Religion and the Internet

Online Christian communities have been describing themselves as "churches" since the 1980s. [...] This chapter will explore the role of the body in online churches, mapping ways in which online worship relies on, incorporates and distances itself from the physical world. These arguments are based on my own extensive ethnographic and archival investigation of five online churches since 2005.

Cet article cherche à examiner et comprendre trois paradoxes provoqués par la grande présence institutionnelle de l’Église catholique sur les réseaux numériques. D’abord, le contraste entre la structure hiérarchique et analogique de l’Église et la structure horizontale et de collaboration des réseaux. Ensuite, l’incompatibilité entre deux modèles communicatifs qui sont la dissémination qui caractérise la communication institutionnelle, et le caractère dialogique des réseaux. Finalement, le paradoxe qu’il y a entre la pratique numérique de l’Église, caractérisée par une conception instrumentale des médias, et un discours ecclésiastique dont le principal défi n’est pas de savoir comment bien utiliser les nouvelles technologies, mais plutôt de comprendre comment vivre dans ce nouvel environnement.

This paper presents some observations on how the borders between the religious and the secular are perceived, blurred and reinterpreted at the community level in Kyoto. These reflections are based mainly on my extended fieldwork in the city, where I participated in and took note of the activities of two chōnaikai (neighborhood associations). I also observed and examined events related to the Gion matsuri, which takes place in July and is one of the three main festivals in Japan. The neighborhood associations play a pivotal role in Kyoto’s community life, and the boundaries between the religious and the secular very often remain indistinct due to the ambiguous character of the chōnaikai. In this context, I analyze some of the religious activities within the chōnai, such as taking care of the small votive shrine dedicated to the bodhisattva Jizō, and events related to Shintō. With regard to local festivals, I explore religious and secular aspects of the Gion matsuri, an event that attracts crowds of visitors from all over Japan and abroad, which offers the opportunity to investigate the intermingling of religion and business, local government, culture and tourism.

Claims of traveling in the astral planes, the techniques and experiences recorded by individuals in such nineteenth-century groups as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society have been common since the late nineteenth century. During these astral travel episodes, the individual imaginatively leaves her or his physical body and travels to places in this world or another dimension. The travelers claim that their inner selves travel into an imaginative environment generally accessible only to themselves. Here they encounter various entities, objects, and structures with which they can interact. In 1895, prominent Theosophist and clairvoyant, Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) published The Astral Plane, which described the various sceneries, phenomena, and human and non-human inhabitants one might encounter in the astral environment. Within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a nineteenth-century initiatory occult organization, travelling or “descrying” on the astral plane was an important activity an initiate was required to master in order to “obtain a clear idea of the relation of Man to the Universe, and to the spiritual planes”. These notions of the astral and the abilities and techniques to travel in it were adopted by many occultists, such as Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), and transmitted into the twentieth century. By the mid- to late twentieth century these ideas and techniques were diffused and incorporated into numerous groups and esoteric religions, the most prominent being New Age and neopaganism. With the emergence of computer technology, and the Internet specifically, various groups of people began to transfer the imaginative quality of the astral environment to cyberspace, and language that was previously used to refer to the astral was now used to describe cyber realms.

As Erik Davis, a self-described culture critic notes, “Both cyberspace and magical space are purely manifest in the imagination. … Both spaces are entirely constructed by your thoughts and beliefs.” Yet there were still significant impediments to cyberspace becoming just like the astral plane as described by nineteenth- and twentieth-century occultists. One was that text and static images on web pages still required the individual to look at the content and then imaginatively construct the “cyberastral” with their imaginations. The Internet was simply a way to deliver the content, but the person still had to imaginatively assemble it to bring the cyberastral realm alive. This process significantly changed with the emergence of three-dimensional graphical representation on the Internet. Another problem was the physical body. What happened to one’s body while in the astral? This question similarly occupied nineteenth-century occultists. Yet contemporary practitioners in the cyberastral have found new ways to deal with this question, or significantly adapted older solutions. The newest three-dimensional virtual worlds do provide the possibility to convincingly represent a cyberastral world, and some esoteric religious practitioners are using these worlds as places to practice their religion. One of these virtual environments is a computer system called Second Life. More than just seeing Second Life as an alternative place for communicating with others in virtual reality, some esoteric religious practitioners understand it to actually be the astral world. That is, they see no substantive difference between an imaginary astral plane described by the early occultists and the Second Life computer system itself. Moreover, this cyberastral environment has an added benefit that the astral environments visited by nineteenth-century occultists lacked: one can travel to the cyberastral and communicate with others while doing so. Thus the transfer of ideas about the astral plane to cyberspace and the development of sophisticated three-dimensional virtual worlds has led to the emergence of a particularly new type of astral plane, one that is imaginative, embodied, computer generated, and most importantly, social.

Son yıllarda toplumsal yaşamın bir parçası haline gelen internet,
bireyin dini hayatına sanal bir boyut kazandırmıştır. İnternet, interaktivite
özelliğiyle; kutsal mekânları ziyaret etme, dua isteme ve daha birçok dini
geleneğe ait çeşitli ibadet şekillerini internet ortamına taşınmış ve sanal
ritüeller olarak ifade edilen ibadet şekillerini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Böylelikle
bireyler evlerinden ayrılmadan bir kısım dini aktiviteleri bu yeni iletişim
ortamında tecrübe etme imkânı elde etmiştir. Bu çalışma da bu yeni ritüel
çeşitlerini incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu bağlamda, ritüellerin fiziksel
ortamdan sanal ortama geçişte nasıl bir adaptasyon ve modifikasyon geçirdiği
incelenmiştir. Ayrıca bireylerin zaman ve mekâna kayıtlı olmaksızın dini
tecrübe yaşayabilmelerine aracılık yapan bu sanal ritüellerin, fiziksel
ortamdaki ritüellerden benzerlikleri ve faklılıkları değerlendirmeye konu
olacak diğer noktalardır. Dolayısıyla bu çalışma, postmodern bir sürecin
hakim olduğu günümüzde, yeni dindarlık biçimlerini anlamayı kolaylaştıracağı
düşünülmektedir.

Lilith and the Nephilim are not uncommon characters in modern day pop culture at large and in video games culture specifically. In three video games, the Diablo series (three games, between 1996-2012), the Darksiders series (two games, in 2010 and 212) and the Devil May Cry series (2001-2013, especially in the so called ‘reboot’ of 2013), Lilith and the Nephilim are both named and (in different ways) connected to each other within the greater narrative of the games. In this article I want to describe the three game narratives in which the Nephilim and Lilith have their place, and in what way those three narratives are connected to each other.

The central question of this article is: what have the narratives of Diablo, Darksiders and DmC in common regarding the Nephilim and Lilith, and what theological implications follow from this common ground? I will argue that the combination of Lilith and Nephilim in these three game narratives is key for creating a mix of ontological and cosmological dualism in relation to a more complex anthropological ‘holism’. The three narratives provide a more or less psychologically convenient explanation for the existence of evil in the world, and at the same time take into account the experience that the human beings we encounter in our everyday life appear to us as incorporating both good and bad deeds, intentions, inclinations, traits and thoughts.

İnternet, günümüz bilgi toplumunda sosyal hayatın önemli bir parçası haline gelmiştir. Bunun neticesinde, toplumsal alana dair ne varsa sanal ortama taşınmış, din olgusu da bu yeni iletişim ortamındaki yerini almıştır. Bu bağlamda başta Hıristiyanlık, Yahudilik, İslam ve hemen hemen bütün dini gelenekler internet ortamında varlık göstermeye başlamıştır. Bu çalışmada, İslam dininin internet ortamındaki serüveni tarihsel süreç göz önünde bulundurularak ele alınacaktır. Bu çerçevede; ilk İslami içeriklerin internet ortamına nasıl aktarıldığı? Hangi dillerdeki İslami içeriklerin internet ortamında baskın olduğu? İslami grupların internete bakış açısı? ve internetin İslami gruplar tarafından ne amaçlarla kullanıldığı? gibi sorular, örnekleriyle irdelenmeye çalışılacaktır.

ternetin dinler ile etkileşimini ele alan bu çalışma, dinlerin internet ortamındaki serüvenini; tarihsel, kuramsal ve pratik boyutlarıyla ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Elinizdeki bu kitapta;

Sanal Dinin ne anlama geldiği ve neleri kapsadığı,

Dinlerin internet ortamına taşınma sürecinin nasıl gerçekleştiği,

Dinlerin internet ortamındaki temsil ve dağılım oranları,

Dini grup ve organizasyonların internet ortamını nasıl ve hangi amaçlarla kullandıkları,

Sanal Dini Cemaatlerin neyi ifade ettiği ve geleneksel cemaat yapısına katkıları,

İnternet ortamına hangi dini ritüellerin transfer olduğu ve nasıl pratiğe döküldüğü? gibi sorular cevaplanmaya çalışılacaktır.


Bu ve benzeri soruların cevaplanmasıyla, dinin internetle nasıl bir etkileşime girdiği ve sanal ortamda nasıl bir görünüm kazandığı belirginleşmiş olacaktır. Sanal ortamdaki dinin anlaşılmasıyla da fiziksel ortamdaki din olgusuyla arasındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar önemli ölçüde anlaşılmış olacak, dolayısıyla da, dinin günümüz bilgi ve iletişim toplumunda kendini nasıl ifade ettiği, dindarlık ve tinsellik biçimlerinin nasıl şekillendiği gözler önüne serilecektir.

"Cornelio, Jayeel. 2009. “The New Face of Global Evangelism: Virtualizing Spiritual Experience.” In  Francis Lim, ed., Mediating Piety: Religion and Technology in Asia. Leiden: Brill.

Book Abstract:

A timely and groundbreaking work, here is a comprehensive analysis of the interactions between religion and technology in Asia today. How does the use of technology affect people's experience of spirituality and the formation of religious identity and community? How do developments in the latest technological breakthroughs such as the Internet influence the ways people constitute themselves as social beings, and how does it shape their experience of the sacred and the divine? Conversely, to what extent, and in what ways do religious beliefs and practices shape people’s attitude towards new technology and its deployment? Combining wide-ranging empirical investigations and sophisticated theoretical reflections, this book demonstrates how the technological and the religious often intersect with the political, thereby elucidating the complex relationships between spirituality, social and identity formation, sovereignty and power.
"

If you’re interested in what might be considered early Buddhism, the teaching of the Buddha as recorded in the Pali Tipitaka and preserved in the Theravada tradition, you may find the website of a new Sri Lankan monastic movement useful.  It has perhaps the country’s most extensive electronic collection of English text and video materials, including translations of selected suttas, instructions on meditation, reflections on practice in daily life, and material for children.

In late 2013 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormons) began releasing official statements, in the form of essays posted on the official Church website, that directly address controversial topics in Church history and theology that have previously been denied, ignored, evaded or otherwise underplayed in official Church relations, both without and within the organisation. The essays, or “Gospel Topics”, show an exceptional openness regarding the Church’s history with subjects such as polygamy, violence and racism. This paper will argue, along with the Church and many church commentators, that a major motivating factor behind this unprecedented level of disclosure is the internet and its influence on members’ access to information about the history of the LDS Church. These Gospel Topics essays reflect a new awareness in LDS leadership that technology is allowing members to discover information from unofficial (read unregulated) sources, and that in order to preserve church membership and morale, the Church as an institution needs to address directly the rumours and the facts that members are uncovering online, and often using as a reason for criticising and/or leaving the Church. In this paper I will examine the LDS and non-LDS responses to the Gospel Topics essays and discuss how they reflect the influence of technology on the way that Mormons engage with the history of their religion and what that means for LDS Church authority and identity.

This paper focuses on a Neo-Orthodox Tibetan Buddhist movement’s shifting trans-European positioning on the web and in its media self-representation with regard to public discourses around homosexuality. The analysis presented also
proves methodologically relevant, exemplifying through reflexive ethnography how outsider/insider scholars can manoeuvre religious politics.
As a global movement of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Diamond Way of the Danish lay teacher Ole Nydahl has been particularly successful in its proselytising efforts throughout Eastern and Central Europe. Previous research has noted the selectively socially conservative and mildly homophobic tendencies of the Diamond Way (Scherer 2011; 2013). In the trans-European context, from Russia to the U.K., Nydahls and the movement’s mild homophobia/strained LGBT-neutrality appears to draw public criticism for either being too pro-LGBT or too anti-LGBT. The investigation highlights the shifting public perceptions and socio-religious political frontlines in Russia and the U.K. and reveals a pattern of opportunism and (non-)negotiating public opinions.

This chapter contains sections titled: Mapping Three Waves of Research“First-Wave” Research on Religion and the Internet“Second-Wave” Studies of Religion Online“Third-Wave” ResearchFuture of Research on Religion OnlineReferencesMapping Three Waves of Research“First-Wave” Research on Religion and the Internet“Second-Wave” Studies of Religion Online“Third-Wave” ResearchFuture of Research on Religion OnlineReferences

Sous la direction de Fabienne Duteil-Ogata, Isabelle Jonveaux, Liliane Kuczynski et Sophie Nizard
Religions en questions
COMMUNICATION, MÉDIAS RELIGIONS 
 

La multiplication des sites et blogs religieux - toutes religions confondues - contribuent à redéfinir les conceptions traditionnelles du temps et de l'espace, les rapports entre centre et périphéries et les relations de pouvoir, d'autorité et de genre. Les pratiques, les identités, la notion de communauté se recomposent sans cesse. Ce livre, le premier en français sur ce sujet, se propose d'évaluer et d'analyser ces transformations.

An abundance of divination rituals, primarily Tarot card reading, are widespread
in cyberspace. These new phenomena are accompanied by a new rationale that is
described in the article under the title “the sacralization of randomness.” The shift of
religion and magic to the virtual realm brings about changes in theology, cosmology,
ethics, practice, and religious/spiritual values, and these are demonstrated and discussed
via the test case of digital divinations. Further implications of these innovations
on the spiritual-cultural scene outside the Internet are also examined.

The revolution of information and communication technology has transformed the world into different shape, including Muslim world. This technology in the form of internet does not merely have the democratizing potential for Muslim world, but also has created a new public sphere and new Islamic authority. This paper discusses the role of internet as played by Muslim religious movement, especially Salafism in Indonesia. Using textual analysis of data collected from their websites, this article argues that the internet as modern technology of information and communication has helped Salafism rise to the public to show their ideological and doctrinal stances as well as to challenge their enemies such as Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberat), Shiah, and so on. Through the internet too, this movement respond to such contemporary issues as terrorism, earthquake and others. This means that although orthodox in doctrine and attitude, this movement can benefit from the internet very much for its missionary purposes.

With the emergence and the prolification of the internet, similar to all other institutions and organizations, religious traditions have made its presence seen in this communicative environment. As a consequence of this circumstance first Christianity, Judaism, Islam and almost all religious traditions have begun to be represented in the internet milieu. The purpose of this article is to reveal to what extent religions are represented and how they are distributed in this new communicative environment. The level representation and distribution of religions in the internet will be revealed with search engines, indexes arranging web sites in accordance with categories and different research findings. While web sources that the data has been obtained is being determined, idiosyncracy of the internet has been taken into consideration. In this sense, English being the most widely-used language in terms of both the numbers of web pages and the users of internet language as English has played significant role in the usage of internet sources that the data has been gained. At the end of the study, it has been seen that religions have crucial representation rate in internet milieu. It was observed that the representation rates of religions which have more members particularly in Asia, Africa and Far East are low compared with the high representation ratios of religious traditions which are widespread and active in West. Factors such as level of education, lack of technical infrastructure, censorship, financial possibility are influential as a result. Besides, results of the study have also shown that both the representation ratios of the religions in internet milieu and the amount of the religious content have risen day by day.

Lilith and the Nephilim are not uncommon characters in modern day pop culture at large and in video games culture specifically. In three video games, the Diablo series (three games, between 1996-2012), the Darksiders series (two games, in 2010 and 212) and the Devil May Cry series (2001-2013, especially in the so called ‘reboot’ of 2013), Lilith and the Nephilim are both named and (in different ways) connected to each other within the greater narrative of the games. In this article I want to describe the three game narratives in which the Nephilim and Lilith have their place, and in what way those three narratives are connected to each other. The central question of this article is: what have the narratives of Diablo, Darksiders and DmC in common regarding the Nephilim and Lilith, and what theological implications follow from this common ground? I will argue that the combination of Lilith and Nephilim in these three game narratives is key for creating a mix of ontological and cosmol...

The Internet has become a multicultural and multilingual environment, declined in a series of “varieties”, all showing their own characteristics and similarities. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective and following the ongoing discussion in the fields of Religious Studies and Internet Studies, this paper explores the “Japanese Internet” as an environment where Japanese users continue to “be religious” and participate in re-discussing and re-shaping religion. In particular, it will focus on the Japanese “New Religions” and their presence in the Social Network(ing) Sites (SNS), aiming to understand if and to what extent related religious communication occurring online is becoming interactive and is making use of the possibilities of the so-called Web 2.0 (and beyond) to produce an active and participatory religious discussion. Furthermore, it will dwell on the role played by the Japanese language in defining the “Japanese Internet” and it will discuss how the language and the medium co-operate in affecting Japanese online religious discourse. Finally, this paper aim is not only to provide an overview of how Japanese “New Religions” are making use of the SNS, but also to examine how Japanese users are using them to re-discuss, criticize and re-shape religion online.

İnternetin dinler ile etkileşimini ele alan bu çalışma, dinlerin internet ortamındaki serüvenini; tarihsel, kuramsal ve pratik boyutlarıyla ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Elinizdeki bu kitapta; Sanal Dinin ne anlama geldiği ve neleri kapsadığı, Dinlerin internet ortamına taşınma sürecinin nasıl gerçekleştiği, Dinlerin internet ortamındaki temsil ve dağılım oranları, Dini grup ve organizasyonların internet ortamını nasıl ve hangi amaçlarla kullandıkları, Sanal Dini Cemaatlerin neyi ifade ettiği ve geleneksel cemaat yapısına katkıları, İnternet ortamına hangi dini ritüellerin transfer olduğu ve nasıl pratiğe döküldüğü? gibi sorular cevaplanmaya çalışılacaktır. Bu ve benzeri soruların cevaplanmasıyla, dinin internetle nasıl bir etkileşime girdiği ve sanal ortamda nasıl bir görünüm kazandığı belirginleşmiş olacaktır. Sanal ortamdaki dinin anlaşılmasıyla da fiziksel ortamdaki din olgusuyla arasındaki benzerlik ve farklılıklar önemli ölçüde anlaşılmış olacak, dolayısıyla da, dinin günümüz...

Vortrag beim XXI. Weltkongress der International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), Erfurt 2015.

The Internet has often been viewed as a new medium with uniquely attractive qualities, and therefore being able to explain religious Internet use on its own terms. The paper presented here argues that, on the contrary, essential reasons
for Christian Internet use can be found in clearly nameable deficiencies of traditional churches and parishes. What is more, while the respective Internet users experience a destabilization
of their religiosity in offline contexts, the Internet use can be understood as an autonomous attempt to restabilize one's beliefs. The findings presented are drawn from a PhD thesis on
Christian, German-language online boards, where especially the relations and interdependencies of religious Internet use and the corresponding offline engagement became an im-
portant matter. Results come from an empirical study, including online analyses, qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey.

Sacralidade digital é a ideia que o advento das novas tecnologias inaugura uma relação digital com o sagrado, afinal, defende-se, fundamentalmente, que há entre o homem e o sagrado uma relação comunicativa, portanto, à medida que o suporte comunicativo dessa relação se transforma, se percebe uma mudança também no modo de experimentar o sagrado, afinal, partimos do pressuposto de que as tecnologias comunicativas não são meros instrumentos, e sim, que há uma relação íntima e simbiótica entre o paradigma tecnológico e comunicativo de uma dada época e as transformações sociais, inclusive no âmbito da religiosidade.

A ambição deste livro é descrever parte das formas dessa sacralidade digital, aliando o vetor histórico – que colabora na compreensão das relações temporais de desenvolvimento das conexões entre o sagrado e o midiático – à investigação que busca contrastar manifestações monoteístas (Catolicismo, Protestantismo, Islamismo e Judaísmo)  e politeístas (Movimento Nova Era, Religiosidades dos Orixás e Novos Politeísmos) do sagrado nas redes digitais a partir de um estudo exploratório participativo.

O livro busca refletir e interpretar que tipo de representação do sagrado o digital favorece, contrastando as diversas possibilidades comunicativas permitidas pelas novas tecnologias no interior de cada manifestação religiosa.

Religion and the Internet is a growing topic of interest in Religious Studies, and the case of Japan is no exception to this trend. In particular, Japanese New Religions have shown to be very sensible both to new social trends and to the new communication technologies modes; some of these groups have established a strong presence online, building webpages and religious portals, personal blogs, online counselling virtual rooms, and even virtual pilgrimages and religious Social Networks of their own. In this presentation, I will introduce the person of Taniguchi Masanobu, religious leader and president of Seichō no Ie International (SNI), and I will analyse how the image of the charismatic religious leader is presented and represented in the Social Media, with particular reference to his use of the Facebook platform. Mr Taniguchi is very active online and has elaborated a complex religious persona. Although this case is by no means representative of all charismatic leaders in Japan, the example of Mr Taniguchi is of great importance to understand possible contemporary developments of some prominent religious figures in the Japanese panorama, who have decided to build up strong personal online profiles.