When people think of religion on YouTube, most probably flash to “gotcha” videos of Sarah Palin’s old church or Barack Obama’s old pastor. But the video-sharing site is also being used by a wildly diverse collection of pastors, rabbis, imams, gurus, and pious laypeople ”” like Roman Catholic Steve Silvia, who made the video above ”” to celebrate and explain their creeds. These aren’t glitzy televangelists. In keeping with the YouTube ethos, many simply fire up camcorder and go. But low cost and infinite range, plus the mini-video’s ascent as one of the culture’s preferred ways of imbibing information, means vastly increased exposure for clerics who would otherwise have tiny flocks. “For years, people in my business talked about how the Internet was going to revolutionize religion the way the printing press helped create Protestantism, but it didn’t happen,” says Steve Waldman, founder of the multi-faith website Beliefnet. But with the rise of YouTube, he thinks the unassuming, grass-roots religion clips like the ones that follow “could be the beginning of that kind of transformation.”
No question, youtube can be a powerful tool for reaching young people who are technically savvy — a youth minister who knows how to use this medium and all do podcasts has a leg up, and it’s not going to break the parish budget. It doesn’t have to be broadcast quality — in fact, younger people seem to prefer the grainy, unpolished stuff.
But as with most of this, we seem to be a little late to the party!
I agree with #1 100%. It’s a great tool and we are a little late.
I’ll add that this particular video is less something intended to help a non-Christian understand the basics of Christian belief (“explain their creeds”), or even (more specifically) Roman Catholic belief, but is rather intended as a screed against Protestants. In the language of marketing, or electoral polictics, it is less a positive ad showing you why X is so great, but more an “attack ad” showing why a perceived competitor is so awful. As with most attack ads, it comes across (correctly) as negative and fact-twisting (e.g. the ad is unaware of the tradition in Lutheran liturgy for the pastor to forgive sins via the authority given by Christ). I’m skeptical that this is probably the best example out there of Christ-centered orthodox and effective internet promotion of the catholic faith.