contributed by Koh Keng We, 8 July 2020

I remembered laughing in front of the movie directed by Jack Neo, “I Not Stupid”, when an elderly lady was told that her son who was overseas could actually download and print a talisman to secure the blessings of the deity she was consulting. The deity through the spirit medium in the temple had written talismans but the lady was not able to send them to her son in time for his examinations. The assistant of the spirit medium then suggested that her son could visit Guanyinma.com to print out the talismans, burn them and then drink the ashes mixed with water. Guanyinma.com thus became a catchphrase among friends, half in jest, for the possibilities opened by new technologies in traditional folk religion. 

Nevertheless, there were questions. Can we actually do that? Would the talisman still be effective? Was it the same as one that had been physically blessed and sanctified by the deity through a physical medium? Could these powers be transmitted through this new spatial and virtual dimension? How would the virtual fit into our understanding of the divine, the supernatural and its powers, and the spaces and realities that they are believed to inhabit or operate through? How would this virtual reality fit within other dimensions of the cosmology and the universe as communicated through different religions, including science itself?

Religion has always been quick to adapt and use new technologies, but in varying degrees and in different ways, depending on the religion in question.  From print technology (the connection between print and the Reformation in Europe comes to mind), to the use of new musical instruments and ensembles, and now the internet and social media, religion has often embraced change and technology. Most frequently, it has been used to reach broader audiences, in terms of marketing as a means of communication. 

Yet, what the Covid-19 situation has brought to the foreground, especially with the prohibition of religious gatherings and services, along with other forms of public interactions, is the possibility of using new technologies and virtual spaces for carrying out religious services and rituals. These new technologies were not just adaptations of existing materials circulating in the spaces and planes of human experiences, but have created new spaces, dimensions, and realities that are not graspable, not material, but no less real.

Different religions conceive of the divine and the “worlds” we inhabit and can interact with rather differently. From transcendental religions to more immanent and animistic religions, each system conceives of the divine, and of the relationship between the self and the divine - and the ways in which the self and community can communicate with the divine -  rather differently, as the work of Geoffrey Benjamin on the “deep sociology” of religion has highlighted (Benjamin 1987).

In the rapid responses taken by the state in conjunction to the different religious federations and bodies to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, we can see the similarities and divergences between the different religions. These differences concern the ways individuals, institutions, and the state addressed the sudden rupture in the routines, flows, circulations, communities and spaces underlying different religions by turning to the virtual and media embodying these spaces. 

From Friday prayers and other religious services in mosques, Saturday and Sunday services in churches, to daily prayers in Taoist or Buddhist temples, we see how religion is never a private matter, and how important the social is, even if in each of these cases, individuals might be deemed capable of doing prayers or worship on their own and in their homes. As the other contributions to this blog have shown, the moving of church and mosque services online, and the live telecast of the main altars of Taoist temples (like the Lorong Koo Chye Sheng Hong temple) and of Buddhist chanting sermons, and rituals (e.g. the Mangala Vihara association) are some of the ways in which these religious institutions have used new technologies to reach out to their followers.

If we accept the idea of football becoming a civil religion for some, we can see an eerie parallel in the playing of football matches in Europe to empty stadiums, and the pastor, ustaz or monk conducting services and sermons in empty spaces to the camera, reaching out to their respective, and perhaps overlapping, virtual audiences. 

Nine Emperor Gods Festival in pre-Covid Singapore (source: photo taken by author, 2019)

In many ways, the virtual and surrogate services seem to be stopgap measures to maintain the ties and the communications within the community. But do they induce the same feeling of communitas (Turner 1969) and the same experiences?  Probably not, especially if one is very much used to the experience of praying together (at least on certain days of the week, month or the year) through mass participation in rituals and communicative acts with the divine.  

While the emotive experience of prayers is attained individually, the social and communal performance of these rituals and prayers give these individual experiences special, perhaps universal, significance.  While the textual and the literal dimensions (especially individual understanding and interpretation of religious texts) have become important in shaping religiosity and religious affiliation in modern times, the social and community experiences of the divine remain very powerful.   

Nevertheless, it seems that folk traditions and folk religions could be most severely affected by the social/physical distancing and the shift to the virtual realm. In the case of Chinese folk religion, this would be perceived as losing ground amongst the younger generation, losing association with the older devotees, and even risk losing some of the rich material and social cultures embodying its practices, rituals, and festivals.

As such, can the virtual and the surrogate actually substitute the material and social dimensions that constitute these religions? How will the lockdown affect the roles of traditional human ritual intermediaries and experts, from Taoist priests, spirit mediums, to different masters and their importance in the everyday life and rites of passage of both the living and the otherworldly? Can the Qingming packages that were created in various Buddhist and Taoist temples to cater to families and individuals who were not able to do the offerings to their ancestors and loved ones, actually replace the acts of going to the columbarium and gravesites, and offering food, joss paper, and joss-sticks? Can telecasting the image of the main altar of a temple actually allow a person to convey his or her prayers to the deities in the temple? Can the virtual substitute the physicality and materiality of the experience, the motions, and the connection with the divine when in these temples? This is all the more when even one’s access to the material items used in these rituals are temporarily cut off, as shops selling Chinese religious materials were not considered essential. The closure of such services is understandable, but the similar temporary fate of what one would consider to be a more “essential” part of the everyday lives of many ethnic Chinese, traditional Chinese medicine, is rather uncanny.  

Folk traditions are never static, and always in flux. They are often marked by flexibility. Thus, columbariums and temples have been offering the above services and packages to help devotees house and take care of their ancestors’ remains and tablets and provide the necessary offerings throughout the year for quite a while. They are often attractive because these devotees feel that they are not able to fulfill these responsibilities, especially with the hectic routines of modern working life, and they fear that their descendants may abandon these traditions. 

Furthermore, if one could not go and pay respects to the deities in the temples due to personal or wider societal circumstances, one can always pray or pay respects at home, or anywhere else. Even without incense or material offerings, palms or hands joined in prayer or just invoking the deity’s name will do. The ancestors and deities will understand. Yet, at the same time, we often hear the lament of the older generation: things are not done as before.  The deities and people, however, are no longer so strict. Corners are cut, procedures “rationalized” or shortened in the name of convenience, and to save time. Times have changed. Change is inevitable.

I return to the initial questions. To what extent can the virtual replace the physical, the material and the social that is so much a part of religious life? Perhaps it can do so more for certain religions than for others. Perhaps it can work more as a communicative and mobilizing tool rather than a long-term replacement for actual rituals, religious acts, human intermediaries and various forms of community and communitas. Will religion be the same again after the Covid-19 pandemic? How will practice, festivals, the community, spaces and the material culture be transformed in the long-term by the pandemic? These are undoubtedly questions that we will continue to ask, and which only time will tell. Yet, what we know is that now, after a few months of lockdown, some of us, at least, or perhaps many, long to return to these spaces. We long to connect with the spaces, the material environments, and most of all, the communities. We long to communicate with the divine in the way we are familiar with and we find meaningful. We long for a return to the normal that we knew, no matter how different that normal is going to be when all this is over. Is that in itself a contradiction? Or just another twist in the history of religion in the longue dureé?

References:

Benjamin, Geoffrey.  “Notes on the Deep Sociology of Religion”.  National University of Singapore Department of Sociology Working Paper no. 85.  1987.

Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process:  Structure and Anti-Structure.  Ailine de Gruyter.  New York. 1969. 

 

Koh Keng We is currently assistant professor in the History Programme in Nanyang Technological University.  His interests include religion, migration, business/economy and empire in maritime Asia and global history. 

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the blog editorial team or the Asia Research Institute.

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