The Stretched Christ: Doing Church Online
Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash
Earlier this month, I received the kind invitation by Heidi Campbell, Professor of Communications at Texas A&M University, to be part of the e-book project The Distanced Church: Reflections on Doing Church Online. The overall project was a response to the mass closures of Churches that took place in many parts of the world, and forcing a rapid pivot towards having liturgies, services and prayers live streamed to homes. Other forms of faith gatherings had to be facilitated through social media, other digital platforms and mobile devices.
The impetus behind the e-book was to provide a resource from across a number of churches in different parts of the world - from the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Germany and Switzerland - to reflect on various theoretical and practical puzzles that arise from this digital pivoting of the Church. While comments abound on social media, this is the first attempt at a comprehensive scholarly response from clergy and theologians, and to provide a resource for those who are still trying to faithfully negotiate our current situation of lockdown.
Since 2012, I have presented and published on the Church’s engagement with the online environment. While not directly influenced by Marshall McLuhan’s maxim that “the medium is the message”, my overall stance on the issue has always been one of caution concerning the capacity of the online form to reformat the Gospel to suit the platform. A lot of my work focussed on what presumptions, in particular the ecclesiological presumptions, that become accepted in the enthusiasm by the Church to adopt new digital methods of spreading the Gospel. The basic kernel of my argument was that, whilst it might be necessary to enter the digital arena to encounter people where they are, a Church that takes bodies seriously should be cautious about the propensity towards disembodiment when one gets online.
My contribution to this volume, which I have entitled “Communion in the Digital Body of Christ”, takes a slightly different turn.
In this time of the Church in lockdown, reading the angry responses from members of the faithful one way or another, as well as learning more about the nature of the sacraments and ecclesiology from learned friends like Fr Harrison Ayre of the Clerically Speaking podcast, made me realise a blind-spot which I outline in my little essay. Realising this point of underdevelopment in my research in this area has prompted me to reorient the work towards a constructive theological project.
At the heart of the project is the interrogating the concept of the presence of Christ, not just in the Eucharistic host, but also in the very DNA of the cosmos. While my critical argument concerning disembodiment that I made in earlier pieces still remain, nonetheless I had to acknowledge that the Body of Christ cannot be eviscerated just because the environment has shifted online. At worst, we can say that the Body of Christ has become stretched in cyberspace.
I did this constructive project because to continue speaking from the stance of critique, while useful in the short term in identifying many unarticulated first principles that we might innocently allow to seep into our thinking, might also end up unintentionally entrenching the very cultural forms I am critiquing Pastorally, I hope that the provision of a constructive theological project, would cut above the anger and vitriol and, in my own awkward way, help Christ’s faithful negotiate through this weird season.
The Distanced Church is now available for free download (as a pdf) here. My thanks to Heidi for her invitation.
Support Awkward Asian Theologian on Patreon, and help make a change to the theological web.
