Chapter one described the long-reigning secularization thesis, emphasizing the place of work in this understanding of modernity and religion. The chapter argued that, although theoretically sophisticated, the secularization thesis failed to properly account for the relationship between modernity and religion. In short, the
secularization thesis did not account for the complex and organic relationship existing between the two. Such complexity was suggested by the works of James Davison Hunter and Christian Smith on American evangelicals. These two scholars, while coming to very different conclusions regarding evangelicalism and modernity, both capture important aspects of this tricky relationship. Hunter appears correct to say that contemporary culture poses problems for modernity and, at the same time, Smith seems right to say that the pluralism marking contemporary life actually invigorates evangelicalism. This complex relationship between evangelicalism and contemporary culture will be developed in this chapter by looking at two pervasive aspects of life today: technology and consumption.1 Both technology and
consumption are connected to contemporary work. It is technology that animates the workplace.2 These technologies, as discussed above, not only shape work but they shape the way the worker conceives reality, including one’s religiosity.
1 Admittedly, there is overlap in these two categories. While I have distinguished
consumerism from technology, the two are not so neatly distinct. As Christian Smith has observed, mass-consumer capitalism has a way of driving the expansion of technological change and in some ways encapsulates technologies, like television. In other words, it is capitalism that fuels much of television (a technology). Nonetheless, each impart unique habits and assumptions upon individuals and will be treated as distinct phenomenon in an effort to bring clarity to these powerful social forces. See Smith, Soul Searching, 177-78.
2 One would be hard-pressed to find a workplace that did not function without the use of technology, broadly defined.
Technology, then, represents the means by which work is accomplished.
Consumption is often considered by the worker as the end for which work is completed. One works to make money so that one can purchase necessities and wants. Moreover, the largely inescapable culture of consumption leaks into attitudes about work and religion. Technology and consumption have been selected because they formidably shape contemporary life and both are intimately connected to the workplace. Finally, this chapter will track where the sacred has migrated under contemporary conditions. The goal of this chapter is to provide a theoretical template for interpreting the empirical data.
Technology’s Re-enchantment of the World
For Max Weber, the rationality endemic to the modern world wields a heavy
influence over its inhabitants, exerting itself most forcefully through the technology that has given rise to machine production.3 This technology-driven state of affairs, Weber believed, would eventually lead to the “disenchantment of the world.” More recently, Graham Ward has challenged Weber, arguing that technology has played a key part in the “return to mythological modes of thinking and imagining.”4 Ward calls this return “technomysticism,” claiming it pervades “cinema, pop videos, computer games, and interactive cyber sites.”5 Writing in the Catholic periodical First Things, Ross Douthat is somewhat encouraged by this return. Douthat
acknowledges that at one time religion was a key contender in the battle to keep the airwaves and television free of bawdiness.6 That battle, Douthat admits, has been lost largely because of changes in technology which have proliferated mediums and outlets making it more difficult to regulate the content of programs. Yet Douthat encourages any that are battle-weary because “there are opportunities in defeat as well as victory, and places where new life can spring up amidst the ruins.”7 Citing
3 Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 181-83.
4 Ward, “The Future of Religion,” 182.
5 Ibid.
6 Ross Douthat, “Lost and Saved on Television,” First Things, no. 173 (May 2007): 22.
7 Ibid., 23.
the spiritual and moral overtones of American shows like Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and The Sopranos, Douthat sees it as advantageous for Christians to engage in this
“riotous marketplace.”8
Douthat’s attitude towards television suggests that Ward is correct:
television and other technologies and mediums are producing programs fostering imaginative thinking about the supernatural. If this is the case, then once again it appears that modernity and religion are showing far more flexibility than many secularization proponents speculated because technology, rather than
disenchanting, seems to be re-enchanting the world. Returning to Berger’s dialectic of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, perhaps too much credit was given to internalization. For example, the notion that the proliferation of a variety of techniques—giving ever more control to individuals—would squelch interest in the sacred does not seem to account for the evidence because, as Ward argues, these techniques, although laden with religion-squelching logic, have not disenchanted the world but have churned out products (i.e. films, music videos, games, etc.) laced with transcendence and mystery. This means that human interest in the sacred pierces through the logic of this technology to affect the ongoing output of human production (i.e. externalization).
This section considers the ways technology can both expand and constrain religion by focusing on the Internet. The Web is important because it embodies so many different technologies and mediums.9 From television to radio to global communication, the Internet serves as the space in which all of these activities can be enjoyed. Reflecting upon the work of Annette N. Markham, Christopher Helland reminds that not only does the Internet fuse a variety of mediums together, but it is also considered “a tool, a place, and a state of being.”10 Helland states that “for many
8 Ibid., 26.
9 See Erik Borgman and Stephen Van Erp, “Which Message is the Medium? Concluding Remarks on Internet, Religion and the Ethics of Mediated Connectivity,” in Concilum, Cyberspace—
Cyberethics—Cybertheology (London: SCM, 2005), 110.
10 Christopher Helland, “Popular Religion and the World Wide Web: A Match Made in (Cyber) Heaven,” in Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet, ed. Lorne E. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan (London: Routledge, 2004), 30.
people cyberspace is a real space,” providing a legitimate venue for religious activity.11
To be sure, the union of religion and the Web has been an important development. Utilizing the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Elena Larsen observes that “28 million Americans have used the Internet to get religious and spiritual information and connect with others on their faith journeys.”12 According to the same study, “More than 3 million people a day get religious or spiritual material” from the Internet.13 Larsen also notes that “more people have gotten religious or spiritual information online than have gambled online, used Web auction sites, traded stocks online, placed phone calls on the Internet, done online banking, or used Internet-based dating services.”14 Given the widespread interest in religion online, it is no surprise that churches feel the need to carve out a space in cyberspace in order to remain in touch with their congregants.15
While it is clear that religious bodies must have a presence online, determining the best way to construct such a presence can become a bit hazy.
Reverend David Jenkins is the pastor of what is purportedly the world’s first virtual church, the Church of Fools. This virtual venture is a “serious religious exercise, despite its name” that offers members the opportunity to do things one can do in any real church service.16 After selecting a character, individuals can click their way through the hallowed halls of the cyber church, sit where they choose, and offer an affirming “Amen!” to the pastor’s sermon. The Church of Fools experiment offers a glimpse into the difficulties that come with doing church online. The church, like most churches, was open to anyone interested in attending, including those seeking to disrupt the services. During the worship time these unwanted visitors would shout profanity and make coarse gestures, distracting the more serious worshipers.
11 Ibid., 31.
12 Elena Larsen, “Cyberfaith: How Americans Pursue Religion Online,” in Religion Online:
Finding Faith on the Internet, ed. Lorne E. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan (London: Routledge, 2004), 17.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 See Helland, “Popular Religion and the World Wide Web.”
16 Times (London), 24 July 2004.
Wardens were in place to press their “smite buttons” which would oust any causing disruption to the services.17 Eventually, though, the visitors were too elusive to wrangle and after just a week the church had to close its doors.18
The ruckus behavior of a few of the visitors to the Church of Fools raises some issues that religion faces online. The anonymity of cyber-identity lends itself to this sort of activity, activity far less common in physical churches. Of course, this anonymousness affects more serious attendees as well. Springing forth from anonymity is the issue of accountability. Divorced from physical reality and the network of relations physicality entails, individuals attending church online lack the formative influences a physical community provides.19 The problem of
accountability is also grounded in the ease with which one attends these churches.
If, as one member of another online congregation has proclaimed, church is “just a mouse click away,”20 then the opposite is true: turning church off is just a mouse click away.
Citing Jean-Francis Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, David Lyon contends that new technologies and communications, epitomized by the Internet, blur the line between reality and simulation.21 This is because technologies, especially the Internet, says Lyon, “bend and melt rather than…structure and solidify reality.”22 Lyon also points out that the Internet is an “open medium” where just about
“anything goes.”23 Such openness coupled with the lack of accountability that the Internet engenders is a combination that could encourage online explorations of which one’s religious community would disapprove. In this sense, the privacy and anonymity of the Internet could incite deviant behavior too risky for the embodied
17 Times (London), 19 May 2004.
18 Ibid.
19 The importance of a physical community for discipleship is deeply woven into the Christian understanding of sanctification. Consider, for example, St. Benedict’s admonition that it is striving for the good of the community which “prompt[s] us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love.” Timothy Fry, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982), prologue 47.
20 Kirsten McIntyre, “Church reaches out to web users,” The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), 27 May 2006.
21 David Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 67.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
physicality of the real world. This could include temptations that may entice
religious individuals online, such as the prevalence of pornography. Or, perhaps it is behaviour akin to the obnoxiousness of the hecklers at the Church of Fools. Finally, the privacy and openness of the Web might lead to more insidious problems. This could include repeated encounters with ideologies and worldviews at variance with one’s own.
According to Lyon, the Internet’s openness and fluidity also erodes authority structures because “it knows no priorities, respects no precedents, promotes no principles.”24 Such erosion of authority was evident in the warden’s impotency in banishing the less-than-sincere Church of Fools attendees. The problem of authority that the Web’s flexibility creates can also be seen by looking outside Christianity.
Describing Neopaganism, Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan observe that cybercovens engender an elasticity uncommon to physical covens where the leadership, number of members, and the frequency of interaction among members are more defined.25 Such elasticity poses problems of authority “because,” say Dawson and Cowan, “there is no mechanism by which information posted to or claims made on the Internet may be vetted beforehand, the World Wide Web produces what some have either lauded or deplored as the phenomenon of ‘instant experts.’”26 Lagging close behind the problem of accountability is authenticity. If, for example, a Neopagan coven can exist online that lacks a leader with experience and includes whoever clicks their way to membership, then the authenticity of such a group may be questioned. Dawson and Cowan pose the question this way: “If a coven can mean anything its online users want it to mean, has it not ceased to mean anything at all?”27
24 Ibid.
25 Lorne L. Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan, eds., Religion Online: Finding Faith on the Internet (London: Routledge, 2004), 2.
26 Ibid. Dawson and Cowan demonstrate this problem by pointing out the credentials that a High Priestess of one coven had garnered: She was fifteen years old with two years of pagan experience (2).
27 Ibid. This question raised by Dawson and Cowen neglects that the leadership of this coven still has structure, that is, it is still organized by a logic and is not random. Meaning, then, does remain in some sense.
Even more subtle, though, is the way a legion of authorities (whether credible or not) vying for attention can undermine the legitimacy of any one authority. Such decay of authority certainly seems possible but it could be that for those that are intentional cyberspace might actually promote authority by providing more opportunity to access it. An extensive chain of evangelical websites, online sermons, online resources, and blogs might anchor the evangelical more deeply in evangelicalism. Islamic groups have used the Internet to make accessible a wide range of Islamic materials. The Web, for example, provides the opportunity for Muslims to recite the Qu’ran with those in Mecca, an especially important
opportunity during the month of Ramadan.28 Not surprisingly, a sense of ummah, that is, the global Islamic community, increases thanks to the connectedness of the Internet.29 For these Muslims, it would seem, the Internet does not cripple authority but bolsters it by providing more opportunity to access it as well as access the broader Islamic community.
Notwithstanding the example of Islam, the question lingers: does the Internet rupture or reinforce religious authority structures? Perhaps this question is a
variation of the perennial sociological question regarding the effect of pluralism on religious belief. For Berger, pluralism hinders the plausibility of belief and religious authority by offering a multiplicity of other options. The Web is an intense plurality of mediums (e.g. visual, audio, and texts) and ideas. For those living in more
homogenous locales, the cyberworld would be a whirlwind introduction to cultural pluralism. Drawing upon the work of Tom Beaudoin, Dawson and Cowan agree with Berger, stating that “The obviously constructed and pluralistic character of religious expressions online tends to have a relativizing effect on the truth claims of any one religion or its authorities.”30 If pluralism has fostered a religion marked more by seeking and dabbling than residing and committing, then the Web is a religious environment extremely conducive to the contemporary religious climate.
Christopher Helland agrees, stating that “the Internet caters to people who wish to
28 Gary R. Bunt, “Negotiating Islam and Muslims in Cyberspace,” in Concilium 41, no. 1 (London: SCM, 2005): 71.
29 Ibid., 70.
30 Dawson and Cowan, Religion Online, 3.
be religious and spiritual on their own terms.”31 As such, it “will likely accelerate the processes of religious change already happening in the West.”32 This, of course, presents challenges to evangelicals who maintain exclusive religious claims unfit for the plurality of the Web.
But what if Christian Smith is correct that pluralism can actually reinforce religious convictions? If so, then the Internet would accentuate evangelicals’ sense of embattlement, leading to a more fervent evangelicalism. Yet there is a twist, once again the anonymity, privacy, and ease of the Internet brings an important dynamic that the physical world lacks: without the accountability of one’s religious
community and the curious stares coming from those not sharing one’s religion (that incite ostensible conformity to one’s convictions), religious individuals have free rein to explore an ever-expanding myriad of diversions that all catechize in a way that might not be conducive to one’s religion. Also, there is the problem
mentioned above of authenticity which is sometimes bound up with the anonymity, privacy, and ease of the Web. When Lyon speaks of the Internet as being open, these are the challenges in mind.
Not only does the Internet blur reality and act as an open medium, it also disrupts identity. Individuals online can experiment with an assortment of cyber-identities in an array of cyber-settings. There is more than just the Internet at work in the severing of identities, however. Psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen believes that the proliferation of a host of technological accoutrements has led to “the saturated self.” Gergen says these varied “relationships pull us in myriad directions, inviting us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of an ‘authentic self’ with
knowable characteristics recedes from view.”33 Gergen continues by claiming that the “fully saturated self becomes no self at all.”34 It has been over fifteen years since Gergen’s book was published and since that time our communication technologies have only proliferated. For example, it is not uncommon for one to be instant
31 Helland, “Popular Religion and the World Wide Web,” 34.
32 Ibid.
33 Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 6.
34 Ibid., 7.
messaging an old friend while on conference call with co-workers in three different continents and at the same time traversing decades of memories by listening to old favorites on an iPod, and thanks to the iPhone, this range of activities can all be executed with one, hand-held device. This somewhat common experience jostles individuals through a number of worlds, challenging an integrated identity. This is why Lyon uses the term “fluidity” to describe the nature of so many of these technologies.35
Yet, as Lyon highlights, there is also a sense in which the self is strengthened thanks to cyberspace and other related technologies. In cyberspace, one finds oneself “choosing, communicating, controlling.”36 Lyon notes that “God-like control is bestowed upon mortals by the power of computers and the grace of VR [virtual reality].”37 The same year Gergen published The Saturated Self, Anthony Giddens published another study on self-identity that came to a very different conclusion. In modernity, says Giddens, “self-identity becomes a reflexively organized endeavor.
The reflexive project of the self, which consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet continuously revised, biographical narratives, takes place in the context of multiple choice as filtered through abstract systems.”38 This context gives individuals
remarkable autonomy to piece together a narrative for their lives. Such self-constructed narratives provide some fixedness in an otherwise fluid world, for Giddens. This is in contrast to Gergen, for whom the self is far more passive and therefore much less able to forge an identity in the tumult of what Giddens calls
“late modernity.” It is probably the case that modern technologies hold one’s
identity in tension, at the same time fracturing and reinforcing individual identities.
What might technology do for evangelicals in the workplace? This, of course, is an enormous question that could be teased out in a number of ways. But to conclude this section I will consider the ways the Internet might foster and challenge faith/work integration. Lyon suggests that many technologies like the
What might technology do for evangelicals in the workplace? This, of course, is an enormous question that could be teased out in a number of ways. But to conclude this section I will consider the ways the Internet might foster and challenge faith/work integration. Lyon suggests that many technologies like the