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<\/a><\/p>\nWe are more aware of evil than any generation before us. We receive news-stories of illnesses we\u2019ve never heard of breaking out in countries whose names we cannot pronounce. We are updated \u2014 between cat-videos \u2014 with terrorist bombings, genocides, hurricanes, shootings, and rapes. We are daily informed of suffering we cannot relieve.<\/p>\n
Though the mode of the Internet tends to level tragedies into objects of interest \u2014 nestling images of the crucifixion of Christians in Syria<\/a> alongside instagrammed nachos, each with the possibility of being \u201cliked\u201d \u2014 nevertheless we know that we cannot perceive these atrocities neutrally. The abduction of Nigerian girls, the child-slavery of Joseph Kony in Uganda \u2014 these are injustices. These are unspeakable atrocities. To know about them is to become, in some way, responsible to them.<\/p>\n This is an easy enough principle to apply to, say, Nazi Germany. We condemned the citizens who knew of the concentration camps outside of their towns and did nothing. Here it is clear: Knowledge of injustice comes with the responsibility to administer justice. It is less clear when the \u201cconcentration camps\u201d are sex slavery rings in Saudi Arabia, our \u201ctown\u201d is in Virginia, and our knowledge comes from NPR. Are we still responsible for the evils we perceive from a distance, and if so, how do we respond to what we cannot immediately, tangibly alter?<\/p>\n Now for the Christian, the answer is obvious: Prayer and fasting. The world is big, the distances are far, but God is one, and we all live in him. Thus there is no suffering we cannot respond to, no personal strife we cannot intercede for, no foreign war we cannot petition for peace. When Syria got bad, Pope Francis called for a day of prayer and fasting. We in America, otherwise estranged from immediate, effective action towards Syrian peace, participated. This was our response, our real engagement in an atrocity we would otherwise only look at from the sideline of communications media.<\/p>\n But in a post-Christian society, and more generally, a post-prayer society, the answer to our increasing awareness of atrocity is becoming, more and more, the Twitter campaign. To overcome our impotence in the face of injustice and suffering, we tweet, share, or more generally, talk<\/em> about it.<\/p>\n Consider Kony2012. We perceived a moral evil \u2014 the actions of Joseph Kony, child-slaver. We felt a responsibility \u2014 that he should be stopped. To effect this end, we raised awareness. We talked about him. We made him a celebrity. The idea was simple \u2014 if we created enough buzz, someone \u2014 maybe the U.N., maybe the U.S., maybe the Ugandan government \u2014 would stop him.<\/p>\n It is 2014, and Kony still does his thing<\/a>. We have ceased speaking of him and his actions. We have ceased feeling bad about his child-soliders. In between Joseph Kony enslaving children and Joseph Kony continuing to enslave children was a massive, orchestrated, American conversation about Joseph Kony enslaving children.<\/p>\n This, of course, is a good example of the fundamental myth involved in raising awareness. Awareness is not action. No matter how much \u201cawareness\u201d exists, it does not become magically mutate into action by virtue of being present in the minds a million. Awareness may inspire action, sure, but this is no guarantee \u2014 especially not in an age increasingly comfortable with being merely \u201caware.\u201d<\/p>\n What are we to make of these \u201ccampaigns\u201d? What are we to call it when those who cannot or will not act directly and immediately against a perceived moral evil nevertheless create a \u201cmovement\u201d against it with t-shirts, bumpers stickers, memes, and millions of dollars? Of course it is not all bad \u2014 these movements raise money and donate it to other people who can<\/em> act. These movements may touch the heart of someone who is willing to sacrifice more than his Facebook status. But it is not all good, either. \u201cAwareness\u201d can sidetrack the energy and passion which serves as necessary propellant for action. \u201cTalking about\u201d Joseph Kony with fervor and righteousness can feel a whole lot like doing something \u2014 and thus be the very mode by which we do nothing at all. Or, as in the case of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, a well-intentioned outcry against a moral evil can bring \u201cfree publicity\u201d to criminals<\/a> who want just that \u2014 to be talked about without being acted upon.<\/p>\n But considered outside of its total effects, considered instead as a personal act, what is the essence of hashtag activism, this social-media campaigning that does not involve getting up from the laptop?<\/p>\n It is a post-Christian replacement for prayer.<\/p>\n Prayer is a fundamentally human reality. There is no culture on earth that does not participate in some form of prayer, petition, worship, praise or\u00a0sacrifice, seeing the events of the world and of their lives as interwoven in the life of a deity. The removal of prayer from a human life is not akin to dropping a particular eating habit. Prayer is integral, primordial \u2014 it will have to be replaced.<\/p>\n This is the modus operandi<\/em> of American secularism, and perhaps of secularism in general. We introduce new forms of the religious rituals we discard. Holy days become holidays, Valentine\u2019s Day persists without St. Valentine, churches become museums, fasting becomes dieting, almsgiving becomes philanthropy, and the sacrament of confession is replaced by the \u201ctell-all insincerity\u201d of pseudo-therapy.<\/p>\n St. Therese of Liseux says \u201cprayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven.\u201d The \u201cactivist\u201d hashtag is certainly a surge of the heart. It is an articulated, emotional response to a perceived evil. And it is, beyond doubt, \u201cturned towards heaven\u201d \u2014 a lesser heaven populated by lesser gods.<\/p>\n Sharing and spreading Kony2012, #BringBackOurGirls and movements of similiar ilk cries out to a general \u201chigher power.\u201d There is no specific plan of action. Michelle Obama, married to the most powerful man on earth, could hold up the hashtag without irony for precisely this reason \u2014 the tweet calls on \u201csomeone, somewhere\u201d to take action, not a particular person.<\/p>\n (I do not for a moment doubt her sincerity in joining the campaign. But I believe in it as I believe in the sincerity of a prayer cried to a God \u2014 we do not know precisely who we are crying to, nor do we articulate precisely how we wish to be answered.)<\/p>\n Prayer does not demand a response from God. We ask, but we also know that \u201cwe do not know how to ask,\u201d that our motives are usually impure (if not downright despicable), and that the ultimate purpose of prayer is not to barter with God, but to open ourselves to His plan \u2014 to say, \u201cthy will be done.\u201d Often I have found that my petition seemed necessary, that a result had to be obtained \u2014 until I began praying for it. It is a paradox: We may sincerely ask that God do this or that thing, but we find, even in our asking, that what we really want is something far deeper \u2014 to know God, to know that He loves us.<\/p>\n The Twitter campaign mirrors this fact somewhat perversely. We do not demand a result. Kony2012 did not achieve the result of stopping Kony \u2014 but we are quite finished with Kony2012. The t-shirts we bought have sunk to the bottom of our dresser drawers. Yes, it is true that these movements often lead to some perfunctory gestures from various governments, but the vast majority of people don\u2019t follow the movement long enough to even see such \u201cresults,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0indicating that results weren\u2019t quite the goal of the average hashtag activist.<\/p>\n I understand that from the outset of these campaigns, a decisive action \u2014 a \u201cvictory\u201d \u2014 is spoken of. So too with prayers of petition. But it is soon revealed that the real purpose was not the result but the campaign itself. We needed to say something. Our own impotence was bubbling inside us. We were being made responsible. We had to do something, but we could not, so we said something, and said it a lot. Through Kony2012 we were all absolved of our own impotence \u2014 even though we did not act, and those higher powers who did<\/em> act did not achieve the goal of the campaign.<\/p>\n The Christian resolves his own impotence in the power of God, who is strong when we are weak. The campaigner resolves his own inadequacy in the mass, in the power of \u201cawareness\u201d spread amongst so many millions \u2014 in the crowd that is loud when he is quiet. This similarity is crucial. Both modes of petition create a community. Hashtag activism groups individuals into common purpose by way of common media \u2014 a shared tagline, shared logos, the \u201cbrand\u201d of the movement. Prayer creates community in that we are united by our relationship to God, in our mutual dependence on him, in a communion that is not a crowd but a Church.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n