I finally wrote back to that nice fellow who contacted me from the Chalcedon Foundation, offering to answer any questions I may have about their group. Here’s what I wrote back to him:

chris, thanks so much for your email, sense of humor and openness to discussion. i’m hard pressed to think of qualities which would be more useful in our culture right now. ive been thinking about it for a few days, but haven’t cooked up any good questions for you. hopefully, its a standing invitation though, because you seem like a great resource to have available. also, if you’re ever so inclined, i would love to
hear your impressions/reactions to material i write about. comments are open to all, and i’m sure you’d bring a unique perspective to my readers, but also to my own thinking as well.

again, thanks for getting in touch.

I would absolutely love it if he really wants to engage in conversation with me (and all of us here), although I’m not too interested in having it be about the Christian Reconstructionist agenda. I’m much more curious to see what he thinks of people like Jacques Vallee and Philip K. Dick. That might actually be really interesting.

I have to admit, I’m a little suspicious of why he contacted me in the first place, since one of the headlines on their website says “Christianity is Under Attack” and also “Help Chalcedon resist opposing worldviews.” I tend to think that it’s sort of a veiled attempt at marketing - that is softening a possibly (and one might say deservedly) negative image by zeroing in on people who seem to be “opinion-makers,” or what Malcolm Gladwell terms “Mavens” in his book, the Tipping Point.

Mavens are the information gatherers of the social network. They evaluate the messages that come through the network and they pass their evaluations on to others, along with the messages. We can view mavens as regulators of the network because they have the power to control what flows through the network. We trust mavens, and this is especially important because their assessments can often make or break the tipping of an epidemic. Mavens drive many of our social institutions. They are the people who inform the better business bureau, regulate prices, write letters to senators, etc. in order that the rest of us don’t have to.

From a marketing perspective, the idea is that if you as a marketer reach out to these people successfully, then they will in turn do a lot of your marketing for you for free, and it will seem like it’s coming from “credible trusted” sources. Of course, whether I am credible or trusted is open to debate. But I certainly do represent an “opposing worldview.” That much is certain.