The Megachurch in the Metaverse

For its entire lifespan religions’ expansive, systematic methods of indoctrination and reach have defined religious practice, beliefs, values and the role it plays in societies around the world. Of particular interest is the role of the religious practices that function as  a totem for  unity and organisation amongst followers. These provided the means for forging shared beliefs and values needed to generate social-religious unity and numerous aspects of American society. Fast forward and the totem of religiousness in the United States has been supplemented by the connectedness and easier organisation of social media. However, where religious totems used to be promoting beliefs and values with intangible benefits and functions, social media promotes whatever is popular and trending. These contradictory, yet similarly pervasive, forms of social organising—shared religious practice and social media—have collided in 21st century America.

 

It is astounding that religious practice has remained pervasive even in the face of a forever changing reality, part of this can be attributed to its ability to adapt. So what causes such a shift and why does it matter if something from centuries ago disappears? In this case one of its causes can largely be attributed to the communication revolution ushered in by social media. In particular, this research aims to understand how change could seed a similar shift in social behaviour as a result of a religious decline.

 

In Mitchell Parker and Eugene Gaier’s (1980) analysis of religious beliefs and practices they recognise an important relationship between the division of religion into beliefs and practices. Parker and Gaier’s definitions help to understand how practices can be distinguished from beliefs. Religious beliefs were described as; “the theological or dogmatic aspects of one’s faith. They include notions of revelation, creation, repentance, the nature of efficacy of the preacher and the form of the deity. Religious beliefs by their nature, are unobservable” Conversely, religious practices “may be defined as the tangible aspects of religion”, asserting that “prescribed rituals determine the form of prayer, the observance of holidays, the nature of food one is permitted to eat, and even the number of children one may have (p. 361)”. As Lenski (1963) describes it, “religion is a system of beliefs about the nature of the force(s) ultimately shaping man’s destiny and the practices associated therewith, shared by members of a group.” These definitions all make clear the role that religious practices have on generation of group dynamics, but also on lifestyle, culture, relationships and much more. This is important when considering the role that social media plays in concert with this practice and the effect it might have on these broader religious behaviours. 

 

To establish a method for how this information might be uncovered, the research will interrogate current trends of religious practice in the United States through the lens of historical figures and ideas, then incorporate social media to put into perspective how these changes have manifested in the 21st century. This research adds to the complication and perspective of social media in Sorcha Brophy’s research that attempts to understand how orthodox evangelical communities have become “centrally concerned with resisting [the] decline [of] orthodoxy.” (2016: p. 127). In “Orthodoxy as Project” Brophy proposes further examination of how groups approach and respond to future challenges and existential threats to their beliefs and practices (p. 141; Martí, 2019). The complication that follows social media and Technoevangelism, with its digitised set of core evangelical values, offers a case study which can derive new meanings from the components of Brophy’s broad analysis. Particularly important to this research will be how emerging social media influences on religion can be both a threat to its organisational identity and also, simultaneously, a potentially effective response to current issues.

 

To separate practice and belief is easier in the sense of a definition, however to separate them in reality requires a historical background. This will help to frame the long history of religious practice and the  sentiment it has produced in the United States. In particular, in the case of the US, early nation building is often described as being established on the premise of religious unity against other religious castes (Brubaker, 2016). For the US, the culturalization of religion, while establishing nationhood, made religion and national culture inextricably linked. In accordance with what Astor Avi and Damon Mayrl expected, religious culturalisation resulted in stronger “religious identification, discourse, and expression whose character is primarily cultural, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual” (2020: p. 209). This effect on America partly passes under the secularist radar. Previously however, religious culturalisation was taking places of religion in a  process that was conspicuous. Now it occurs in the palm of the hand.

 

As John Adams explained to the officers of the militia of Massachusetts (1798), “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people ''. The caveat of Adam’s speech being that it allowed only ideas of Christianity remain central to the nationalist-populist agenda that many US presidents have since adopted (Brubaker, 2016). Adam’s Christan sentiment was woven by religious practice and translated into the fabric of the US, working, in most cases, to oppose modernity, liberalism and secularism (Brubaker, 2016). This has made its way so deep into the framework of political  thinking and national unity that Dwight Eisenhower in his Address at the Freedoms Foundation (1952) almost directly quotes Adam’s, "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply held religious belief—and I don’t care what it is''. 

 

While a share of the founding fathers shared beliefs in Deism, the prevailing opinions of most saw religion as a defining feature. Deism is the belief in the existence of God solely based on rational thought, that knowledge in nature, science and technology was the discovery of God's existence (Byrne, 2013). And while Deism has not been lost in American cultural and political discourse, it has not had the same continual potency on voting behaviour and electoral outcomes as fundamental religious affiliation (Martí, 2019). However now there may  be emergence of Deism as social media might be moving to replace religion's "bigger meaning", and by its nature, its practices. As swaths of Americans quietly reject religion as their moral and spiritual guide, increasing numbers have moved online in search of the updated model of meaning making and a private expression of religious practice.

 

Most recently, during Donald Trump's ascension to Presidency in  2016, Adam’s Christian-American dogma materialised in a speech to a large crowd at Liberty University where Trump promised that “We’re going to protect Christianity”, speaking to his more broad ideas of returning the United States to its previous greatness (Martí, 2019). More simply this could also be a political ploy to garner support from white evangelicals, some of Trump’s more furious supporters. Interestingly, as Franklin Graham conceded in a 2018 interview, Trump was not an exemplar but a defender, “I never said he was the best example of the Christian faith. He defends the faith.” What this defence speaks to is the culturalization of these values and their association with an idealised vision of America that Trump used to mobilise people.

 

Through an understanding of these presidential examples, and American traditions, a pattern emerges that identifies religion as an enduring source of national identity. Part of this identity is practised on the micro-scale in American life, which, like all things, are increasingly becoming interwoven with the virtual world of social media. As Robert Pirsig diagnosed, "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion" (cited in Giannetti, p. 8; 2008). The entrenched culturalization helps to contextualise why group religious practice provides heightened engagement and stronger commitment. To this same effect social media users, like those who practise religion, use groupness (group forming, in/out-group making) and ritual to make shared meaning. 

 

The concept of culturalizing religion is central to understanding how social media plays into this dynamic in the 21st century. The three examples described support a conclusion that the culturalization of religion has become, for various reasons, inseparable in the discourse of the political institutions of the United States. The emergence of social media has complicated this separation of power, perhaps now social media, and its census-like qualities returns the power to the individuals. Now discourse between users, platformed discussions and the instantaneousness of social media will help to shift the virtual location people share and validate their beliefs and values. 

 

The two particular effects this medium has had on politics and society is its ability to host the dissemination of millions of perspectives across the world, all at once. It is this ability, combined with America’s contradictory predispositions toward religion, that causes vast confusion from aesthetics and fanatics alike (Coman, 2017). Arguably, previous presidents have reflected the broad societal perspectives on religion in their respective eras. However Trump is the only president appointed during the decline of religion, and coincidentally the only example of the three to contend with the challenges of rapid technological change, in particular focusing on social media. With such established cultural and political roots to religion, the US may struggle in the coming decades to decide how society will cope with such a fundamental shift in nationhood.

 

The decline of religion in the United States is overlooked as a force with the potential to change the entirety of the political, social and cultural landscape of the nation within the next 50 years. The likely causes of this decline are largely unknown or too numerous to pinpoint, however “globalisation, migration, and extremism”(p. 3) are sited by Baraybar-Fernández, et al. (2020) as possible culprits for why the American “positive perception of religion has been largely lost”. Baraybar-Fernández, et al. go on to comment on how Moralistic Therapeutic Deism could be a reason for religious views and values being mistaken for secular ones in 21st century America. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism aligns itself with the underlying principles of religion, choosing instead to focus on the way the Bible preaches morality and philanthropy, rather than the Supreme Being (Stokel-Walker, 2022). This less orthodox and inconspicuous version of religious practice is borderline, by Parker and Gaier’s definition, to become intangible (1980). Both the General Social survey and the Pew Research estimates indicate a stark and sudden departure of 21st Americans from decades of religion, with arguments that this might affect societal stability (Fagan, 2006).

 

 In an article titled, “Why Religion Matters Even More: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability'' (2006), published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and written by Patrick Fagan, religious practice is credited with being a “powerful antidote to many of our nation's pressing social problems” (p. 1). Similarly technology is credited with such radical fixes to the ailments of the US (Rosner, 2013). Interestingly, secularism, science, deism and religion all struggle to establish their perspective as that which must be followed to secure success. Fagan notes that as Americans “work to reduce the influence of religious belief or practice [they] further the disintegration of society” continuing that, “some may be uncomfortable with the religious beliefs and practices of others, but that discomfort is small compared to the effects of having a society with little or no religious practice” (p. 19). 

 

Fagan’s concerns, and Pew's empirical evidence suggests the US is hurtling toward a reality flip. However, where Fagan is lobbying to effect policy many are taking to the most interconnected soap box in the world, the internet, and specifically social media. Social media is perhaps the new frontier of American religion. While religious identification and congregations decline a new culturalisation of socialised virtual religious practice is emerging.

 

 This is not to claim that this will have a phoenix effect, instead this finding aims to clarify how the religion has adapted its practice for the familiar function of social media. This culturalisation movement toward Techno-evangelicism is a striking display of religious mobilisation during a pivotal moment in American history. 

 

The pre-pandemic Pew Research Centre Survey (Table) found that increasing numbers of US adults are using “new media” to observe and practise their religion (2014). In Heidi Campbell’s Religion in quarantine: The future of religion in a post-pandemic world (2020), reflects on her personal experience with religion and to what effect, “Viral mayhem disrupts the order humans perennially seek in a chaotic world, whether through scholarly discourse or religious adherence.” (pp. 5-6). With the ‘virtualisation’ of congregations during the pandemic it is likely that in the wake of such dramatic change, new media is seeing a distinct increase in popularity. Campbell explains this specific shift, and the broader changes explored in this essay, writing, “A global pandemic reacquaints us with chaos, cracking conventions of thinking, sensing, expressing, practising, and feeling. As we ask how religious practices are adapting to socially imposed constraints on human contact and move online, we might also ask what the sense of transcendence, that fundamental unknowingness, offers for reconceiving social organisation — from factory farms that incubate viruses, to production and distribution of medical supplies, to religious institutions themselves.” (p. 6) 

Campbell’s expression is a clear indication of the impact modes of delivery and practice can have on religious sentiment.  In particular, reference to the ‘reconceiving of social organisation” is significant because it supports the hypothesis that the role of practice can have broad implications on religion

 

In the globalising religious practice people such as English native Reverend Pete Phillips noticed in his work with decentralised religious teaching that there was an emergence of “A new kind of mutated Christianity for a digital age…One that follows many of the ethics of the secular world.” (Stokel-Walker, 2022). To ground the statistics that surround religious affiliation more generally, it is worth also noting the reasons religious leaders believe a change in their religious practice is occurring. Phillips observesthat “Millennials prefer this generalised picture of God rather than an interventionist God, and they prefer God to Jesus, because he’s non-specific”. Phillips' explanation supports the idea that social media has caused a shift in identity, specifically how belief can have profound effects on practice. What Phillips is describing in his observation is a shift toward Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (Smith, 2009) and that this is a global change with specific effects on America in the 21st century. Correlating this impending decline, and in opposition, the methods by which religious believers and practitioners alike are attempting to retain their followers, provides insight into new social dynamics.  

 

On the religiously fertile and culturalized soil of the United States social media is moving to fill the role of traditional religious practice This topic speaks to religious tradition, Americanism and technology,  and how they interact as socially and culturally deterministic forces. The aim was to research and correlate these two societal features. What is particularly interesting is how these old ideas can be joined with, and adapted to, a new era of communication. The convergence of religion and social media is reflective of a larger social and ideological convergence and that is what this essay, more broadly, aims to understand and diagnose. 

 

As the United States carves its new techno identity, its traditionally religious nation indeed has struggled to avoid social and cultural contradiction. The collision of religion, one of America’s constitutional stipulations and freedoms, and social media, one of America's most prolific inventions, is reflective of national shifts in identity, societal organisation and necessity. Where religion used to play a vital role in each of these aspects they have been rearranged to include technological perspectives once never considered. Technoevangelism is the reimagining of religion, and has in the process, reimagined America's core convictions. Social media has adapted the practices of religion, creating its own shared language, a conceptual framework, a platform for synchronised and asynchronous communication and ritualised the experience in the most captivating ways possible. Social media has changed the meaning making experience in America, adapting itself into the role of religious practice.

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