PostSecret: Bringing Grace, Absolution & Authenticity
January 23, 2007
Sarah and I hung out with Frank Warren last night at B&N, along with many others (Frank is pictured above speaking to the crowd). For those who don’t know, Frank Warren began the PostSecret website a few years ago, after he began the project by handing out 3,000 postcards to random people on the street, asking them to “share their secrets.” What he’s created is a bit of an international phenomenon, not to mention with a huge cult following. He receives 100-200 postcards every day and his third book, The Secret Lives of Men and Women, is #11 on the New York Times Bestseller List. And we’re addicted too - we both look forward to checking out the new secrets every Sunday.
Warren shared some of the beginnings of PostSecret, in addition to reflecting on the whole project. He’s not sure why it has become as popular as it has. Are we simply a voyeuristic culture and do we just like knowing other people’s shit? Or is there something more powerful about the PostSecret project? Warren has received hundreds and thousands of emails from people who have contributed to the project or been moved by it. Some have ended relationships because of PostSecret - others have begun new relationships. One woman designed a postcard to send in, but when she was finished, she was so disgusted with her secret that she began to take steps that very day to help her deal with her problems.
Some probably do seek absolution - others grace. But more than that, PostSecret plays into our culture’s desire for authenticity, which is becoming more and more apparent.
Warren loves PostSecret because it has become, in his words, a community art project. Regular people can create these artistic expressions of themselves which are displayed on the web, in books and in a traveling art exhibition.
Warren also referred to the website as a conversation project. While he receives thousands every week - he only puts up 20 new secrets, but he chooses them to hopefully give a good sampling of the type of work he’s received throughout the week. He puts them up in such a way as to tell a narrative story - to bring readers into the stories of others’ lives - through their secrets. This website, he says, is helping us find new ways to share about ourselves, and new ways to enhance authenticity and connectivity through this type of sharing on the web.
And for those of you who read the secrets on Sundays…I think Warren’s right. Some make you laugh, others make you sad - but there are always ones that resonate in some fashion (in odd ways sometimes). But in a sense, we are drawn into the lives of others, we are connected to others, through the secrets. Many have different opinions about whether or not a real sense of “community” can be created through the web & blogs, but it’s clear that there is something happening through a site and an art project like this.
What do you think? Are you a regular at PostSecret? Do you find this an interesting project? Does anyone not like PostSecret, and why…?
Tags: Books, Post-Secret, Postcards, Secret
Posted in 
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:48 am
I am a regular reader of PostSecret, and think he has something good going on there.
The idea of the community art project is a great name for what he is doing. Though there is something “secret” about the whole project, I think there is some sense of community.
Last year, on a whim, just to see if it was the real deal, I submitted a postcard, and indeed, it was posted on the site. Though the sharing of my secret was not completely transforming or liberative, it was great to participate.
I’m interested in seeing how long PostSecret will last.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
I do check in on Post Secret just about every week. I’m moved by some of them and often disturbed by others! Some seem ‘more authentic’ and others seem to be there for ’shock value.’
I wonder on occasion, just as when I read a dear Abby column just how many of the secrets are truly authentic?
Sometimes the questions to Abby and the secrets to Frank are so far out there I wonder “is that for real?”
If anything I think this is a testimony of the need for some avenue of confession which Jesus, and subsequently the church, taught about but which the protestant tradition has largely neglected.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:34 am
It reminds me of Gillian Wearing’s 1992/3 project, “Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say.” (see here)
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
i think we need to admit that the definition of community is changing. my needs for community are different than my childrens’
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I check PostSecret every week. It reminds me every week that our stories are not our own–by sharing our secrets we are (hopefully) liberating someone else, too. When Frank Warren spoke in Denver he reinforced that belief.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
The word “community” has lost all meaning if it can be applied to an electronically located phenomenon like Post Secret. Reading a midwesterner’s secret desires to rape his dog do not draw me into his life or create anything but the illusion of “community.” Community has to do with flesh and blood, with breath and stench, with sound, light, and real interaction between physical human beings.
But that is beside the point I want to make here. If the Post Secret project teaches us anything, it demonstrates a real problem in contemporary Christian Protestant America: no place for the confession of sin. It’s a sad fact that Protestants have no real way of dealing with feelings of shame and guilt within the church — at least, not in any formally sustained way such as developed and maintained by the Roman Catholic tradition. The options for Protestants seem limited to either hiding in shame or confessing and leaving.
This tendency may be attributed to Protestantism’s theological priorities. Schleiermacher made the point sharply in the early nineteenth century: “[Protestantism] makes the individual’s relation to the church depend on his relation to Christ, whereas [Catholicism] conversely makes the individual’s relation to Christ depend on the church (The Christian Faith, $24). That is to say, because of the Reformation’s emphasis on the believer’s direct relation to Christ, the need for ecclesiastical airing of sin in the form of confession and absolution disappeared, thereby stifling a vital dimension of “authenticity” so many today feel is missing in Protestant churches.
What most people say they enjoy about Post Secret, echoed by Adam, is revealed in terms like “authenticity” and “absolution.” These are words not unfamiliar to an ancient, Roman Catholic medievalism, now ironically endorsed and celebrated by the Waspiest wasps in the country: CTS seminary students!
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Kellen - I believe as well that community should incorporate some real human interaction - much can be hidden from behind the veil of a computer screen.
But I will not say that the type of community that is formed online is no community at all. And to call it “community” does not at all strip of it all its meaning. It simply is a different type of community. I know many people who have experienced a very real sense of community in the blogosphere and what not. Is it without its own problems?
Of course not - it’s messy - there’s miscommunication. But there are also good things happening.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Once the site becomes popular, what are the chances half the “secrets” posted there aren’t even genuine?
January 24th, 2007 at 12:55 am
how did you cram all those losers into such a small space?
January 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Kellen–
I agree about the Protestant need for auricular confession, which is why I wrote my MA thesis on the role of confession in Calvin’s theology and ultimately ended up in ECUSA.
It would be intersting to think more about what absolution, grace and authenticity would mean based upon a post secret context, and how they would differ from other accounts we get from other contexts.
I assume there would be both commonality and divergence.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Dan,
I remembered our conversation as those thoughts came to mind — I hoped you would chime in!
kp
January 25th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Honestly, I had never heard of PostSecret before reading this post, though I find the concept rather interesting… I will definitely be looking into it more when I get the time.
That said, a small suggestion: It might be wise to add a “Not Safe For Work” (or “NSFW”) comment immediately after your link to the PostSecret webpage. I clicked on it out of curiosity today, at work, and was confronted with… well, something that probably should not be viewed on a company machine. Just a thought :).
January 29th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Kellen–
Yes, I do think community requires bonds that are embodied - eye contact, etc., but online activity does make connections between people. Though I agree with your concern about the seemingly trivial connections that seem to come from blogging, we should remember that that true frienship generally starts with the trivial.
I had a long conversation with Hauerwas once about whether you could be friends with someone you’ve never met. I still puzzle about that.