The disaggregated divine

We talk about col­lege, we talk about media, we talk about indus­tries in gen­eral, now here’s an inter­est­ing win­dow into the church. Because of course, if every­one else is cop­ing with the con­se­quences of the dig­i­ti­za­tion of aspects of their worlds, why should the clergy be exempt?

Tel­e­van­ge­lism has been around much longer than I have. But it remains a very par­tic­u­lar type of wor­ship, looked upon by old-school church­go­ers as low­brow, lazy, sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic, stuffed with cheap visual thrills. In other words, they regard it much the same way “seri­ous” media con­sumers tend to regard tele­vi­sion generally.

Digi­van­ge­lism, on the other hand, could be some­thing alto­gether dif­fer­ent. Much like the rest of the Inter­net, it can go in two direc­tions — more vul­gar and shal­low than the worst tele­vised atroc­ity, or even more gen­uine and fer­vent than the com­mu­nal phys­i­cal wor­ship expe­ri­ence. In his essay, “In Defense of Vir­tual Church,” Pas­tor Dou­glas Estes is clearly aim­ing for the lat­ter, but seems to strike many believ­ers in the com­ments as merely mak­ing a case for the former.

Estes spe­cial­izes in one man­i­fes­ta­tion of the vir­tual church, per­haps the most obvi­ous. As far as I can tell, he’s most con­cerned with the con­cept of church in vir­tual worlds (like Sec­ond Life), which I find a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. But he’s acquired at least one really thought­ful critic, who’s promis­ing to take on these ideas in a four-part series called “In Defense of Phys­i­cal Com­mu­nity.” As you might expect, Nicholas Carr gets name-dropped in part one, but I have high hopes he’ll go beyond that in parts two through four:

• The Cul­tural Impli­ca­tions of the Internet
• The Phys­i­cal Lim­i­ta­tions of the Internet
• The Eccle­si­o­log­i­cal and Scrip­tural Impli­ca­tions of Online Church

I think this is a fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. It’s another front in the high-church/low-church wars that are still rag­ing over the Inter­net and its effects on our cul­ture. But this time it’s actu­ally about church! When peo­ple refer to old-school jour­nal­ists as a “priest­hood,” they’re employ­ing a droll metaphor. In this con­text, when some­one talks about the priest­hood, they’re for real.

The Catholic in me — the boy who led his high school’s wor­ship team, who car­ried around a copy of the Cat­e­chism to ref­er­ence in doc­tri­nal debates — is also dying to see how this turns out. I can imag­ine a jour­nal­ism that con­sis­tently uses the best aspects of the Web to deliver a deeper under­stand­ing than any form of jour­nal­ism we’ve seen to date. And I can sort of squint my eyes and pic­ture a spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence online that stirred me more than the scent of wood and holy water, the thumb­ing of an ashen cross onto my fore­head, a whis­pered “Peace be with you.” I’ve had spir­i­tual expe­ri­ences online before, but I’ve never seen what I would call an online church. For a lover of the Inter­net and its poten­tial, the pos­si­bil­ity is deeply exciting.

3 Responses

Bethany says:
October 26, 2009 at 10:39 am
Thanks for these links. This is a dis­cus­sion I have a lot of inter­est in too. I study com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and am very invested in ques­tions of church and wor­ship. I’ll check in on the rest of that series, that guy seems on the same track as me.
In gen­eral, I say this about vir­tual church:
things it has: the abil­ity to talk to other peo­ple and get to know them per­son­ally and inti­mately. (some) account­abil­ity. prob­a­bly enables dis­cus­sion more than phys­i­cal church. also makes life eas­ier for peo­ple who might be dis­abled or ugly or bad-smelling or not dressed well.
things it doesn’t have: potlucks. body and blood. hugs.
based on these argu­ments, vir­tual church is supe­rior to megachurch, infe­rior to small local church. But I can imag­ine sit­u­a­tions where it might be the best thing going.
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Saheli says:
October 26, 2009 at 11:45 am
I think the thing that has really blown my mind on this front are Skype-based multi-continental reading/discussion/singing groups. There is some­thing really dis­ori­ent­ing about eat­ing din­ner with some­one and hav­ing them drop ref­er­ences to “it’s like so-and-so was say­ing in lec­ture,” or “I got this new tune for that song from so-and-so” when the so-and-so’s involved live half way around the world, and until a few weeks ago such ref­er­ences would have cer­tainly meant there was a phys­i­cal program.
The other thing that has blown my mind are cell phone videos of pil­grim­ages. I think the fact that so many Indi­ans have cell phone video cam­eras has effec­tively forced priests to stop exclud­ing cam­eras, so sud­denly all these ancient places are open­ing up to pho­tog­ra­phy, but there’s also some­thing about a cell phone video that makes you feel the crowds more—plus every­one else in the video is also tak­ing a video. 
I don’t think that it will ever com­pete with “real life”—if any­thing, watch­ing those videos has me brows­ing ticket prices. But I do think that it can make dias­po­ras feel less lonely, and can pro­vide a lot of com­fort to the home­bound, which is pretty magical.
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The Church of First Produce « Snarkmarket says:
October 26, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[…] look­ing at how the inter­net is chang­ing churches; Mark Bittman looks at how the inter­net ought to be chang­ing the real spir­i­tual cen­ter of […]
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