Email to Friend
What would Jesus tweet?
Trinity Wall Street performs virtual passion play on Twitter
That is, until this past Good Friday, when Trinity Church Wall Street in New York "tweeted" a Passion Play between noon and three o'clock on the social-networking and microblogging site called Twitter.
Twitter allows people to transmit, or "tweet," 140-character messages so that their friends and others who sign up to "follow" them can be updated on their whereabouts, activities and thoughts.
While most of the Twitter-ing world is concerned about such social contacts, Twitter is also being used in other ways. The Los Angeles Fire Department used Twitter to relay public information during a series of wildfires in 2007. An official of the Israeli government staged a Twitter news conference in late December to answer questions from the public about its military actions in Gaza. Barack Obama's presidential inauguration committee tweeted traffic, parking, public-transit and other information during the January inaugural events.
Individuals witnessing occurrences such as the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India and the January 2009 landing of a U.S. Airways plane in New York's Hudson River were known to be among the first to transmit news of the events. It is claimed that organizers of what became a 10,000-student protest in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau on April 8 used Twitter to coordinate the gathering.
Linda Hanick, Trinity's vice president for communications and marketing, told ENS that her office believes that the passion play was the first time Twitter was used for a narrative.
Trinity set up a "group tweet" which allowed it to create six individual accounts for JesusChrist, Pontius Pilate, Peter, ServingGirl, Mary_Mother_of, and JosephArimethea. It then publicized its plan and invited people to follow the group tweet. Each character's Twitter page included a photo taken from Trinity's online Stations of the Cross.
"It was amazing because the interest in it hit so quickly on Friday morning and we went from roughly 70 followers early Friday morning to, by 1:30 and 2 [p.m.], about 1,700 followers," Nathan Brockman, editor of Trinity's website and other publications, told ENS on April 14.
Brockman's colleague, Leah Reddy, who has a theater background, wrote a script based on the Gospel of Mark, and sent out the tweets from each character.
"It sincerely was an attempt to re-tell the story in a reverential way …the script was very moving," Hanick said. "It wasn't a spoof … we used the language of the New Testament."
Twitter is a two-way -- or multi-lane--street, and as the play progressed, some of its followers began to participate. Some commented on the play. MattReeve, who appears to have been the first such responder after the start of the play, tweeted: "This is a fantastic way of sharing Christ in a updated way. Love it."
A few minutes later jgderuvo protested: "Guys, stay within the 140 character limit ... it's truncating, ruining the effect!"
Brockman said that the tweets occasionally went over the limit because the tweeter's name and other information are included in the character count. The entire tweet could be read online.
Other participants took on personas of people in the story. "People were engaged as though they were there in person," Brockman said.
For instance, romanguard1 tweeted: "I've got dibs on his robe, but if you guys want to cast lots for the rest of his clothes I'm cool with that"
His tweet came just after the following series:
"PontiusPilate: They want this done by nightfall. I sent my soldiers to break the dead men’s legs. Are my hands clean of this?
"JosephArimathea: is sleepwalking through this. I cut the tomb, bought the linen, hold his body—and he’s gone
Mary_Mother_Of: I saw the water and the blood. I want to scream with him: Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"
JesusChrist had tweeted his last words nearly an hour earlier: "Father into thy hands I commit my spirit."
There was one inappropriate tweet. Marymagdalene tweeted an acronym for a vulgarity.
"We were prepared to catch that sort of thing and deal with it, and we did," Brockman said. "We didn't know the acronym stood for, actually, and when it became apparent to us, we removed it right away."
Brockman put the offending tweet in perspective: it was one comment from among the 2,700 to 2,800 people who were receiving the passion play. "I was amazed by the engagement that people were showing on Twitter and by the civility that they showed one another," he said. "Sometimes, people hear that online environments can get quite nasty. This certainly didn't."
The entire transcript can be read here. A Twitter account is not required.
Hanick said that the tweeted passion play was not meant to draw people away from traditional Good Friday church services. "We were looking to tell the story from noon to three in a technology that reaches people that would not normally go to church from noon to three," she said.
Hanick said she heard from people who were working during those hours, but also following the play. They told her that "it was very powerful to get a text message every six or seven minutes with a tweet on was happening next. They were going through their day, but it was in their consciousness and that really was what the goal was."
Brockman said "we seem to have struck the right note at the right time. I think people were really taken by the fact that we're an Episcopal church as old as we are -- going back to the 17th century -- and we are willing to go out there and meet people where they are in the current moment with the latest in social-networking technology."
Hanick said the feedback show that "people found that it was moving, which was what we were hoping, we were hoping to give people an experience of Good Friday."
Both Hannick and Brockman said that the Twitter passion play was the latest in what Brockman called "our long-term, on-going experiment" with new media. Trinity is known for its award-winning print publications and website that features video and audio streams.
The idea for to stage a passion play on Twitter grew out of a brainstorming session after the staff completed work on its online Advent calendar, said Hanick who admits that "I didn't quite get it" when the idea was first proposed.
After promoting the passion play to the secular media, Hannick fielded a number of inquiries about the experiment. She reported that most of the reporters "thought it was hip and cool and innovative that a church was using this technology in a powerful way."
"I think it was positive for the Episcopal Church and we were using it not to make a statement; we were using it to tell the story of the Passion," she said.
» Respond to this article
2007
Search
Browse by Topic:
Multimedia »