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Durham E-Theses Creating Church Online: An Ethnographic Study of Five Internet-Based Christian Communities HUTCHINGS, TIMOTHY,ROGER,BENJAMIN How to cite: HUTCHINGS, TIMOTHY,ROGER,BENJAMIN (2010) Creating Church Online: An Ethnographic Study of Five Internet-Based Christian Communities, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/416/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 CREATING CHURCH ONLINE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF FIVE INTERNET-BASED CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES TIM HUTCHINGS THEOLOGY AND RELIGION DURHAM UNIVERSITY PhD THESIS 2010 1 CREATING CHURCH ONLINE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF FIVE INTERNET-BASED CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES ABSTRACT Tim Hutchings ―Online churches‖ are Internet-based Christian communities, seeking to pursue worship, discussion, friendship, teaching, support, proselytisation and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. These online churches are one example of ―online religion‖, a new kind of digital religious practice that promises to transform worship, authority, community and the construction of identity. This thesis examines five online churches, representing diverse media, theological traditions, leadership structures and forms of external oversight. Each has created a sizeable congregation and offers forms of worship and community online. I used ethnographic methods to examine these churches with particular attention to media, worship, community and leadership. I conducted long-term participant observation over the three years of my research, taking part in online and offline activities whenever possible, speaking informally with as many people as possible and interviewing over 100 leaders and members. Survey data and other written materials were also studied where available, including media reports, participant accounts and online blog posts. My research suggested seven important themes present in each group: mass appeal, the formation of community, spiritual experience, the replication of familiar elements of architecture, liturgy and organisation, the prevalence of local churchgoing among online participants, patterns of internal control and systems of external oversight. Each case study demonstrates the very different negotiations of those themes at work in each group. In my final chapter, I bring together threads and insights from each case study according to four key dimensions of one common theme: the relationship between digital and everyday life. Online churches deliberately replicate familiar elements of everyday activity, become part of the everyday, remain carefully distinct from the everyday and become distinctively digital. We must attend to all four of these layers to adequately understand and evaluate what takes place online, and what role that online activity plays in everyday religious lives. 2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION p5 LITERATURE REVIEW p7 METHODOLOGY p43 CHAPTER 1: CHURCH OF FOOLS p63 CHAPTER 2: I-CHURCH p99 CHAPTER 3: ST PIXELS p139 CHAPTER 4: THE ANGLICAN CATHEDRAL OF SECOND LIFE p181 CHAPTER 5: LIFECHURCH.TV CHURCH ONLINE p221 CHAPTER 6: THE DIGITAL AND THE EVERYDAY p273 CONCLUSION: p311 BIBLIOGRAPHY: p315 3 DECLARATION The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any format, including electronic and the Internet, without the author‘s prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been undertaken without the warm welcome I received from the communities of i-church, Church of Fools/St Pixels, The Anglican Cathedral of Second Life and LifeChurch.tv, or without the support of my supervisors, friends and family. My thanks to all of them. This research was funded by a Durham University Doctoral Fellowship and by an AHRC Doctoral Award. 4 INTRODUCTION This thesis will be submitted in 2010, the 25th anniversary of a significant event in the brief history of religion and the Internet: the appearance of the earliest recorded online church, launched in 1985.1 Hundreds of congregations have now emerged online, appropriating every form of new media to support worship, prayer, friendship, discussion, teaching and evangelism. Churches can be found high in the skies of virtual worlds, streaming sermons from local congregations, connecting through social network sites, or debating ideas in forums and chatrooms; some attract a dozen congregants, while others preach to tens of thousands. The last six years have seen an explosive new vitality among online churches, blossoming from a few low-profile ventures to capture global attention. This thesis seeks to chart some of that vitality through ethnography, conducting detailed participant observation with many interviews to try to understand what takes place in these online groups, who joins them, and why. Ethnography requires long-term personal involvement in group life and repeated conversations with members, and allows the researcher to explore the perceptions and practices of a group in great depth and richness. This flexible, contextual approach is particularly well-suited to the study of communities, engaging directly with participants‘ experiences, perceptions, relationships and activities, and is ideal for exploring relatively unknown areas of social activity like online religion, offering the chance to spend time learning what matters to participants before highlighting key themes for analysis. I studied five online churches in total, and discuss them in chronological order: Church of Fools; i-church; St Pixels; The Anglican Cathedral of Second Life; and Church Online, an ―online campus‖ run by LifeChurch.tv. These five examples of online religion differ in size, activity, media, leadership style, theology and institutional oversight, offering opportunities for wide-ranging comparative analysis. 1 Church of England Board of Social Responsibility, Cybernauts Awake! (London: Church House Publishing, 1999) Chapter 5, http://www.starcourse.org/cybernauts/index.html. Accessed 16-03-07 5 Certain key themes quickly drew my interest. Worship, community and authority are all crucial issues for Christian churches, and each is replicated and transformed in complex and diverse ways online. My discussion of each case study emphasises these themes, seeking to demonstrate the pressures and dynamics guiding negotiation of each topic. The whole thesis, however, works toward a larger goal: tracing the many dimensions of the relationship between digital and everyday life. It is this multi-layered, multi-faceted relationship that inspires, drives and shapes online activity, including online religion. I soon discovered that ―going to an online church‖ can only be understood if we pay attention to what else is going on in the life of the churchgoer, and this thesis seeks to investigate the many levels of that embeddedness. My final chapter, ―The Digital and the Everyday‖, will bring together insights from all my case studies to show commonalities and contrast distinctive features in light of this overarching theme. As online church-building continues to gather pace, the framework of analysis I offer should help future researchers document and assess the increasingly diverse, vibrant projects that emerge. 6 LITERATURE REVIEW Online religion is constantly changing, and those who seek to research it are seldom discussing quite the same groups or practices as their predecessors or successors. This review seeks to set each contribution in context by combining references to literature with a history of online churches, so the reader can compare the evolution of discussion with that of the practices being discussed. A narrow focus has been adopted to limit the volume of material considered. I have focused primarily on published academic work directly relevant to the study of online churches. The history of the Internet itself has been comprehensively outlined elsewhere2 and will not be rehearsed here. Many classic and recent texts in the study of new media, religion and media, sociology of religion, congregational studies and ethnographic methodology have been invaluable for my research, and media coverage and online discussions have also been of interest, but these sources will be introduced in the main thesis and bibliography where appropriate. FIRST STEPS: 1985-1994 The Church of England document Cybernauts Awake!3 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.‘4. Cybernauts doesn‘t name this church, unfortunately, and I have found no other reference to it. 2 See, for example, Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History