Tickle's talk (alliterative! haha!) generated a lot of controversy and discussion among the audience members. Quite a few feathers were ruffled by some of the claims she made. One attendee described her to me as being "quite provocative" for some folks.
I'm sad to report, though, that I was not impressed by the lecture. She spoke w/o notes, made very broad, conceptual statements, swept through thousands of years of history with sweeping generalizations, almost summarily dismissed theology and scholarship, contradicted herself left and right, and yet ended up saying nothing very new -- at least nothing new for these ears which have for the last four years been tuned to the seminary channel.
To be fair, the speaker was addressing an audience that was comprised of a much older generation, people who might never have heard of SecondLife.com. To them, it was impossible to imagine worshiping as an avatar in 2nd Life (or that there are people doing that!), and I imagine quite a few might have been shocked just considering the idea of consecrating the elements (virtual bread and wine?) in cyberspace. She asked us to reflect on the differences between virtuality and physicality in the worship experience. That's something i've heard before... One concluding statement that Tickle made, which I thought was fairly obvious, was that church praxis and polity must change to reflect the new virtuality.
These are not new considerations, I imagine, for the faculty and seminarians of this and other graduate theological institutions. But, some of Tickles' talk generated heated discussion amongst these older folks who are being, will be, or might have been, pastored by a seminarian trained to listen to, discuss and discern these kinds of theological, esoterical, eschatological, historical, cultural, sociological, practical questions, etc., etc. Isn't it scary that they are hearing these things for the first time?
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