Frantisek Stech, Author at AI Theology

What Will Online Religion Look Like In The Metaverse?

The Internet is not to be understood merely as a tool. It is a specific extension of a complex environment instead. Contemporaries live on (or in) the Internet as well as in the physical landscapes of this world. Besides, such a mode of living in the world continues to intensify. Always more human activities are being moved into the online environment which changes them a lot. Just think of how rapidly the activity of shopping has changed during, let’s say, the last decade. Three decades ago, shopping was a completely different experience than it is nowadays, as the Internet became an everyday reality.

Regardless of these considerations, it would be a mistake to see the Internet only as a kind of parallel reality. As a complex phenomenon, the Internet touches all spheres of human life, including the sphere of religion – the religious life. At this place, a crucial question might be asked: What is the relation between religion and the key technical medium of the internet?

In general, we may consider 3 dimensions of such a relationship. It is (1) religion online, (2) online religion, and (3) online religious experience. The first two dimensions were studied and well defined by Canadian sociologist and anthropologist of religion, Christopher Helland. The third was added a few years ago by new media and media theory experts from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Menahem Blondheim, and Hananel Rosenberg. The concept they suggested raises serious questions, but at the same time, it touches on the limits of what is presently possible. In any case, all phases (if we look at the problem from the perspective of development as Christopher Helland), or dimensions (if we consider the fact that the first two categories often exist in parallel or in different combinations) might be described as follows.

taken from Pixabay.com

The Initial Stages of Internet Religion

Religion online describes a static presence of religion on the internet. Typically, good examples of this are the websites containing information about different religious communities and their activities. In the Christian religious tradition, we can point out websites of parishes or church communities. According to Helland, this relationship between religion and the internet belongs to the past, which was characteristic of slow internet connection and technically undeveloped, static, access devices (e.g., heavy personal computers), which some of us may remember from the 1990s. At that time, the internet was understood by religious communities merely as a tool for their presentations. With time, websites, as well as social networks with religious content, became an integral part of life for a great number of religious communities. They will likely continue to serve, as such, even in times when the internet offers new possibilities.

In online religion, the Internet has become a tool for developing religious practice online with the improvement of the connection speed and improved access technologies. Online prayer groups, religious rituals, or services set and performed in an online environment might be mentioned as examples. This form of interaction between religions and the internet encountered its unprecedented boom during the last two years in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. With governmental restrictions and lockdowns, religious life in its traditional communitarian form stopped practically overnight and religions were forced to move a large part of their activities to the online environment. The internet was naturally used as a tool to handle this change. Soon, however, it was understood that it is not only a tool but also a new environment for religious practice from now on.

This is of course not without theological problems. Perhaps, one of the crucial questions refers to the online religious experience. Is it possible to speak about online religious experience at the level of online religion? Is online religious experience real or rather “just” virtual (and thus not real)? Blondheim and Rosenberg open this question and argue for a new dimension of the relationship between religion and the internet because, in their opinion, it is possible to encounter authentic religious experiences in cyberspace.

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

The Next Frontier

It is disputable if online religious experiences are already present phenomena or if they are an uncertain matter of the future. In the latter form, they would only be considered at a level of a vision for the future. Some suggest that something like an online religious experience is principally not possible at all. However, theoretically speaking, the increasing speed of connection and response of largely personalized and omnipresent access devices (e.g., smartphones), quickly advancing the datafication of human lives, virtual reality development, and interaction with artificial intelligence, bring serious questions into the realm of religion.

The internet is becoming a true environment; something that becomes more transparent like a borderline between cyberspace and real space in which our bodies dwell. It slowly fades away. Consequently, cyberspace should neither be labeled as a “consensual hallucination” as it once was by its conceiver William Gibson, nor as a kind of utopia, or place “nowhere-somewhere” (Kevin Robins). Contemporary people live in digital landscapes as they do in physical ones. These two traditionally separated spaces manifest themselves, today, as one hybrid space.

The age of the internet of things is slowly coming to its end, and the era of the internet of everything is setting in. Quickly advancing mobile technologies are playing a key role in the hybrid space interface. Thanks to them, people are practically connected to the internet non-stop. They can create digital-physical landscapes and perceive how they become digital-physical hybrid entities as they live in hybrid (real-virtual) spaces they create for themselves. To put it bluntly, what is happening on the world wide web, is happening in the real world, and vice versa. Everything might be online, and to a large extent, it already is.

Photo by Diana Vargas on Unsplash.com

Religion in the Metaverse

Let’s assume that in such an environment (such as the metaverse) it is possible to have an authentic religious experience. In other words, let’s presume that from this perspective, the encounter with the Sacred in cyberspace has the same characteristics and qualities as in the physical landscapes of this world. An imaginary wall between real and virtual is still perceivable. However, with the emergence of the metaverse, it is becoming more transparent and more permeable. Yet, if it ever will disappear remains a question. In each case, we can already speak of religious experience in cyberspace concerning some computer games as World of Warcraft, for instance (Geraci, Gálik, Gáliková).

Recent research on Neo-Paganism suggests that a relatively high number of its adherents consider their online religious activity equivalent to that in the physical world. Some of them even stated that their religious activity in cyberspace is on a higher level than that in real life. We may also speak of online religious experiences concerning the phenomena of virtual pilgrimages (cyber-pilgrimages or e-pilgrimages). Further, platforms like the one with the meaningful name Second Life make it possible to live a religious life in a completely online environment.

Blondheim and Rosenberg believe that online religious experience in the digital world is “emerging from the breakdown and collapse of all entrenched conventions and narratives in the digital world, and the opening of a chaotic abyss can (…) serve as a prelude to a fresh new theological start.” Unfortunately, they do not say anything about how this new theological start they propose should look. But, right now, it is not that important because it may stimulate our imagination and thoughts on the transformations of faith in the digital age.

What would be your reflection on this matter?

An earlier version of this text originally appeared in the Christnet online magazine in Czech (https://www.christnet.eu/clanky/6592/nabozenstvi_on_line_on_line_nabozenstvi_a_on_line_nabozenska_zkusenost.url); published 22nd September 2021. English translation published with the permission of the Christnet magazine. Translated by the author.

František Štěch is a research fellow at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University. He serves as coordinator of the “Theology & Contemporary Culture” research group. Previously he worked at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University as a research fellow and project PI. His professional interests include Fundamental theology; Ecclesiology; Youth theology; Religious, and Christian identity; Intercultural

Get to know our Advisory Board

Theology as the Intelligence of Faith in the Cyberspace

The book Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet (Fordham University Press 2014) by the prominent Vatican theologian Antonio Spadaro SJ, represents an explicit attempt to conceptualize an encounter between Christian theology and contemporary digital culture. It tries to answer questions related not only to the impact of the internet on the church’s self-understanding but also reflects on God’s revelation, grace, liturgy, sacraments, and many other theological topics. Hence, Spadaro’s book serves as a brief but lucid introduction to a whole range of questions emerging in the Internet era.

Defining Cybertheology

From his perspective, the Internet is not a tool to be used. Rather, it is a genuine environment for contemporaries to inhabit as much as they do in the physical landscapes of this world. We would be mistaken if we conceive the Internet just as a kind of parallel reality because it permeates the complex of human dwelling. It is “an anthropological space that is deeply intertwined with our everyday lives.”[1] As such, it represents a new culture – the culture of cyberspace,[2] and in relation to that fact, theology entering the coordinates of this culture becomes Cybertheology.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, many authors attempted to define Cybertheology. Some understood it as a theology of new technologies. Others saw it as the study of spirituality appearing within the internet environment. Spadaro’s aim is to reframe these first attempts and offer his own alternative definition: “It is necessary to consider cybertheology as being the intelligence of the faith in the era of the Internet, that is, reflection on the thinkability of the faith in the light of the Web’s logic.”[3] Cybertheology reflects on faith lived “at a time when the Web’s logic marks the way of thinking, knowing, communicating, and living.”[4]

This is an important characteristic because in this sense it would not be appropriate to define cybertheology only as a kind of contextual theology since the internet is a phenomenon that became an integral part of everyday human life, at least for the majority of people living on planet Earth. Cybertheology could be understood as mediation between God’s word (Logos) and digital culture and for Spadaro, it appears as one of the most important vocations for contemporary Christians.[5] Consequently, cyberspace is a new anthropological space, where Christians encode and de-code their digital witnesses about their faith and hope they have in Jesus Christ (cf. 1. Peter 3,15). It is a new eco-system (or extension of the physical eco-system) where theology is done and thought.

Church as the Spiritual Google

Two ecclesiological relevant topics may be mentioned here to illustrate this. The first one is connectivity, which introduces the Church as a connective environment, i.e., as a communication hub allowing for multiple encounters of people among themselves, with the rest of creation, and with God the Creator. In this relation, the Church can become a connective authority or a kind of Google for the realm of spiritual life.[6] In other words, just as Google enables its users to find what they search for, Church enables people to find and encounter God.

The second example is relationality itself, which receives new meanings in the environment of the internet. Just think of how often we are preoccupied with deciding if our meetings will happen online or offline. According to Spadaro, the Church may understand itself as a network and derive new impulses from the very conception of the internet for the sake of its own self-reflection. This kind of theology does not only react to new trends or technologies. At the same time, it is influenced by them and starts to live inside a milieu shaped by them.

With that said, Spadaro is rather critical to living a Christian life exclusively in the realm of cyberspace. In consonance with his own denomination, he still holds that physical community is essential and indispensable for a genuine Christian life from faith. With respect to this, he argues against tendencies like virtual sacraments received by avatars in cyberspace, which are supposed to mediate grace to physical persons of whom they are extensions.

Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere

Even though he holds that from a Christian point of view it is not possible to accept the concept of purely virtual sacraments, he concludes that thanks to God’s grace, religious experience is principally possible also in cyberspace.[7] In any case, it might be said that for Spadaro, the age of the Internet introduces a new and specific phase of the human journey towards God, which requires complex theological reflection stemming from deep immersion in digital culture. Spadaro writes:

Today, one thinks, and one knows the world not only in the traditional manner, through reading and exchange or within the confines of special interest groups (for example, teaching or study groups), but through realizing a vast connection between people. Intelligence is distributed everywhere, and it can be easily interconnected. The Web gives life to a form of collective intelligence. The Church itself recognizes that it has a responsible role in the formation of a human collective culture.[8]

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Here, Spadaro connects to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who he considers a prophetic theological voice, because Teilhard thought that the development of human culture is directed towards ever more intensive interconnection (complexification), that is into the global network which would be in future the environment for life.

While for philosopher Pierre Levy, the global environment implies the subordination of the individual to the whole, Teilhard turns this conviction upside down and speaks of an individual mind. In the milieu of the intensive, global interconnection, this individual mind is lifted into a higher level of being, into the level of the noosphere. In the sphere of reason, the new intensification of human interconnectedness (including their minds and consciousnesses) occurs.

The interesting fact is that according to Teilhard, machines play an important role in this process,[9] because they help with interconnecting intelligent entities and contribute to the genesis of “the technological, planetary nervous system.”[10] Restlessly complexified, the techno-human network of the world (noosphere) remains evolutionarily connected to the biosphere as well as an ancient lithosphere. This continuously opens up (more and more) to its own transcendence (even more intensive integration and interconnectedness) reaching its final climax in the Omega point – the end of history, in salvation, which comes through Jesus Christ as the very basis of all evolution.

Through Jesus Christ, with Him and in Him, the whole process of evolution is brought towards completion, towards God, who shall be “all in all” (1. Corinthians 15, 28). This final unity, however, does not mean the vanishing of the particular in universal. On the contrary, it becomes preservation of the particularity of all parts and may be compared to a firmly woven net of distinctive beings imbued by God in whom, all particularities meet their unity in diversity because He is all in all. This was clear already to Jennifer Cobb who at the beginning of the 1990s, saw in cyberspace a clear parallel to Teilhard’s noosphere.[11]

We may conclude that in his book, Spadaro shows how theology may help in the contemporary quest for re-thinking new technologies and changes they bring along. In this attempt, he finds the theology of Teilhard extremely inspiring, even though he is aware of all its ambiguities.[12] Spadaro thinks the most important is Teilhard’s emphasis on proposing “an open vision of transcendence that is able to understand an intelligence that is not collective but convergent.”[13] Consequently, we can understand digital culture as a specific phase of the human journey towards God, and, thanks to that, it is also legitimate to think about the internet, in theological terms, as an integral part of the divine milieu.

Cybertheology in COVID Times

Spadaro formulated his ideas (in Italian) already a decade ago. The English translation of his book appeared 7 years ago. At that time Spadaro could have hardly imagined that the theological reflection he proposed will become so important in times of the global pandemic of the Covid-19. Within a very short period, an unprecedented amount of people throughout the world found themselves in social isolation.

Consequently, the vast amount of human social activities was quickly transferred to online mode (or environment as Spadaro would probably say). Including education and religious life. With brute force, the Covid-19 pandemic pointed out the key role of new technologies in the lives of contemporaries, religious people not excluded. Debates on how to be the Church in the digital age intensified in all Christian denominations, and this requires a conscientious theological reflection.

In such context, the return to Spadaro’s 2014 Cybertheology book becomes even more pertinent. The things he envisioned then as faint glimpses of the future became our de facto reality when houses of worship were forced to close. Shifting a faith paradigm from attracting people to people buildings to developing intelligent forms in cyberspace is a good start.

Get to know our Advisory Board

[1] Antonio SPADARO (2014), Cybertheology: Thinking Christianity in the Era of the Internet. (Translated by Maria Way), New York: Fordham University Press, p. 3.

[2] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 14.

[3] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 16.

[4] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 17.

[5] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 18.

[6] See FRIESEN, Dwight, J. Thy Kingdom Connected: What the Church Can Learn from Facebook, the Internet, and Other Networks, 2009, Grand Rapids (MI): Baker Books, p. 80-81.

[7] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 75-76.

[8] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 94.

[9] TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, Pierre, The Future of Man, 2004, New York: Image Books, 158-161.

[10] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 100.

[11] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 103.

[12] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 105.

[13] SPADARO, Cybertheology, p. 105.

Author: Frantisek Stech