Is Your Church Watching You?

I WAS SITTING in a large auditorium full of market researchers. A speaker suggested that, by selling wrinkle cream, we were helping to make the world a better place because women would feel better about themselves. I looked around the room, thinking, “Is everyone buying into this? Do people really think this is true, or do they see that it’s just a corporate pep talk?”

I had worked in the world of international market research for nearly 10 years. Though there were a few moments like this one when something just didn’t feel right, in many ways I still didn’t see the issues I see so clearly now — marketing techniques are the air we breathe.

I eventually left my work in marketing to pursue a master’s in social justice and a doctorate in theological ethics. I began to investigate how marketing practices negatively impact how we live as human beings and how we think about marketing in the church. In contemporary society, we tend to view marketing techniques as neutral tools that can be applied in different contexts — whether for businesses, nonprofit fundraising, or church communication. But can we adapt tools that have been developed in the context of capitalistic profit maximization to the mission of the church? Are there fundamental differences in how the church views and relates to human beings?

David Lyon and Jason H. Pridmore, in the journal Surveillance & Society, identify marketing as “‘exemplar par excellence’ of contemporary surveillance,” which involves the intentional, systematized focus on individual, personal details for the purposes of “control, entitlement, management, influence, or protection.” This is part of a broader culture of surveillance that Lyon delineates, a culture that looks less like 1984 and more like films The Social Dilemma or The Circle.

As we have become accustomed to being surveilled, even if apparently at a distance, we participate in providing data to surveil ourselves, and we surveil others. All this raises theological questions about how the church participates in this culture and how it shapes the social relationships we imagine possible in the body of Christ.

The church through history has adapted its message to new media to pursue its missional goals, from Martin Luther and the printing press to George Whitefield’s newspaper promotion and televised Billy Graham events. Each shift raises questions about how different media affects our message. For example, we might ask what happens when we add visual images or video to our communication? While photos and video appear to present objective images, Brian Brock explains in Surveillance & Society that their view is limited in time and space, which shapes how we judge what is important to look at in a scene. As a result, how we see and know about an event, situation, or person gradually loses its relational character.

Today, as we spend more and more time online, the church faces pressure to communicate with people where they spend their time. In 2005, just 5 percent of adults in the United States used social media platforms, but by 2021, that number was 72 percent. About 70 percent of Facebook users and 60 percent of Instagram users, according to the Pew Research Center, visit the respective sites daily.

Life as a commodity

A NEW SET of ethical questions arises as digital media intersects heavily with what is now called surveillance capitalism. As Shoshana Zuboff explains in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, surveillance capitalists capture what used to be personal experiences of human beings, turning them into data-based behavioral profiles that can be commercialized — turning our life experiences into commodities. That data is inputted into machine intelligence tools to create predictions about how we will think and act in the future. These predictions are the products that surveillance capitalists sell to anyone interested.

For example, Google Ads are heavily utilized by churches and other nonprofits since Google offers up to $10,000 a month in free ads to qualifying nonprofits. Ads are generated and targeted to the users based on the behavioral profiles created by Google. Ads are only seen if Google deems it relevant based on a behavioral profile, and the advertiser only pays for the ad if someone clicks on it. Therefore, Google predictions intend to minimize the risk that an advertiser pays for ads to those who aren’t interested in them and increase the likelihood of finding those interested in them.

Though the current phase of surveillance capitalism started with Google and online advertising, the behavior of human beings is now gathered through location tracking by many means, including our phones and wearable devices, in stores, and through smart home devices such as the Amazon Echo and the Nest Thermostat. The predictions are also utilized beyond advertising — for example, to assess risk for mortgages, insurance, and government benefits.

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Churches increasingly rely on Google, Facebook, YouTube, and various mobile phone apps for ministry. Churches stream services on Facebook and YouTube, which collect data as people interact and watch. A variety of firms offer churches expertise in maximizing free Google Ads and running social media campaigns to advertise their programs and services. These targeted campaigns use the predictive tools from surveillance capitalists. A recent New York Times article reveals that some churches have direct partnerships with Facebook and are praising it for helping them grow during a pandemic. The possibilities and questions about the church using these tools are only beginning as the church adapts to an increasingly online environment, propelled in the last few years by COVID-19.

Our prayers are not off-limits either. Prominent Silicon Valley investors have bet big on prayer apps — making a profit on prayer and the personal information shared in these virtual communities. While a decade ago venture capitalists invested only $100,000 in religion and spirituality apps, by 2021 it was up to $175 million, according to Christianity Today. Many of these apps collect user data and can sell it. For example, Pray.com offers free services to churches to share prayer requests and receive tithes, but according to a Buzzfeed investigation, the site tracks and sells to third parties the personal data entered as prayer requests.

Churches participate more broadly in surveillance by utilizing church management software that tracks attendance, giving, and participation by members, allowing churches to analyze data and communicate with specific groups of people. Churches may also create their own apps that utilize data from their members. For example, one prominent megachurch has an app that, according to its privacy policy, does not sell user information but uses it to communicate with users, to “help you grow spiritually,” to “enable staff in relevant roles to minister effectively,” and to “deliver targeted ... marketing and promotional messages to you.” The church also purchases supplementary data that it matches to its own user data to statistically analyze the effectiveness of its marketing, among other things.

‘Observation without witness’

THESE PRACTICES RAISE at least two sets of ethical questions. The first is to think about what it means for the church to actively participate in the work of companies that create a massive imbalance and inequity in knowledge and power for the sake of profit. It is virtually impossible to escape these networks, and likely most churches or individuals aren’t ready to give up their social media pages. However, the more we actively utilize data for targeting communication or encourage our congregations to engage in these spaces, the more power we give to surveillance capitalists.

The power of surveillance capitalists is not evenly distributed. Data privileges some and is disproportionately used against others — further perpetuating inequalities. The data gathered can be used to discriminate against people that the algorithms deem risky, including those in poverty and people of certain genders, races, or ethnicities. This can manifest in discrimination for government assistance or access to credit, or it can involve the monitoring of activity as a requirement for access. Surveillance capitalism also enables predatory targeting of services such as payday loans to those ripe for exploitation.

As we consider our own participation, from our personal online presence to jobs that may involve surveillance, we can pay attention to these details. We must recognize that our participation is not neutral. As Eric Stoddart argues in The Common Gaze, one way we can transform surveillance is to recognize and aim for “the common good, inflected with a preferential optic for those who are (digitally) poor.” He calls for solidarity and “watching with rather than over others.”

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The second set of ethical questions relates to how the modes of watching and communicating fit with the church’s ministry. People have always been watching or have been watched by others; consider the parable of the Good Shepherd who counts and goes after a lost sheep. But modern surveillance contrasts with the way God sees and responds to the world and therefore how we are called to pay attention to each other. Many of the techniques promise the ability to know people, personalize communication, and build community. Yet the knowledge generated is radically impersonal, what Shoshana Zuboff calls “observation without witness.” In capturing data that approximates human beings, surveillance capitalists are indifferent to the realities of our personal lives and interpret the data for their own purposes. While church leaders may not be indifferent, the reliance on data keeps us at a distance from real people and allows us to interpret their lives for our own goals.

To know and individualize communication, big data is used to sort and filter human beings into predetermined categories. Leaders can then select who they think are valuable to communicate with for a given message. The goal is to prioritize people deemed most valuable by leaders, whether in terms of finances or responsiveness to specific messages. In a church, this might look like categorizing people based on giving, attendance, or volunteer status. When one group is targeted as more valuable, others are necessarily of a lesser value.

This teaches us to relate to people-based categories that we deem to be important based on our objectives and expectations. As we communicate with people according to their categorizations, their identity is shaped and reinforced by the messages they receive, and they are cut off from engaging in a wider community with others who aren’t like them. In all this supposed accumulation of knowledge, we learn to know and communicate with people without care, love, and attention to their real experiences. While this may be an effective — if exploitative — way to generate profit for a business, there are theological issues when applying this to the church.

Surveillance techniques falsely attempt to approximate the discernment and communication already available to the church in the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul’s famous passage on spiritual gifts in the body of Christ, we see some important contrasts with surveillance. Surveillance tools offer leaders the ability to manage their congregations, but Paul tells us this action is reserved for God (verse 18). The Spirit arranges people in the body of Christ and does so in ways that defy our expectations. Similarly, the Spirit communicates and reveals gifts in all of us with particular attention to those we least expect (verses 22-24). All of this requires relational knowing of a diverse body of believers, not abstract, indifferent knowledge of people just like us. Seeing each person as God has gifted them while rejoicing and suffering together is the basis of a unified community (verses 24-26).

Amid a culture of surveillance, we must be aware of the social categories — indeed, our very propensity to categorize people at all — and instead learn to pay attention to specific people in the fullness of their physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences so we can receive and communicate the gifts the Spirit gives. Only in this way can we know each other, communicate effectively, and receive what the Spirit is doing.

What Power Do You Trust?

Questions and actions for churches on surveillance, data, and the gifts of the Spirit.

CONSIDER INVITING OTHERS in your church to discuss how you might take small steps together to reimagine the shape of your community. Check out Restless Devices, by sociologist Felicia Wu Song, for resources to change your relationship with your devices and digital media. As the church learns to think and live differently, we offer witness to God’s life in the world. I want to offer some questions and thoughts for the church’s use of surveillance.

The first question may sound simple: What power do you trust? Surveillance offers ways to accrue knowledge and power to grow and manage our churches, but who deserves our trust — a power driven by impersonal knowledge and profit, or the power of the Word and Spirit that creates and sustains all things? If we trust the power of surveillance, I would suggest we are aspiring to be our own gods, to control things ourselves, and we risk missing out on the Spirit who is always doing a new thing. This doesn’t mean we can’t utilize online communication or technology at all, but trust in God must change our orientation in the world.

Second, ask how and why you use social media and other online tools. Try to go beyond answers like efficiency, expectations, or “because we can” — the prevailing rationale in our technological age. Consider eliminating targeted advertisements and minimizing the ways people need to interact with you online in order to be part of the community. For example, is the only way to communicate with a particular group within your church via a Facebook group? Can that interaction be moved off social media? Maximize in-person, human connection while paying attention to the needs of people in your community who may still need virtual options. Let your personal interactions and knowledge of what’s happening in your congregation drive the way you communicate.

Third, check the privacy policies of technology you use. Many free services, as well as some paid services, rely on surveillance capitalism, but we have options. For example, Vimeo is a video hosting and streaming service that does not rely on surveillance capitalism, while YouTube does.

Finally, following 1 Corinthians 12, how might the Spirit be inviting you to reevaluate and upset the ways you categorize and relate to people? Since we swim in the waters of a surveillance culture, relating to people in data-driven categories feels normal. Our social norms put people into higher-or lower-priority positions. Reach out to different people in your congregation, ask them their story, and see what you learn about how God is working in their lives. As we follow the Spirit and discern the gifts and needs of people in a diverse body, we can communicate according to how God is at work and trust God’s provision and care.