Tweeting for the Lord

Amy O'Leary
(photo from Salt Institute for Documentary Studies
and Public Radio Exchange)

I have a theory that the Saturday news contains the juiciest stories. Often, the articles involve dirt or unpleasant PR someone either wants public or desperately wants buried. Occasionally, a feature pops up in which a trend begins to surface. Such is the case with a story in today's online edition of The New York Times. Reporter Amy O'Leary wrote an excellent, imaginative piece on how Christian organizations use Twitter to spread prayers and other messages to its user community.

One delicious observation in O'Leary's piece is how Biblical verses fit the 140-character limit for tweets. Not only do the verses come in under the Twitter bar, there's room for hash tags. This fortunate combination is made to order for the successful creation of tweets. Also, knowing the message gets to a defined community of like-minded users makes Twitter a powerful, compelling tool to spread one's religious messages.

The Christian communities have traditionally possessed their own means of communication. They have bypassed mainstream media and do their best to ignore it. The fact is the Christians don't need and don't want big-time media around, unless it's their own outlets. In a way, the Internet revolution played right into the Christian movement's hands. O'Leary's article brought that point home, ironically using the very tip of the secular media spear -- the front page of The New York Times -- the Christian world has long avoided and regarded with suspicion.