composed mostly of persons born before 1965-are finding faith and community. There are meeting places in cyberspace in which people are becoming friends. A colleague here at Columbia told me only last week that his son met his wife in a chat room. The relationship grew, they decided to meet in "real time," and eventually married!

While some of my generation (and older) ask questions such as, "Can there be real community in cyberspace?" or "Can real learning take place on the WEB?" young people are doing both! Films like The Matrix are as much about religion and belief in a cyberspace context as they are about entertainment. Are we religious educators listening with care to the religious insights of a cyberspace context of a new generation?

One last thought. This last weekend, I was in Chicago for a board meeting of the Religious Education Association. We met at one of the loveliest homes I have ever seen. Religious paintings from the 17th, 16th, and even 14th centuries hung on the walls. Two paintings of the crucifixion were particularly wonderful. Then our host turned to me and said, "Most young people have no use for this kind of art. The market has fallen through the bottom for Western religious art-only gray-hairs buy it any more. Most young people who come to my home are repulsed by this art. I have to explain to them what the crucifixion is, they do not know. Western culture is passing away." Then he looked me straight in the eye and asked-demanding an answer-"Did you expect this to happen?" I replied almost unconsciously, "No, I did not." In that moment, I realized that the world has changed!

So I turn to you, dear reader, and demand an answer to this question, "If the world has changed, (and it has changed!), what are we as Christian religious educators called to do?" I await your answer.

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