Creating Church Online

Ritual, Community and New Media

Tim Hutchings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367333454
• eBook ISBN: 9781136277498
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Online churches are internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytization, and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. Hundreds of thousands of people are now involved with online congregations, generating new kinds of ritual, leadership, and community and new networks of global influence.

Creating Church Online constructs a rich ethnographic account of the diverse cultures of online churches, from virtual worlds to video streams. This book also outlines the history of online churchgoing, from its origins in the 1980s to the present day, and traces the major themes of academic and Christian debate around this topic. Applying some of the leading current theories in the study of religion, media and culture to this data, Tim Hutchings proposes a new model of religious design in contexts of mediatization, and draws attention to digital networks, transformative third spaces and terrains of existential vulnerability. Creating Church Online advances our understanding of the significance and impact of digital media in the religious and social lives of its users, in search of new theoretical frameworks for digital religion.

1 A Brief History of Cyberchurch

To understand the context of the five churches discussed in this book, we need a grasp of the history of online experiments that preceded them. I offer here a brief timeline of some of the major milestones in the development of online churches, and I will also include a few references to the first published attempts to evaluate their significance.

In this chapter, I will focus only on the origins of online churches, beginning in the 1980s and following the story up to 2010. My task here is to give the reader a sense of the kinds of groups and debates that were emerging in the early years of online churches, to help highlight what was new (and not new) about the particular examples we will focus on. As we shall see, the churches I have selected for attention all emerged within a few years in the mid-2000s, and they represented major developments in online churchmanship, particularly in their ambition and scale and in their relationship to established religious organisations. We will return to this story in the conclusion to this book, to survey the landscape of online churches today and reflect on what has changed between 2010 and 2016.

The history of online activity is not easy to track, of course, and many early sites and communities have disappeared without leaving a trace. I rely here on references to churches found in published literature, but very few of the authors I will be quoting were trying to undertake a comprehensive survey of all the different churches available when they were writing. This narrative will hopefully be useful, but it is sure to be incomplete.

The Church of England document Cybernauts Awake! refers to the earliest online church I have discovered, launched in 1985. The founders ‘claimed that for the first time people could worship in spirit and in truth’, free from the distractions of others who might—in their own words—be ‘fat, short, beautiful or ugly. People are pared down to pure spirit’ (Church of England Board for Social Responsibility 1999, Chapter 5). Cybernauts doesn’t name this church or explain what participants actually did, unfortunately, and I have found no other reference to it.

Another trace was recorded by the pioneering digital theologian David Lochhead. In 1986 the owners of the Unison service hosting the Presbyterian discussion network Presbynet asked if they could organise an event online in response to the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Presbynet planned ‘a memorial liturgy with prayers, scripture, meditation and a section in which readers could add their own prayers’ (Lochhead 1997: 52), followed by a time of open discussion. According to Lochhead, this event ‘demonstrated the power of the computer medium to unite a community in a time of crisis beyond the limits of geography or denomination’—but it was also one of the first demonstrations of the potential of online ritual as religious expression.

Another early landmark was reported by game designers Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer (1991). A game called ‘Habitat’ ran from 1986 to 1988 and was the first graphical multiplayer world, offering a simple 2D interface. Characters could steal from or kill one another. On dying, the victim would re-appear empty-handed in their ‘home’ space and any objects dropped could be collected by others. Participants hotly debated questions of identity, violence, death and discipline, and this dispute led to a small milestone for online religion:

One of the outstanding proponents of the anti-violence point of view was motivated to open the first Habitat church, the Order of the Holy Walnut (in real life he was a Greek Orthodox priest). His canons forbid his disciples to carry weapons, steal, or participate in violence of any kind. His church became quite popular and he became a very highly respected member of the Habitat community.

(Morningstar and Farmer 1991)

It is unclear what this church did, if anything; it may simply have been an organisation sharing an ethical code of nonviolence. Nonetheless, the Holy Walnut was the first self-declared ‘church’ founded in a graphically represented environment. The satirical humour evident in the name would become a recurrent feature of online churchmanship and of course, a widespread theme in digital cultures.

In a 1989 review of the use of bulletin board software (BBS) in the New York education system, Anneliese Sessa mentions a BBS called ‘Cyber Church’, and her account also focuses on the community’s response to death and disaster. After the California earthquake of 1989, ‘a priest from St Mary’s Church … gave detailed reports of the damages and loss of life he encountered’, and Sessa reports that ‘his descriptive technique of writing drew pictures in my mind that made me feel like I was there with him’ (Sessa 1989: 5).

The potential uses of the Internet expanded dramatically with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1990. Websites could offer graphics, text and hyperlinks, and online communities—including online churches—began to develop from the early email discussion lists and local BBSs into more complex and sophisticated forms. The first church to be created on a website may have been the First Church of Cyberspace, launched in 1994.¹ Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey, sought to establish an online congregation through the use of discussion forums and an always-open chatroom in which services were held once a day. Members could also access images, music and a multimedia online Bible.

A website called Partenia (www.partneia.org) also launched in the mid-90s, promoting the social views of the controversial Roman Catholic bishop Jacques Gaillot. Gaillot was moved by the Vatican from the French see of Evreux to Partenia in Algeria, a diocese that vanished under the desert in the 5th century. Taking up residence among immigrants in Paris, he chose instead to interpret ‘Partenia’ as a symbol for all those excluded from society (Partenia.org n.d.). The site soon attracted a worldwide following, with forums, chatrooms and summaries of Gaillot’s views available in seven languages. Partenia referred to itself as a ‘virtual diocese’, but did not seem to consider itself a ‘virtual church’; nor did ‘St Sam’s’, an Anglican ‘cyberparish’ email list founded in 1988 and documented by Heidi Campbell (2005: 96 ff).

Online ministries were also emerging in Asia at around the same time. Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, for example, claims to be the largest Christian megachurch in the world, with more than 800,000 members and many hundreds of pastors. YFGC began using satellites and the Internet to broadcast live services in the mid-1990s, and a focus on expansion and evangelism seems to have been central to the church’s digital philosophy from the beginning (Kim 2007). When Pastor David Yonggi Cho met Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in 2001 to discuss the future of Christian ministry, one critical account reported that the pair planned ‘to utilize cyberspace to reach into the homes of countless millions with their own distinctive brands of Christianity’, generating a new kind of global religious empire (Glover 2004: 85).

I was able to visit Yoido in the summer of 2016, and one of the church’s many hundreds of staff pastors described online broadcasting to me as a powerful tool for reaching into countries where Christianity was absent or marginalised. This account frames the Internet as a complement to existing Christian ministry activities, extending missionary work into new areas without undermining the work of local churches. Not everyone has been convinced by this complementarian approach, as we shall see in Chapter 2. According to one report, David Yongghi Cho himself once said to his congregation, ‘Don’t come to church, just stay at home and get your teaching through the Internet’ (Glover 2004: 86)—suggesting that online and offline religion might in some cases be competing for attention.

Published discussions of online churches began to proliferate in the mid-1990s, inside and beyond academia, and these began to debate exactly how revolutionary the new medium might become. In an article calling for new models of Christian adult education, for example, John Lai foresaw major changes for the whole Christian church. Lai suggested that ‘the emergence of what might be called the virtual church or cyberchurch’ was going to ‘require a reexamination of the organizational context of learning’ (Lai 1995: 11). The cyberchurch would encourage new kinds of relations between Christians around the world, facilitating ‘the emergence of more network-like church organisations vis a vis more traditional hierarchies’, and ‘the capacity of certain groups and individuals to exert normative control over others will be inhibited’.

In December 1996, TIME Magazine published a cover story by Joshua Cooper Ramo titled ‘Finding God on the Web’. TIME shared some of these transformative expectations. The article describes religious websites, chatrooms and newsgroups from around the world, suggests that computer communication could bring different groups together and quotes Jacques Gaillot, who ‘marvels at the freedom he enjoys loosed from the hierarchy of the church’ (Ramo 1996: 3). According to Gaillot, ‘on the Internet there is no question of someone imposing rules on the way people communicate … The Net has no center from which will can be applied.’ The authors reach striking, provocative and rather poetic conclusions: ‘we stand at the start of a new movement in this delicate dance of technology and faith’, they suggest, ‘the marriage of God and the global computer networks’ (Ramo 1996: 6). The consequences of this dance may be far-reaching: ‘is it possible that God in a networked age will look, somehow, different? … Interconnected, we may begin to find God in places we never imagined’ (Ramo 1996: 7).

The German-language journal Praktische Theologie (Practical Theology) published a special issue on the significance of the Internet for Christian churches in 1990 and again in 1996. The 1996 issue includes an interview with Germany’s first ‘Online-Pfarrerin’ (online pastor),² Melanie Graffam-Minkus, appointed by the Bavarian state church in October that year, and her perspective is much less radical than that of Lai or Ramo. Graffam-Minkus offered advice by email, responding to around five messages per day, and considered her work rather straightforward. ‘It is a matter of meeting people where they are every day’, she explained to interviewer Eva Lettenmeier, ‘and for many digital communication is already an essential part of their daily lives’ (Lettenmeier 1996: 277). The work might seem normal to a pastor, but users were surprised to find her online, and that surprise encouraged some people to contact her. Graffam-Minkus reported that many ‘rather unchurched people’ sent her emails, looking for ‘a cute or serious conversation, understanding or advice, answers to theological and religious questions.’ For many of her correspondents, their emails represented ‘the first contact with a pastor for a long time.’

In this interview, Graffam-Minkus is very clear about the limitations of what she is doing online. ‘The computer cannot replace human contact’, she insists, and she sees herself as an initial contact, sending correspondents to their local pastors if she can. The final exchange of the interview is of particular relevance for this book:

Question:

Would your dream be a real ‘Internet community’ services with worship, Bible study groups, baptisms, weddings …?

Answer:

No, I cannot imagine it is right for people to want to get married in tracksuits in front of the computer. Too much of what makes the community of believers would be lost. Feelings, impressions, gestures…. The sensory dimension plays an important role in the life and work of the Church, and for good reason. How can the fragrant scent of candles be sensed through the computer? (Lettenmeier 1996: 277)

Another German online church launched two years later, in 1998: St Bonifatius, in the virtual environment of funcity. St Bonifatius is an ecumenical community sponsored by three Catholic dioceses in northern Germany, and offers a chatroom, email contact with a large team of chaplains and (since 2008) an online monastery occupied by more than a dozen monks and nuns from different religious orders (Bonifatiuswerk 2010).

Ralph Schroeder, Noel Heather and Raymond M. Lee published one of the first sociological case studies of an online Christian church in 1998, and their analysis also emphasises continuity. Their article examines discourse in ‘E-Church’ (a pseudonym), a small charismatic group. E-Church held a weekly prayer meeting in a 3D environment that included a church building, and the authors emphasise consistency in its rituals rather than innovation. ‘The “genre” of a real-world prayer meeting was constantly invoked’ (Schroeder, Heather and Lee 1998) through the use of standard forms of language, with a high degree of liturgical patterning. Group prayers were led by a woman, but the authors see this as a normal practice among house groups rather than a transformation of authority. One area in which a change is noted is in the pattern of conversation: ‘the novel combination of notional anonymity and intimacy which the virtual reality world fosters led in this case to a surprisingly open airing of major personal problems.’

The UK’s first online church launched in 1999 and remains online today, although the website was last updated in 2009. ‘WebChurch: The WorldWide Virtual Church from Scotland’ (webchurch.org) offers articles, sermons and other resources and encourages visitors to email the pastor with questions and prayer requests. The church promises that any prayers received will be passed on to volunteers and remembered for a week.

In the US, some more theologically ambitious initiatives were emerging. ‘Alpha Church’ (www.alphachurch.org) was founded in 1998 by Patricia Walker, a Methodist minister who—according to her own website—left the church (or ‘transferred to non-denominational status’) to lead the project (Alpha Church, n.d.a). Alpha Church still offers sermons and worship services today, with daily updates in the form of blog posts, images and recorded resources to be read, streamed or downloaded by the visitor. The visitor can email the pastor to ask for prayer, and donations are encouraged. According to the site’s own explanation of the history of Alpha, the church was established with a particular focus on the needs of disabled Christians: ‘two paraplegic young men gave us feedback as to what appealed to them spiritually, visually, and logistically’. Before long ‘we discovered that the Internet was an excellent way to draw in people who could not get to “regular” church’, particularly ‘those who were computer savvy’ (Alpha Church, n.d.a). Unlike Melanie Graffam-Minkus, Alpha Church encourages its members to consider the Internet as a sufficient alternative to face-to-face churchgoing.

Alpha Church invites visitors to share holy communion, which involves reading or watching recorded resources while eating and drinking something—not necessarily bread or wine—at the computer screen. Rev Walker encourages the worshipper to create an appropriate environment for these practices, suggesting (in an earlier version of her communion page, no longer available online) that we ‘may light a candle nearby to represent the light of Christ’, turn down our computer speakers ‘to a medium level’ and ‘read aloud with the responses’. Spiritual efficacy is promised for these rituals: ‘during the Communion-Eucharist service the elements will be blessed/sanctified and you will eat and drink them’ (Alpha Church n.d.b).

Online communion can also be found at Grace Incarnate Ministries, the website of US Methodist pastor Rev Greg Neal. Neal launched his online ministry in 1998 to share his sermons and articles and offer prayer, and his website is still available online (revneal.org). According to Neal, he had no intention of offering online communion when he first posted a video of a service in 1999:

Almost immediately I began receiving emails from people who told me that, while viewing the communion video, they had joined the congregation in the responses and had prayed as the music played and the people were receiving communion. One person who shared this with me even asked if it would be okay if she got bread and wine and partook of communion while watching the video.

I was horrified by the concept [but] there wasn’t any way for me to get the consecrated elements to her, she had never attended my church nor was she part of any church anywhere.

(Neal 2013: 2)

The next year,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Welcome to the Online Church
• 1 A Brief History of Cyberchurch
• 2 Making Sense of Online Churches
• 3 Methodology: How to Study an Online Church
• 4 Church of Fools
• 5 I-Church
• 6 St Pixels
• 7 The Anglican Cathedral of Second Life
• 8 Church Online at LifeChurch.tv
• 9 Creating Church Online: Media Design and Media Logic
• 10 Being Church Online: Networks and Existential Terrains
• Conclusion: What Happened to the Online Church?
• Index