RCCongress 2010 Highlights

As first reported by Interfaithing in early December of last year, the 2010 edition of the Religion Communication Congress came to a close last week. The Religion Communication Congress 2010 (RCCongress 2010) ran from April 7th-10th and gathered hundreds of professionals in the fields of media and religion to Chicago for a series of workshops, roundtable discussions, guest speakers, and special performances.

The RCCongress is a once-a-decade interfaith forum that provides a hands-on opportunity for media and religion professionals to learn how to effectively communicate matters of faith responsibly and fairly to a shrinking world of religiously and culturally diverse people by utilizing the latest technologies and communication practices.

Best-selling author and winner of the 2009 Wilbur Award, Mitch Albom, opened the RCCongress 2010 with a riveting speech that laced together the two stories that inspired his latest book Have a Little Faith. The first was Albom’s own eight-year journey to rediscovering his faith while he prepared to preach the eulogy of his childhood Rabbi. The second was the story of Henry Covington, a drug-dealer-turned-pastor ministering to the poor and homeless of Detroit. These two polar opposite experiences taught Albom one very important lesson; we are all men of God.

"If we truly believed that, we would have to treat each other better. We would have to, because we would see everybody the same," Albom said.

An interfaith comedy team comprised of Susan Sparks (an American Baptist Church pastor), Azhar Usman (a Muslim lawyer), and Bob Alper (an ordained rabbi) entertained congress-goers on the opening day as well, showing a lighter side to religion.

Alper said, "When people laugh together from all different backgrounds, they can't hate each other."

The morning of the second day of the congress, renowned religion historian and professor emeritus of the University of Chicago Divinity School, Dr. Martin Marty, moderated a panel that addressed the changing media landscape and asked, “When news stories that were posted four hours ago are old, how in the world can you keep up?” Panelists included Kevin Eckstrom (editor of Religion News Service/proffesor of Journalism at Northwestern University), Barbara Bradley Hegerty (religion reporter for National Public Radio/author), and Kenneth Irby (founder of the photojournalism program at the Poynter Institute and head of the institute’s visual journalism group). The panel discussed the positive and negative issues wrought by the social media revolution, followed by a question and answer period for the audience at the end.

On the third day of the congress, founder and director of The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Diana Eck gave a keynote address to the participants about the necessary use of new communication venues to spread a message of hope.

"Pluralism begins with difference. Real religious pluralism means our engagement with one another requires building sturdy relationships," said Diana Eck.

She added, "religious faith is a powerful force in people's lives and choices. We must find new ways to spread the message of hope through new communication venues in our world." This is the goal of The Pluralism Project; to bring changing views on religion into the open and try to understand our differences.

"Pluralism is more than differences, more than tolerance. It requires we know something of others. It is based on relationships," said Diana Eck.

At the end of her keynote address, Dr. Eck summed up the presentation. "Religious identity touches all parts of life. Join us to learn and interpret. The Pluralism Project is the work of all us. Pluralism is energetic engagement, active seeking and based on dialogue. We must ask ourselves what human capital do we need to bridge our differences."

Also on April 9th, Director of Macdonald Center or the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, Dr. Ingrid Mattson address the congress about the struggles of Muslims in post 9/11 America.

"How do you respond to injustice when you are persecuted because someone hijacked your religion? We had to divert money, human resources, creativity, thoughts, strategy to keep the Muslim community safe," she said. "God has a purpose and we are only responsible for our own response."

Dr. Mattson explained how these difficulties led more and more Muslims to better understand the need for interfaith work and push for an accurate global perception of who Muslims really are.

On the closing day of the congress, Rev. Otis Moss of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago gave a plenary address telling the older generation of faith communicators to be ready to “remix” your message. Infamous for his work in developing a new generation of prophetic faith leaders and for his ability to bridge the generation gap, Rev. Moss spoke of the need to take the tried and true values that have always existed and apply new methods that the new generation can relate to.

"We support our generation, the young people will support theirs. Only the method will change, not the message. Remix love, compassion, justice, race, and faithfulness," he said.

The closing day of the RCCongress 2010 also saw a plenary session led by Director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Jeffery Cole. Cole spoke of the future of global communication and how we need to think mobile.

"Mobile is at the center of everything," said Cole.

An estimated 4.7 billion people out of the world’s 6.8 billion population has a mobile phone. More so than the personal computer, mobile phones are bring more embraced globally than any other single electronic communication device.

Cole offered his advice to faith-based communicators in their search to determine which media platforms to embrace, discard, and ignore."Your learning curve needs to be steeper than your action curve." In practical terms, that means, "you don't have to be on Twitter. But you have to understand Twitter."

Through studies conducted Cole predicted that newspapers in printed form have about a five-year future, magazines have more of a future in their traditional form, and television will continue a trend where is "escapes from the home" and "becomes a constant companion" on the Web and is watched on computers and mobile phones.

Ultimately, Cole said social networking is “the real deal”. He noted that Facebook alone has 400 million active users. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world.

To sum up Cole’s plenary session, being able to navigate through new means of communication as a means to reach the younger generations is critical for religious bodies and faith-based organizations.

Wesbite: www.rccongress2010.org

Photos courtesy of George Conklin