Religion has gone online. Wasn’t it already there?
contributed by Bernardo Brown, 30 May 2020
Online religion is much like online sex: it can be done, but it is rather, well… lame. At least this seems to be the case for those who try to take practices meant for actual human bodies to experience and replicate them using digital media platforms.
For a class that I am currently teaching in Tokyo, I have nine groups of students doing research on the impact that religious practices that have gone digital across Asia have on religious practitioners. The results so far are interesting in that people have either joined online rituals enthusiastically, or have found ways to be physically together while keeping social distance .
But although the success of these adaptations requires much work from organizers and flexibility from motivated participants, they are overwhelmingly characterized by a lack of creativity. Religious practices ‘gone online’ rarely attempt to support innovations that originate in the digital world and are not keen on promoting unmediated spiritual experiences.
Aside from parking-lot rituals and drive-thru confessions – which do not require any digital technology – there is a notorious lack of innovation in how the pandemic has affected those who organise and participate in religious rituals. The key concern is how to do the same we did before but without being physically there.
Although digital platforms have generated new spaces to share personal experiences and interpretations widely, and to experiment with new forms of relationality and spirituality, the more individual and ingenious aspects of lived religion are being largely censored in the context of organized religion.
Instead, there is an effort to raise the profile of official websites with their regularly streamed rituals, veda chanting and meditation sessions. Most importantly, all of these official sites are replete with specific guidelines on how to practice online religion ‘properly’.
Similarly, social media apps, discussion forums and YouTube channels that highlight their ‘official’ character attempt to draw a clear line that distinguishes them from sites and resources that lack institutional sanction. It appears that new technologies are perceived more as a threat than an opportunity to refashion religious obligations and spiritual experiences.
It is thus not surprising that religious specialists and authorities from diverse denominations were quick to embrace digital media, but only to take their leadership online.
Anthropologist Ian Reader has argued that in the case of Japanese pilgrimages like the Shikoku Henro, the internet “has served more as a conservative medium replicating and reinforcing traditional structures and narratives, than as something innovative or revolutionary reshaping pilgrimage representation, imagery, modes of performance or authority structures” (2010, 82).
Although this was written a decade ago, it is highly appropriate to describe the approach of traditional religious authorities today. The already well-known capacity of digital media platforms to contest official narratives, propose sui generis interpretations of events and constitute a burgeoning followership, all sound warning alarms across hierarchically organised religions.
For this reason, traditional religious authorities have attempted to monopolise the official narrative and define the ‘correct’ interpretation of online religious experiences; often warning against the emergence of alternative viewpoints that stray off the mainline narratives.
It is worth highlighting that online religion is not new, and that the policing attitude of authorities that has rapidly emerged in the digital sphere is only characteristic of the last few months. Sociologist Weishan Huang – building on work published by Christopher Helland (2005) – argued that in its early origins “Online religion consisted of religious websites where people could act with unrestricted freedom and a high level of interactivity. It represented how the fluid and flexible nature of the Internet also allowed new forms of religiosity and interactive religious practice online” (Huang 2016, 111).
Indeed, the work of Helland and others like Heidi Campbell, seems to describe a very different world of digital religion, one that was marked by freedom, innovation and the creative exploration of new forms of religious communities. In Campbell’s words, “the Internet serves as a spiritual hub, allowing practitioners to select from an array of resources and experience in order to assemble and personalise their religious behaviour and belief” (2012, 76).
Online religion was largely considered (until earlier this year, I would add) a relatively minor and marginal space for the building of religious communities and the sharing of spiritual experiences. The situation in 2020 has drastically changed, and new figures that emerge online appear to pose a challenge to traditional authorities. From her research on the use of WeChat in Shanghai amongst Tzu-Chi Buddhists, Huang noted that the platform is “less hierarchical and creates multiple centers,” which enabled the emergence of hybrid and decentralized practices (Huang 2016, 118). These practices may have become much more visible today, as millions of religious practitioners are roaming the internet, allowing multiple voice to reach new audiences.
Until recently, mainstream authorities seem to have largely ignored alternative leaders and experimental practices, given that they did not really attract a serious following and thus did not constitute an alternative centre of attraction. The situation today has changed dramatically, but rather than using the experience of those who have practiced religion online for the last twenty years, mainline religious denominations see it as the right time to classify their actions as unsanctioned innovations and to marginalise them from mainstream religious practice.
Campbell, Heidi (editor). 2012. Digital Religion. Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds. London: Routledge.
Helland, Christopher. 2005. “Online Religion as Lived Religion.” Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet: Special Issue on Theory and Methodology 1(1): 1–16.
Huang, Weishan. 2016. “WeChat Together about the Buddha. The Construction of Sacred Space and Religious Community in Shanghai through Social Media” in Religion and Media in China. Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan and Kong Kong, edited by Stefania Travagnin. London: Routledge.
Reader, Ian. 2010. “The Shikoku Pilgrimage Online Official Sites, Promotion, Commerce and the Replication of Authority” in Japanese Religions on the Internet: Innovation, Representation, and Authority, edited by Erica Baffelli, Ian Reader and Birgit Staemmler. London: Routledge.
Bernardo Brown is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo
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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