When Religion Meets New Media

Heidi Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781134272129
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

This lively book focuses on how different Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities engage with new media. Rather than simply reject or accept new media, religious communities negotiate complex relationships with these technologies in light of their history and beliefs. Heidi Campbell suggests a method for studying these processes she calls the "religious-social shaping of technology" and students are asked to consider four key areas: religious tradition and history; contemporary community values and priorities; negotiation and innovating technology in light of the community; communal discourses applied to justify use.

A wealth of examples such as the Christian e-vangelism movement, Modern Islamic discourses about computers and the rise of the Jewish kosher cell phone, demonstrate the dominant strategies which emerge for religious media users, as well as the unique motivations that guide specific groups.

Chapter 1
Religious communities and the internet

Before jumping into an exploration of religious communities’ engagement with the internet it is important to start with reflection on the factors which shape the religious response to media in general. While Judaism, Islam, and Christianity each have their own unique history, belief system, and religious rituals, they also share commonalities, especially when it comes to the basis for their interactions with media. In the introduction I propositioned that these three religions’ patterns of media negotiation are guided by three factors: (1) how they define their distinctive communities around issues of interpretation of core beliefs and practices, (2) their tradition of interaction with their sacred texts, and (3) their unique understanding of religious authority (i.e. leadership roles and community hierarchies) serving as the primary guide to their responses to text and community. These areas, I argue, are crucial to consider when attempting to understand a religious group’s response to any new form of media, especially the internet. The internet as the network of networks represents a collection of diverse software, networking applications, and forums allowing for innovative forms of religious interaction and ritual engagement to occur. In many respects it is a hybrid technology combining different text, images, and sound into a new media forum that serves as a digital playground of new opportunities for sharing and experimentation. While it is considered a new media, the opinions and concerns raised about use of the internet by many religious users are not new and can be clearly linked to base concerns about how religious groups frame the idea of community, authority, and written media or texts.

Religious views of media are readily informed by one’s conception of religious community. It is not only their affiliation with a specific set of beliefs and a tradition, but how those practices are lived out that defines a religious community. The boundaries of a particular religious community are established by agreed-upon standards of interpretation based on a particular groups’ understanding of the role text plays in the community and what authorities have the right and responsibility to guide these interpretations. Therefore groups with more conservative or literalist interpretations of their sacred texts and a high reliance on recognized religious authorities to dictate those interpretations often have a stricter understanding of communal boundaries than others, as seen in the ultra-Orthodox Judaism or Shia Islam. This varying sense of boundaries and obligations means that religious faith traditions are unlikely to have a monolithic or unified response to a given media. Rather responses are negotiated and dictated by the life patterns of the specific group to which religious believers belong. For this reason, when it comes to media like the internet one can expect that, for instance, Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians will differ on the sources they turn to for advice regarding technology use and the extent to which certain innovations are encouraged or embraced because of their histories and view of authority. Therefore it becomes important to consider not only the tradition a religious community comes from but also the particular characteristics and lived practice of the specific group when reflecting on media use.

Also, because tradition and teachings instruct religious communities on how sacred texts should be interpreted, handled, and performed it must be recognized that these instructions also form the basis of a philosophy of communication. This means that within a given religious community there are inherent, embedded rules of how media should be treated and conceived of, arising from communal beliefs. Observing the relationship of the community to its sacred text as a sort of base media can provide clues to these unspoken guidelines. For example, Orthodox Jews consult both oral as well as written texts in the process of interpretation and encourage a high level of intellectual and dialogic engagement in order to attain textual meaning (Jaffee, 2001). Yet they will not physically touch the Torah, because it is considered holy, and is created through a highly regulated process laid out in Torah law. The advent of the printing press thus raised unique Halachic problems. Could sacred documents such as a Sefer Torah, tefillin (psalms), or mezuzoth (blessings placed at the doorposts of homes) be printed in light of traditional and accepted mitzvoth (rules). Over time, mitzvoth were adopted by many groups related to the art of printing to allow for wide acceptance of printed prayer books and other documents. However, the craft of handwriting certain sacred texts is still revered and preferred by some Jewish groups. Thus the digitization of texts through the internet again has raised issues within Judaism about the production of sacred texts. The flexibility or rigidity of interpretation of rules surrounding sacred text sets the tone for how a religious community views and treats the written word in general. Those in the Jewish tradition who highly value dialogic discussion and engagement with sacred text over the sole deferment to the interpretations of recognized rabbis and interpreters have also historically had a greater openness towards using other printed materials such as newspaper to facilitate a cultural connection through the Jewish Diaspora (Blondheim and Blum-Kulka, 2001). This means a Jewish community’s relationships with and beliefs about religious texts may have bearing on their views of different forms of mass media. Thus what a religious community believes about the use and role of text within the community plays an important role in guiding future media use. Paying attention to a community’s historical approach to text can provide important indicators of how they will approach and decipher new forms of media.

Finally, it is argued that religious responses to media are informed by a community’s view of religious authority, especially in relation to the interpretation of sacred texts. For instance, Shiites often defer to recognized imams for the application of the Koran, while Sunnis may refer to a preferred legal tradition to help in their understanding of Koranic meaning. For one, religious authority is based on specific authority roles; and for the other, authority comes from recognized religious structures. Yet for both the source of authority sets the boundaries for acceptable meaning-making. Identifying what a religious community considers to be a source of religious authority in relation to text may serve as an indicator of what sources will hold authority in the future engagement with media. This leads to another commonality: religious leaders play an important role in relaying or mediating meaning-making about official sources of information. Christian religious leaders’ advocacy of the use of the printing press for religious dissemination and proselytization created a baseline of tradition within Protestantism that has enabled future generations to advocate the use of radio, television, and as we shall see later, the internet for evangelization (Eisenstein, 1979; Walsham, 2000). By presenting the printing press as God inspired and created, leaders not only blessed its use, but in many respects compelled their communities to utilize it (Loach, 1986). Seeing media technology as a God-given resource to be embraced for religious purposes is a legacy and belief clearly seen in many Protestant Christian groups’ media usage, especially in an era of televangelism and religious internet use. Thus how religious leaders present a given technology and the rhetoric they employ may open or close doors for future media technology to be introduced to that community. Thus it is in careful observation of religious groups’ engagement with “old media”, as it were, that we begin to comprehend the factors influencing their decision-making regarding new forms of media, such as the internet.¹ These claims that community, text, and authority serve as key pointers to understanding religious engagement with new media must be tested. So in this chapter we now turn to one of the defining media of the information age and consider whether or not these claims hold true in relation to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian engagement with the internet.

The internet has become a space populated by users who have readily brought their faith online with them, and as a result have developed a myriad of cybertemples, online prayer chapels, religious discussion forums, and information portals that enable them to live out their faith in a net-worked environment. Yet, as suggested above, the choices made by religious internet users are often strongly informed by the religious communities they belong to. These choices related to internet use and innovation are also often guided by previously established views about religious authority, community, and even older mediums such as printed text. Thus even in an age of new digital media, religious internet users frequently act in line with the trajectory set forth by their community’s negotiations with previous media. In order to consider this more fully, this chapter explores Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perceptions of the internet. This begins with a general overview of the rise of religious information on the internet, outlining the dominant forms of religious use. This leads to an investigation of how each of these religious traditions and different groups within them have responded to the internet. Through surveying how voices within each religion have critiqued as well as advocated the use of the internet, a link is made with discussions in the book’s introduction. It demonstrates that one’s beliefs towards religious text, authority, and community also plays a significant role in determining one’s position about the nature of the internet.

The rise of religion online

For almost three decades the internet has been used as a space where spiritual rituals are conducted and traditional religious beliefs are discussed. Religious use of the internet can be traced back to the early 1980s. It was a time when religious computer enthusiasts began to explore “ways to use this new means of communication to express their religious interests” (Lochhead, 1997: 46). Rheingold documents some of the first religious-orientated activity taking place at this time on Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) under a “create your own religion” discussion area on CommuniTree. The Origins conference described itself as “partly a religion, partly like a Westernized form of yoga society, partly a peace movement” and brought together people from a variety of religious persuasions in online dialogue (Rheingold, 1985). However, it was not too long until this evolved into numerous BBS forums on religion, some “connected with real-life congregations” and traditions such as Christianity, to others that seemed to “come in sixteen shades of unorthodox” focused on paganism or New Age cybernetics (Rheingold, 1993: 134–5).

During this same period religious discussions began to surface on Usenet. Helland has documented discussions how in 1983 angst from Usenet users about how religion-focused dialogue seemed to be dominating the miscellaneous discussion group section eventually led to the creation of “net.religion” (2007). This became the “first networked forum for discussions on the religious, ethical, and moral implications of human actions” (Ciolek, 2004). Discussions on net.religion were diverse, but tended towards Christian discourse and debate. This led to eventual tension with Jewish members of the group who felt the need for a space where they would not be immediately criticized for advocating their beliefs and tradition. After applying to the Usenet administrators and substantive debates surrounding the implication of creating a religion specific group their request was granted, and in 1984 “net.religion. jewish” was created. Six months later “net.religion.christian” was created as religious dialogue online continued to grow. By the late-1980s further groups emerged and split into the hierarchies of “alt.philosophy,” “alt.religion,” “soc. culture,” “soc.religion,” and “talk.religion” during a reconfiguration of Usenet. Throughout the mid-to-late 1980s many other religious computer enthusiasts formed online groups dedicated to their specific religion, such as the Christian email newsletter “United Methodist Information.”

By the 1990s increasing numbers of religious groups, especially email discussion lists, were forming online such as: Ecunet, an ecumenical Christian email listserve (http://www.ecunet.org), H-Judaic (http://www.h-net.org/~judaic/), and BuddhaNet (http://www.buddhanet.net). Also, the first virtual Christian congregation was established in 1992 by American Presbyterians, a non-denominational online church called “The First Church of Cyberspace” (http://www.godweb.org) that hosted services until 2007. This marked the birth of a generation of online cyberchurches and -temples that served as repositories of religious information, provided online prayer centers, or even hosted weekly internet-based meetings or rituals.

By the time the publication of Time magazine’s special issue “Jesus Online” appeared in 1996, dozens of religious websites could be found online: from the first monastic website, Monastery of Christ in the Desert (http://www.christdesert.org) and first Islamic e-periodical, Renaissance: A Monthly Islamic Journal (http://www.renaissance.com.pk), to the first Zoroastrian cybertemple (http://www.zarathushtra.com) and the establishment of the Virtual Memorial Garden, a tribute to people and pets (catless.ncl.ac.uk/vmg/). Chama’s article “Finding God on the Web” also proved an important landmark, as the mainstream media recognized the prevalence and importance of religious activity online. As it stated:

For many signing on to the Internet is a transformative act. In their eyes the web is more than just a global tapestry of personal computers. It is a vast cathedral of the mind, a place where ideas about God and religion can resonate, where faith can be shaped and defined by a collective spirit.

(Chama, 1996: 57)

The article provided examples of how online religious seekers were cultivating traditional and non-traditional religion in a new media context.

The late 1990s saw the rise of numerous religious portals and hubs seeking to connect religious seekers with the growing number of resources online at such websites as Crosswalk (http://www.crosswalk.com/) and Gospel.com (http://www.gospelcom.net/) that provided Christians with access to online Bible study tools and various interactive devotional or fellowship groups. Also on the rise were websites providing access to new forms of religion, altering and adapting ancient beliefs to this digital environment. Ancient religions, such as Wicca (NightMare, 2001) and new religions such as technopaganism (Davis, 1998) – neo-paganism adapted and celebrated in a technological context – have found homes online. Also, experiments in religious internetworking emerged, most notably Beliefnet, (http://www.Beliefnet.org/), a “multi-faith e-community” which offers thoughts for the day from the Dalai Lama, inspirational screensavers, and access to sacred text from different faith traditions.

By 2000 religion had been firmly established on the internet’s virtual landscape. Religious organizations, groups, and individuals continue to create and import new forms of religious ritual and community practice online. In the past decade, we have seen even more novel examples of religion spring up online such as “godcasting” or religious podcasting which involves the production of religious-style talk shows, sermonettes, or other audio MP3 hosted by anyone from televangelists to home school mums (see: The Godcast network (http://www.godcast.org/) or GODcasting.tv (http://www.godcasting.tv/)). Blogging, or Web logs, emerged in the late 1990s from the online diaries appearing on many journalists’ and hobbyists’ personal websites. Between 1998 and 1999 several blogging platforms and hosting tools were launched including Open Diary, Live Journal, and Blogger.com. From these came the emergence of the blogging revolution, and by the early twenty-first century religious blogs came on the scene such as those found at religious blog hubs such as Jblog: The Jewish and Israeli blog network (http://www.israelforum.com/blog_home.php), Christian blogs at (christianblog.com) and (thechristianwoman.com), and Muslim blogs at (hadithuna.com).

Cybertemples and churches continue to surface online, taking advantage of the latest technologies and innovation to experiment with new forms of religious gathering. One experiment that received much media attention was the Church of Fools (http://www.churchoffools.com/), the UK’s first Web-based 3D church, sponsored by the Methodist Church of Britain, and the satirical website Ship of Fools. Beginning in May 2004, Church of Fools ran highly publicized weekly services that allowed congregants to attend as avatars that could sing, pray, and interact synchronously in a 3D multi-user environment. Within its first twenty-four hours online, the church had 41,000 visitors and raised much discussion in the international p...

Table of contents

• Media, Religion and Culture series
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Religious communities and the internet
• Chapter 2 Considering the religious-social shaping of technology
• Chapter 3 History and media tradition
• Chapter 4 Community value and priorities
• Chapter 5 Negotiating with new media
• Chapter 6 Considering communal discourse
• Chapter 7 Studying the religious shaping of new media
• Chapter 8 Insights from the religious-social shaping of new media
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index