As a follow up to that Media Reformation post, I wanted to look around and see if anybody else has anything good about that topic. There are not a lot of people using that phrase at the moment. Most of the ones who are seem to be Christians who are trying to convince other Christians to get in on the electronic “multimedia” bandwagon to help bring their congregations up to speed with the rest of the media-driven world. A fellow named Michael Slaughter put out a book to that effect called Out on the Edge: A Wake-Up Call for Church Leaders on the Edge of the Media Reformation. Good for them, I guess, for at least sort of trying to keep pace with the world, even though it seems like sort of a cheesy attempt. I think they are really missing the more important parallels that could be drawn between the Protestant Reformation though, and what is currently happening today with ordinary people’s relationship to the media.

In fact, the only useful item I found about this Information or Media Reformation comes from an older post on a blog called Arguing With Signposts.

One of the core doctrines of the baptist strand of the Christian faith is the “priesthood of all believers.” This is a doctrine that flows from the Protestant Reformation which essentially says that all believers act as their own “priest,” able to approach God individually.

This is in contrast to the traditional Catholic understanding, whereby individual believers must seek absolution for their sins through the priest, who acts as a “go-between” for the believer to God. The Catholic understanding was based in the old testament Jewish practice, where one priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple, representing the entire nation of Israel.

In the rise of the blogosphere, and alternatives to the mainstream media (like Talk Radio), I see a “Media Reformation” taking place.

This is becoming evident in something I am calling the “Mediahood of all Receivers.”

No longer are the professional journalists the “priests” of the temple of information. Rather, information receivers are able to go around the media to access information on their own. But more than that, individual receivers are able to publish their own thoughts, in effect “becoming” the media.

While I think the “Mediahood of All Receivers” is an unfortunate choice of phraseology, I think his overall premise is exceptionally good, and I’ve been working along these same lines of thought for at least two years. I wonder if and when it will get picked up into the mainstream, because I think it has a really explosive potential, were it to be delivered in the right way to people. All we need is a Martin Luther, in some sense. Something to catalyze the process of change around. I need to go back and read more about the original Reformation, I think. I bet, if nothing else, using that as a metaphor, you could probably pull out some good business models based on what happened historically.