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<\/a><\/p>\nTo go to a worship service, you put on a virtual reality helmet in the comfort of your home and click on a link that takes you to a cartoon version of a church.\u00a0 You yourself are there as a cartoon avatar and you will be greeted by other cartoon avatars of the other worshippers.\u00a0 One might be in the guise of a Veggie Tale character.\u00a0 Another may be a Warrior Princess.\u00a0 Or a superhero.\u00a0 Or a fashion model bedecked in expensive but virtual designer clothes paid for with real money.<\/p>\n
As you sit in a cartoon pew, cartoon worship leaders perform music, and then a cartoon preacher gives a message.\u00a0 If there is to be a baptism, this happens in computer-generated virtual water, whereupon the candidate in the virtual reality helmet at home kneels down to simulate being immersed in the water.<\/p>\n
Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook who changed the name of his company to \u201cMeta\u201d to reflect his new ambitions, says that his goal<\/a> is to make \u201cimmersive digital worlds\u201d into \u201cthe primary way that we live our lives and spend our time.\u201d\u00a0 He dreams of the time when we can all stay at home wearing virtually reality helmets, enabling us to work, shop, go to school, and socialize in the metaverse.<\/p>\n Some churches are already offering worship services in the metaverse, as described above.\u00a0 I blogged about this phenomenon in my post The Metaverse Gives Us Metachurch<\/a>.\u00a0 You might want to read that post again to appreciate what follows.<\/p>\n One of the articles in the special Religion & Liberty<\/em> issue that I blogged about yesterday is Worship in the Metaverse<\/a> by A. Trevor Sutton.\u00a0 He is a Lutheran pastor with whom I collaborated in our book Authentic Christianity:\u00a0 How Lutheran Theology Speaks to a Postmodern World.<\/a>\u00a0He is also working on his Ph.D., in which he is studying the religious implications of our new technology.\u00a0 Out of that work he has published Redeeming Technology: A Christian Approach to Healthy Digital Habits.<\/a><\/p>\n In his Religion & Liberty<\/em> article, Trevor begins with a vivid reflection on the physicality of the risen Christ and our human physicality.\u00a0 He then shows how all of the major Christian traditions\u2013Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist\u2013agree that worship addresses the senses and is to be embodied.<\/p>\n He makes a useful distinction between \u201ctechnology\u201d and \u201cmedia,\u201d drawing on that great media scholar Martin Luther:<\/p>\n While technology and media are often conflated, they are not identical or interchangeable. Technology can be understood as tools or instruments. (To be certain, this is not an exhaustive understanding of technology.) Media, on the other hand, are often understood as conduits for communication. Media are that which convey ideas, images, or information. For example, Martin Luther in his lectures on Isaiah recognized the ways in which worship and media intersect: \u201cAs the God who is worshiped, God is clothed in the earthly media of the Word, of Baptism, and of the Lord\u2019s Supper, wherein he reveals himself.\u201d Although it may often go unnoticed, corporate worship\u2014both past and present\u2014relies heavily on media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Trevor also works with the thought of the pioneering media scholarship of Marshall McLuhan, who said that media is an extension of the body and its senses.\u00a0 He applies this to worship:<\/p>\n Media are conduits for communication that influence not only the message itself but also the recipients of the message. For example, livestream video of in-person worship extends the sight and sounds of the sanctuary, but not the taste, touch, and smell of the worship service. Those viewing the livestream worship see and hear the sanctuary while the rest of their senses are located elsewhere. Their eyes and ears are extended into the worship space while their nose, tongue, and other body parts are not. Digital media allows part of you\u2014but not all of you\u2014to be somewhere far from the rest of your body.<\/p>\n Digital media\u2019s ability to extend some of our senses results in a fragmented bodily experience, hence a disintegration of the senses. Part of you may be somewhere, but not all of you. The opposite of this is common sense (sensus communis<\/em>), wherein there is communion and harmony of the bodily senses. Common sense occurs when all your senses\u2014sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell\u2014are gathered together in a harmonious and singular experience.<\/p>\n In-person worship is a common sense experience: You see the sanctuary, stained glass, cross or crucifix, and candles. You smell the incense. You taste the bread and wine of the Lord\u2019s Supper. You touch the pews and hymnals and embrace others. You hear the Word proclaimed, crying babies, and the din of the worshiping space. In-person worship is the communion of senses wherein taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing coalesce in a common experience.<\/p>\n Metaverse worship, however, ruptures the communion of our senses. A VR headset transports everything to a virtual site of worship; eyes and ears and minds extend into the metaverse, while noses, mouths, hands, hearts, and guts remain elsewhere. The sense of touch is relegated to a couch or computer chair while smelling a house, coffee shop, or dormitory. Since the metaverse is a place devoid of tastes, VR worshippers taste whatever happens to be at the ready where they are worshiping: pancakes, coffee, or Doritos. Worshipping in the metaverse is devoid of common sense\u2014you are here, you are there, you are everywhere. In short, you are nowhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Trevor is no Luddite.\u00a0 He is not saying that watching and hearing a service online\u2013which the majority of churches are now offering post-COVID\u2013 is necessarily wrong or ineffective.\u00a0 The Word is efficacious, after all, and we can hear that Word through the online media.\u00a0 He even concedes that different theologies can arrive at different practices.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cA tradition that values proclamation of the Word may see great possibility in online worship,\u201d he says, \u201cwhereas one that gives priority to the Eucharist may see online worship as untenable.\u201d<\/p>\n And, of course, watching and hearing an actual pastor conducting an actual service online before actual congregants is not the same as the completely virtual cartoon world of the metaverse.<\/p>\n His point is that the technology and the media that we use affects us. \u201cAltering where and how we worship will alter our values and virtues, possibly encouraging a more solipsistic and individualistic approach not only to worship but to the Faith as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n I would add the observation that most religions work to free us from the \u201cweb of illusions.\u201d\u00a0 This is what Hinduism and Buddhism<\/a> are built around, but the Bible too warns us against teachings based on illusions and false appearances (Isaiah 30:10, Col 2:23).\u00a0 I am not aware of any religion that teaches us to live in illusions, much less to worship in an illusory space.\u00a0 And when religious people try to do this, it will end up undermining their religion.<\/p>\n