Can authentic religious expression be found in a digital medium?
While it can be argued that modern cultural obsessions such as celebrity worship, sport or political fanaticism, or fantasising about Edward Cullen are expressions of religion in some regard; today I plan to focus on the traditionally understood definition of religion to see how religious rituals developed before the technological age can be adapted into a digital medium..
Looking at virtual worlds, it is important to understand that watching an avatar which represents the viewer can provide a compelling experience. Rizzolatti’s discovery that brain activity while watching a task is similar to brain activity while performing the task, shows that 3D worlds like second life should be able to trigger a similar experience to participating in the physical ritual.
.
I have observed several religious sites in the Second Life world, each of them intricately designed and programmed to allow users to participate in ritual by-proxy. While each of these sites has suffered with the decreased popularity of Second Life, at one time they were all bustling spiritual centres of worship. Large groups of people were able to worship together and build social capital through virtual interactions. While Second Life was full of people exploring the world, these churches received a lot of first time visitors and retained a few regular members. With the reduced popularity of Second Life, there were fewer new visitors and consequently the appeal to the regular members of massive corporate worship was reduced. The social appeal of the church dried up and eventually even the loyal members moved on. These deserted sites stand as quiet monuments to the revival that could have been..
Another approach to online religion is the browser based church. By making the service as accessible as clicking a link, these sites guarantee high numbers of first time visitors, which allows the regular members to feel part of a large corporate experience. This is a more maintainable illusion, but still an illusion..
For the social capital earned in these sites to have a lasting value, the disposable nature must be replaced. Developers of online community games such as World of Warcraft have found that having users work together towards goals can build very strong personal ties while gaining in-world prestige over several years of commitment. Churches wanting to encourage loyalty in both their online and offline congregations need to provide tangible goals for users to work toward in small community groups with internal trust and companionship rewards and progressive external rewards in acknowledgement of 
successful task completion. These tasks could include activities ranging from raising a set monetary goal for the church, to developing a new online forum or collaborating in gathering signatures for a petition to recognise online churches.
successful task completion. These tasks could include activities ranging from raising a set monetary goal for the church, to developing a new online forum or collaborating in gathering signatures for a petition to recognise online churches..
I have only seen limited expressions of this in online churches, but I expect that when religious leaders begin adapting game theory and digital media to promote religious expression the real extent of the potential benefits of digital media for religion will begin to be understood.
.
.
Bibliography
Camerer Colin F. Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction [Journal]. – Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2003.
Campbell Spiritualising the Internet [Journal] // Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet. – online : [s.n.], 2005. – 1 : Vol. 1.
Gallese, V; Fadiga, L; Fogassi, L; Rizzolatti, G Action recognition in the Prmotor Cortex [Journal] // Brain. – Oxford : [s.n.], 1991.
Hagström C Playing with Names: Gaming and Naming in World of Warcraft [Journal] // Digital Culture, Play, and Identity. – Massachusetts : Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008.
Helland C Online Religion as Lived Religion [Journal] // Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet. – online : [s.n.], 2005. – 1 : Vol. 1.
Church of Jaminology 
Nice post thanks for ssharing
LikeLike
You make it sound like all of SL’s spiritual sites are a wasteland, but some of us stayed around, and we still meet though “corporate worship” is pretty far from what I see going on. I’d like to hear more about this “massive corporate worship” that you mention in this article.
LikeLike
Out of curiosity, have you read (or heard of?) the Altered Carbon trilogy?
It’s sci fi, in a future where the mind can be seperated from the body digitally, and added back to another body. (or stored indefinitely, or put in virtual reality, etc).
Across the novels the author looks at multiple religions handling this. In one, there is a church which never accepted that mind(soul) could be divorced from the body, and does not allow it’s followers to be ‘resleeved’ (ie, mind put into another body). Because of this, they cannot travel between worlds except the slow sublight way, and so the religion has become a minor cult on earth. Catholicism.
On the other hand, in another book, we visit a sect which have taken the possibility of virtual existance to the extreme, and live solely in a virtual monastery. A monk there talks about how in this world, he can decide to climb great mountains… can decide what it means to fall… decide what gravity means, and decide what “pain” means. And decide how important those things are – or aren’t, to his long term growth.
Anyway, this post reminded me of that. Can lend you these if you’re interested to read 🙂
LikeLike