The Pixelated Congregation

Over the past couple of decades, the Web has expanded the flow of information between like-minded people as well as between those separated by great cultural and geographical distances, changing the way we understand everything from politics to entertainment. It has also provided a new space for interaction -- a virtual world in which users can communicate freely and easily. These developments have allowed people to establish and foster individual online identities, granting them real-time access to information and correspondence. Like most things, religion hasn't been immune to these transformative powers of the Web. In fact, many religious people have embraced the technology as a way of enhancing their faith. According to Stewart Hoover, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado and director of its Center for Media, Religion and Culture, the Web and other new media are appealing forums for people seeking religious insight and spiritual inspiration. "They are media where people can take their own initiative and bring together new combinations of things in unique ways that are satisfying and meaningful to them," Hoover says. "The elasticity and the plasticity of the Web are very attractive to them." Because of its adaptable and interactive nature, the Web offers its users a wide variety of religious experiences. From providing service times at local houses of worship, to forums for discussing controversial topics, to online churches and communities, the Internet and the content of the World Wide Web have, to a large extent, revolutionized the way people think about and experience religion. In 2000, Christopher Helland, assistant professor of sociology of religion at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, proposed a useful framework for examining religious participation on the Internet. He established two distinct categories: religion online and online religion. Religion online refers to places on the Web -- usually sites run by official organizations or religious groups -- which provide information but no interaction. In contrast, Helland defines online religion as mostly unofficial or unaffiliated sites that offer visitors some sort of interaction with other visitors or with people who create content for the sites. Helland, who admits that a major problem with his topic of study is the rapidly changing nature of the Web, closed a 2005 journal article by predicting that organized religious communities would begin to adapt to the Internet as an additional venue for social interaction beyond traditional brick-and-mortar public spaces. Four years later, as religious groups begin taking advantage of online resources -- and social networking, in particular -- it seems that Helland's prediction has come true. Revolution NYC -- a non-denominational Christian church based in Brooklyn, New York, and led by Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye, the famed televangelists of the 1980s -- has begun to blur the line between religion online and online religion. Although the church holds weekly services and Bible studies locally in Brooklyn - as well as in its Atlanta and Charlotte locations - the majority of Revolution's members are part of a virtual community. Visitors to the church's website can download or stream the weekly sermons, view photos and videos, and read about and discuss a variety of topics on a message board. Revolution also maintains a collaborative blog and an active presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Bakker regularly posts videos providing answers to questions he receives from members. These online options are avenues for Internet users not only to get information, but also to have meaningful interaction as part of a community and to create individualized religious experiences. Vince Anderson, Revolution's assistant pastor, says that he and Bakker are working hard to become even more involved with the church's virtual community. Twitter allows them to be closer to members as pastors because through that medium they are able to provide immediate feedback and support to congregants who may be hundreds or thousands of miles away. There are also groups around the world that meet weekly to listen to and discuss Revolution services. "We want to facilitate those groups more," Anderson says. "We want to create real community out of the virtual community that's already been established." Although some religious organizations like Revolution are beginning to use the interactive components of the Web as a religious medium, blurring Helland's distinctions as a result, many others still fall more exclusively into the "religion online" category. Stewart Hoover believes that some members of traditional religions such as Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism have been skeptical of utilizing the Web for anything other than informational purposes because they feel it has the potential to undermine control over the meanings of their symbols and ideas. The Catholic Fellowship of NYC, the only group out of 45 Catholic young-adult groups in the New York City area that was established not as part of a geographical parish but specifically as an online community, offers its members very limited avenues for participation and interaction on the Internet. Instead, founder Toan Chu says the organization primarily uses the Web to "recruit potential members and post and coordinate events." The group has an informational website in addition to a sizeable presence at Meetup.com , a site designed to help organize events to create real-life fellowship and social interaction. So while such religious groups are integrating the Web into their religious life as a means of "reaching people very quickly and delivering the message effectively," as Chu puts it, they still maintain tight control over what's being communicated. Still other sites on the Web function primarily as a venue for virtual religious experience, fitting into what Helland calls "online religion." Unlike Revolution NYC, which is a real-life organization that uses the Internet for both informational and interactive purposes, and the Catholic Fellowship of NYC, which gears its online presence toward practical functions that relate to real-life fellowship, this group focuses primarily on the virtual experience. In many cases, an affiliated institution doesn't exist outside of the Internet. One of the best-known examples of online religion is Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual online world populated by user-created avatars and boasting hundreds of thousands of users and an established religion presence. According to a USA Today article, "Leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites estimate about 1,000 avatars teleport into churches, synagogues or mosques on a regular basis. Hundreds more list themselves with Buddhist, pagan, Wiccan and other groups." Users can light candles for Shabbat, pray at a Buddhist temple, or even attend a service Webcast from a real church in Oklahoma. While such interaction has clear religious significance, some media analysts like Hoover remain skeptical of the depth of the cultural influence exerted by purely interactive media like Second Life. "Trying to use the Web to reintroduce a structured religious pattern, even if it's something like a megachurch, seems to be something contradictory to me," Hoover says. "I think the kind of things you get from that formal structure, people would rather do in person. The Web is really a medium which is structured to do other things." Perhaps the Web is better suited to facilitating religious experiences like the connections that happen on social networking sites, a more communitarian form of online religion. As Hoover observes, "The concern people used to have about the impersonality of the Web -- that by going you'd be anonymous, isolated, and atomized -- definitely doesn't happen anymore. Now people are going to the Web to find other people who think and feel like they do." Anderson of Revolution Church agrees. "Our members are tweeting and blogging," he says, "communicating with one another, which has given them a voice and an opportunity to claim the church as their own. Anything we can do to make the larger voice heard is great, and the Web really gives us a way to do that. It gives a lot more freedom and opens everything up to critique and discussion." Anderson's words point to the fact that the Web is not only a great resource for seekers, but it also provides a new platform for religious experience. Chances are, as with other online communities, the relationship between the medium and the seekers who use it will continue to grow stronger. As the number of Web users grows, and people become more comfortable with the technology, the ways in which we experience and think about religion will also continue to be transformed. "The Web's too efficient and accessible, there's too much good information, for people not to take advantage of it," Hoover says. "The Web will only increase in significance for religion and spirituality." So while he remains skeptical about the lasting impact of Second Life and other examples of online religion, Hoover believes that religion online will continue to grow. Christopher Helland anticipated that religious communities would embrace Internet technologies specifically to enhance social interaction and, in doing so, that they would begin to mesh the religion online and online religion categories. As Revolution NYC demonstrates, the recent acceptance of online social networking has begun to dissolve that boundary between the different forms of religious participation on the Web. As users begin to better understand the technology and welcome the idea of virtual communication, and religious organizations themselves become increasingly more accepting of Web interaction, the utilization of social media will grow, further transforming religion's relationship with the online world. Vince Anderson sees both positive and negative aspects of this shift toward the integration of social media into religious life. "Positively, it has introduced a new way for people who are thinking and feeling similar things to connect -- immediately. But it's also negative because for everyone you are connected with, for everyone that is similar in mind and heart, you gain someone who's opposed to you." Anderson says that he finds himself arguing over theological points with his opponents over Twitter, something he thinks doesn't work because it counters the church's reason for having a presence on the site to begin with -- to inspire the congregation. Still, interactions like spontaneous theological debate on Twitter are very significant. They establish the Internet as a valid setting for real religious experience. Moving past the online religion/religion online framework, these experiences will provide an important foundation for the future of religious participation on the Web.