Denominational Discourse in the Age of the Algorithm

In an earlier column, I made the case that an overlooked reason for rising tension within churches and denominations is overexposure: we see too much. Digital proximity—through livestreams, social media posts, and online commentary—means we see not only the best of each other’s ministries but also every slip or stumble or stylistic difference. Nicholas Carr’s most recent book suggests this level of constant visibility breeds annoyance, not affection. When we can see everything, we start noticing the small things that bother us—and then we can’t unsee them.

This dynamic is evident in denominations and networks—digital neighborhoods where everyone is peering over each other’s fences. The livestream era has aided in the transformation of worship into a spectacle for public consumption, and social media turns denominational disputes into public performances. Even when our theology unites us, our timelines can divide us.

Everywhere I go, when I meet with leaders and pastors in various denominations, I encounter a common concern: how do we sustain denominational partnerships and healthy fellowship in a world where social media incentives are designed to pull us apart, in service of an algorithm that thrives on conflict? Even if only a minority of churchgoers and leaders are on the platforms most associated with controversy, and even if a tinier minority generate incendiary posts, these online dustups sometimes have outsized influence in directing conversations and hardening tribal lines. Why is this the case?

Controversies and Attention Entrepreneurs

To start, we must understand what is happening to us when we’re on social media — especially Twitter/X posts and Facebook comment streams. Chris Bail’s landmark work lines up well with other studies in showing that our attention on social media is drawn toward content intended to provoke negative emotions. A celebratory post, or a careful, analytical post for consideration will never go as far or as fast as a post that evokes sadness, fear, indignation, or contempt toward another group. This is human nature—our sinful and selfish tendencies often find satisfaction in feeling the stimulation of conflict, and since it’s a mark of human psychology to stay alert to danger, we are prone to amplify the most distressing signals we come across, whatever dangers we feel are most threatening to our sense of identity or the tribe we belong to.

A recent substack by Nathan Witkin, “The Case Against Social Media is Stronger than You Think,” points out the perverse incentives that reward today’s “attentional entrepreneurs.” Platforms now pay participants in proportion to the ad revenue they generate, and naturally, it’s the negative content that most reliably draws the most attention. No wonder, then, that popular personalities produce and amplify the posts that traffic in fear, outrage, and tribalism. It works. 

Witkin tracks the rise of political influencers, but the same could be applied to the internal politics of church networks, denominations, and affiliations. By transforming the self-perception of a family of churches, the influencer can exert a measure of control over the conversations taking place.

All of this tracks with another recent study, focused primarily on political posts (Robertson, del Rosario, and Van Bavel, 2024): 

“Online discussions are dominated by a surprisingly small, extremely vocal, and non-representative minority… While only 3% of active accounts are toxic, they produce 33% of all content… They bias the meta-perceptions of most users who passively ‘lurk’ online… The people who post frequently on social media are often the most ideologically extreme. Indeed, 97% of political posts from Twitter/X come from just 10% of the most active users on social media, meaning that about 90% of the population’s political opinions are being represented by less than 3% of tweets online.”

A decade into this new world of social media, churchgoers, pastors, and denominational leaders have been quietly relieved to discover a growing gap between online outrage and real-world outcomes in physical gatherings, annual conferences, general assemblies, and Convention votes. These leaders, who may at one point have been inclined to care too much about what was happening on Twitter/X (often making policy decisions based on the controversies and criticism arising from that platform), now say something like, “Twitter is not real life.” They have learned to distinguish between the widespread sentiments of normal (usually quieter) pastors and the “terminally online,” so that they don’t overreact to every controversy or complaint, no matter how much traction it seems to generate.

But the real-life implications of our social-media-dominated discourse remain. That’s why I keep hearing from pastors and church leaders who are unsure of how to proceed: Do you defend yourself when slandered? Do you try to counter a false narrative? What fires do you respond to and what fires do you let burn out? When is it wise to change your posture or shift your policy in response to social media complaints, and when is it best to stay the course? 

It’s more complicated than simply saying “Social media isn’t real life.” Well, yes and no. On the one hand, when you know only a small minority is the most vocal, you might be inclined to encourage everyone to just log out, shrug off the concerns, or give no attention to platform controversies. On the other hand, it’s unwise to ignore the dynamic effects of the algorithm or the “attentional entrepreneurs,” because there is something we might call “the spillover effect.”

The Spillover Effect

Witkin’s examination of social media influence in politics shows how even the elderly—the generation least likely to be on Twitter/X—are still influenced by social media controversies because traditional media outlets, such as cable news, are now driven by what is happening on social media. That’s the “spillover effect.” 

The same takes place in ecclesial contexts. What happens online becomes “the news.” (Just one example: I was surprised last week to see a basic comment I made on social media, expressing my intention to pray for a Christian leader undergoing surgery, in a news report chronicling the situation. That’s a benign example of the spillover effect. I’ve seen malignant ones too—when online outrage erupts, and even trustworthy outlets feel compelled to amplify it.) Witkin writes:

Social media’s intrinsically social nature guarantees it will have large spillover effects. Ignoring this is like assuming that, if you could only delete your social media accounts, that would insulate you from 100% of social media’s effects on your life. The obvious reason it won’t is because everyone around you will still be using social media, and their use will continue to affect you (e.g. by their telling you what’s happening online, by you feeling excluded from their group-chats, etc.). As long as social media represents the social world to us, and as long as we share our impressions of that social world with others offline, then its effects on individuals are going to ‘spill over’ to their peers.

Social media, however small the sliver of participants, will bring about spillover effects that come to dominate and determine the conversations of people in real-world, face-to-face interactions. Attentional entrepreneurs are savvy at playing the game. Even their language is from gaming! They gush about their number of followers, or how many views their posts get, or how one of their sick burns “ratioed” some online opponent. Even worse for denominations and churches, the incentives are strongest for people on social media to direct their fiercest ire not toward those most opposite, but to focus on the flaws of the people who are largely with them, just divergent in some way. They draw new lines, narrow the circle, chip away at the credibility of trusted voices, by criticizing those to their immediate right or left. 

The result is malformation. Bail demonstrates how the “normies” or “moderates” who represent the majority perspective go silent, and so the impression left for those online—the lurkers, or the reporters, or denominational leaders—is that the sides are more extreme than they are. In politics, the result is a malformed understanding of our fellow citizens. Applied to denominational conflicts, we can wind up with a wildly inaccurate view of where our constituents really are. 

Stewards and Disruptors

All this brings me to an insightful post from Jake Meador, who, writing from within the PCA, acknowledges that the common taxonomy of three dominant groups in the PCA (the doctrinal, the missional, and the pietist) are often affected by another line of division: the institutional stewards vs. the institutional disruptors. Stewards and disruptors show up in all three of the tribes. 

What marks out a steward is an overarching commitment to the health of the institution, the slowness and thoughtfulness of decision-making, and a demonstration of loyalty to the processes and rules of the organization. There’s resistance to throwing online grenades at other people in the same family, even when there’s serious disagreement, out of a greater desire that complaints and criticisms be channeled in a proper and helpful direction.

The disruptor waves off working through established channels for addressing conflict or disagreement. Social media posting or podcasting is the tool of choice. Building a robust online presence is the way to bring about institutional change, apart from any substantive submission to real authority that would limit their approach. 

This analysis resembles Yuval Levin’s A Time to Build, which claims we’ve shifted from a formative view of institutions to a performative one. In the past, leaders saw their roles as a sacred trust—pouring themselves into the mold of the institution, whether the Senate, the academy, or the church. Today, many treat institutions less like molds that shape them and more like platforms that showcase them. Instead of conforming to the institution for the common good, leaders now use the institution to build their own brand. Four decades ago, elected officials measured success by the laws they passed and the coalitions they built. Now, success is often defined by visibility—how well the institution can amplify their voice or fuel their news cycle. 

Meador explains:

The disruptor's behavior demonstrates how they regard the institution: If it can be made to serve as a convenient vessel for their own personal project, they are happy to use it. But if they would have to submit themselves and their own ambitions to that institution... well, that is something they cannot do. 

The posture of a disruptor is a kind of wretched blending together of the worst qualities of both non-denominationalism and denominationalism. On the one hand, it says "I want to be influential and powerful in the denomination," while on the other it says, "I will routinely behave in ways that are schismatic and corrosive of trust and fellowship amongst Christian brothers."

Questions for Denominations and Church Networks

So where does this leave the average pastor or churchgoer or denominational leader? 

I’m afraid things will get worse before they get better… unless we get better at helping people distinguish good-faith critiques from bad-faith actors. We need to help people better discern the trustworthiness of online sources. There are websites and social media accounts that are no more reliable than the tabloids on grocery-store newsstands across the country, but it sometimes takes longer for the ordinary churchgoer to recognize their lack of trustworthiness. 

Meanwhile, we are drowning in worldliness online. Healthy institutions must help people spot worldly ways—not only in the positions being advocated, but in the posture an attentional entrepreneur takes. I’ve stopped being surprised when a Christian online will spread an outright lie, even one that’s easily proven false, without even a hint of care or concern that the 9th commandment has been violated. Or when a fellow Christian expresses not disagreement, but contempt and loathing for another believer, without any twinge of conscience that this attitude contradicts multiple New Testament warnings. I’m no longer surprised, but I’m still saddened by it all. 

Jake offers a few suggestions that can help us identify the institutional disruptors:

• Do they submit themselves to an external authority or do they flee from accountability and structure?
• Do they tend to bounce around regularly from church to church or denomination to denomination or do they attempt, so much as they can, to be more rooted in specific places or communities?
• How much does the individual post on social media about denominational matters and how do they talk about such things? Does their tone and posture suggest a desire to serve and submit, or a desire to control and dominate?

I would add a few others, acknowledging that the answers to these questions may differ from denomination to denomination, depending on a more centralized or diffuse structure of accountability:

• Is their engagement marked by disproportionate outrage—regularly amplifying conflict, rarely encouraging cooperation?
• How often does this person devote time to publicly attacking other Christians by name with the goal of discrediting them within the life of their denomination or the evangelical world more broadly?
• Do they operate largely outside established denominational processes, choosing platforms over polity?
• Do they demonstrate an awareness of complexity and a commitment to careful consideration, or reduce everything to sides, slogans, and villains?
• When they raise concerns, do they pursue resolution through appropriate channels, or publicize grievances for effect?
• Are they best known for faithfulness and fruitfulness in their local church, or mainly online for their firepower and flair? 
• Do they display wisdom from above, as modeled by James 3? (First pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without pretense)

We must get better at helping others see the dynamics at play, so they’re not easily manipulated. Recognizing these patterns shouldn’t make us cynical—just wise. 

Healthy denominations must learn to weigh the words of those who build trust more heavily than the words of those who seek traffic. Healthy denominations must also remain responsive toward good-faith criticism, in answering sincere questions from ordinary pastors, while directing differences and debates through the proper channels in less-sensational ways, so that the online world never becomes the primary outlet for consternation. 

If denominations and networks are to thrive in the social media age, we must recover the slow work of stewardship—leaders shaped by patience, accountability, and prayer. The way forward isn’t withdrawal from the digital world but wisdom within it: forming habits that prize truth over tribe, charity over clout, and fellowship over faction. We need spaces where honest questions can be raised without spectacle, where correction and debate flow through relationships, and where institutions once again become molds that form disciples rather than platforms that feed performers. The health of our churches tomorrow depends on cultivating better instincts today—training our eyes to see below the surface, our hearts to resist the lure of outrage, and our hands to build institutional trust in a world bent on tearing it down.