Invisible Children: A Better Story About Faith and Science

I want to take a break from the usual does-science-contradict-faith controversies and look at the intersection of faith and science in another way ... from the perspective of the Kony 2012 campaign.

I've been studying and researching faith for a few years now, and though I am not sure I know anything more than when I started, I have learned that one definition of faith implies that something is not as it should be. In other words, faith inherently houses a sense of absence or waiting or longing for a situation, climate, circumstance to be changed. Faith then, to differentiate from belief, becomes a way of living in the world that is in contradistinction to the current state, situation, or reality. It is not simply marginal protest that cries against an issue without an alternative; no, such protest is easily dismissed and often needed to maintain the status quo. Rather, it is a lived alternative that in some ways works to bring about the reality clutched by faith and in other ways is already realized through the faithful living of such subcommunities.

Regardless of the many criticisms laid against the Kony 2012 campaign, I want to point out that Invisible Children seems to me to be just such a "faith-fueled" organization because it has what Walter Brueggemann calls "prophetic imagination." Invisible Children is prophetic because it envisions an alternate reality which does not yet exist -- the capture of Joseph Kony and the complete dissolution of the LRA. It uses imagination because, with both obvious and super-subtle forces of acculturation today, it is harder than ever before to cause and create a change to a faith-fueled vision of "things as they should be." As Walter Brueggemann notes, the old confrontational model rarely affects change today. In this way, it is not enough to prophetically envision an alternate reality, for one must also imaginatively create ways to reach and enact that reality in such a technology-based and interconnected world.

And this is where science and faith and prophetic imagination have come together in one of Invisible Children's initiatives. In living as though Joseph Kony should be behind bars, Invisible Children has creatively used scientific technologies of crowdsourcing and crowdmapping geographic information in order to bring about the capture of Kony and the LRA. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a greatly expanding topic in science and technology and includes the use of crowdsourcing information for digital mapmaking as well as crowdsourcing validation and verification of the very map data initially crowdsourced. For example, using Facebook and Twitter posts from people on the ground, a company like GeoCommons can be used after a hurricane hits a nuclear power plant during a children's school festival to create a map centered on the route of the hurricane. The route could be overlaid with a map of all primary schools in the area that were participating, overlaid with a map of all functioning hospitals with pediatric services in a 100 mile radius, overlaid with a map of the highest areas of active radiation, for instance.

Invisible Children, sourcing information from the UN and NGOs, has created the LRA Crisis Tracker, a public, real-time mapping platform that collects and publishes data mapping the LRA's movements and actions including sightings, looting, injuries, abductions and civilian deaths. This tracker works in coordination with Invisible Children's Early Warning Radio Network and has given greater visibility to the LRA's movements, warning people and communities of the LRA's advances and showing the world that, though the LRA has fewer soldiers, it is still active in countries neighboring Uganda.

This is a perfect example of faith and science working together. Invisible Children has prophetically pictured a different reality, living as if it were true, working to cause it to be true, and creatively using science and technology to bring about this alternate story. Invisible Children's faith, infused with prophetic imagination, not only causes the organization to live towards a different story, but has clearly invited others to join in living just such a better story.

 

Comments

[AF Hill]

08:48 PM on 04/20/2012

I think Walter Brueggemann would be highly offended that you compared IC's model to the "prophetic imagination." The reason IC is so successful is because they turn Ugandans into a spectacle and encourage teenagers to buy bracelets and t-shirts (I know because I was one of them for four years), until I started looking at the effects of such tactics. As the prophetic imagination actually imagines an alternative instead of just killing a guy, I would say, no, this is not the prophetic imagination. This is much more of a "kill this guy" and "get on with your life." There is no questioning of systems or reality in this organization.

[Bruce Wilson]

01:13 PM on 04/21/2012

Yes, exactly.

And this just in - Invisible Children is now accused of covering up human rights abuses committed by the Ugandan and DR Congolese armies operating in regions the DR Congo.

See: http://www.kony2012-is-a-scam.org/index.php?p=news&w=a&id=10&s=invisible-children-s-lra-crisis-tracker-is-a-sham-and-a-scam-

And: http://www.irinnews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=95083

[methodman]

11:26 AM on 04/19/2012

I think you mean prayer not faith. Prayer which I am, defiantly suspect of, hostile to, and show an open contempt for could be used to foster deductive reasoning, indirect reasoning, inductive reasoning and conditional statements. Faith is really confusing because the important definitions belonging to words where the words are not called appropriately. For example Opening; which actually only is necessary for a few people who can then show it to many people but it is actually important late. Most people don't need to be doing that. Most people need to contemplate manual transmissions along mental lines and the slight perception adjustments. See again how confusing this is. This is faith talk again it is ridiculous and no Christian is going to respect it. Hence I have no respect for Christians. Or Faith, Or prayer or pastors. or Religion. Just speak'n Truth.

[PhilosopherJon]

09:03 AM on 04/19/2012

When there is hope, there can be scientific innovation.

[Bruce Wilson]

08:07 AM on 04/19/2012

From the Uganda monitor:

"Ms Margaret Aciro, whose picture appears in the Kony 2012 video showing her lips, nose and ears mutilated, has criticised the documentary, saying it is aimed at making money using victims of the northern insurgency.

Ms Aciro, 35, abducted by rebels of the LRA in 2003 from Paicho Sub-county in Gulu Municipality, was among thousands of people who flocked Pece War Memorial Stadium on Friday to watch the filming of Kony 2012 by Invisible Children.

“I watched the Kony 2012 video but I decided to return home before the second one (Kony 2012 Par II) because I was dissatisfied with its content. I became sad when I saw my photo in the video. I knew they were using it to profit.”

As the Uganda Monitor articles goes on to describe, some of the estimated 10,000 Northern Ugandans present for the screening became enraged by the Invisible Children videos and started throwing rocks. As the Monitor puts it, "Dissatisfied with the content, the crowd pelted the organisers with stones".

Police responded by shooting tear gas at the crowd and firing their rifles in the air. According to other accounts in Ugandan media, there was at least one death and "many" injuries.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1387926/-/aw2cd3z/-/index.html

[escholar]

09:24 PM on 04/18/2012

Invisible Agenda -
Invisible Children seem to have an invisible agenda, that hopefully will become visible to everyone, sooner or later.

- http://www.infowars.com/kony-2012-has-evangelical-christian-and-us-intelligence-roots/

[Bruce Wilson]

05:27 PM on 04/18/2012

Invisible Children's work is not so popular in Uganda. Last Friday, during an official IC screening of KONY 2012 part 2, the audience started to pelt the screen, and IC organizers, with rocks. Ugandan police, in turn fired live rounds at the audience. One death and several injuries were reported.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1387926/-/aw2cd3z/-/index.html

It was the second riot, or near-riot, that Invisible Children's videos have provoked in Uganda.

[IC admirer]

09:58 PM on 04/18/2012

Don't expect the Ugandan Government to be satisfied about anything American. The average Ugandan hopes, wishes and prays for the overthrow of the 26 year old Ugandan Government.

The Ugandan government has been in power since the dawn of Kony's rise to power.

[Bruce Wilson]

11:33 PM on 04/18/2012

Yes - The Museveni regime and Joseph Kony have been symbiotic. This raises the question - why doesn't the Invisible Children effort spend any political capital criticizing Yoweri Museveni?