In the minds of many anxious congregations, the news is not good: The cubicle has become the new church, and "God" is beginning to look a lot like the great ENIAC in the sky. Though religious groups have successfully found community online (exemplified by ISP and Protestant resource ECUNET), the faithful - and the rest of us - are struggling to find communion between their machines and their spiritual selves.
But if the optimism of Wednesday's MIT conference, "From Printing Press to Computer: The Future of Faith Communities in the Information Age" is any indication, the benediction of the digital world is not far away. The conference, sponsored by the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, brought together academics, clergy, and even a theologian from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab to share ways of capturing and coaxing the god from the machine.
Most fundamentally, the conference hoped to "heal the splits" between "the world of the born" (read: humans) and "the worlds of the made," says editor and theologian Jennifer Cobb, whose book, Emergence: Cyberspace and the Sacred, is due this fall.
"How can we build technologies to include a 'sacred domain'?" asks Cobb.
The sacred site may be right before our eyes (and on our monitors), said philosophy professor Kate Lindemann. While extropians concoct postmodern ceremonies, Lindemann calls for the revival of ancient prayer forms through "contemplative gazing" on the computer screen. Though this may seem unlikely for the culture of glass-eyed couch potatoes, Lindemann offers a more profound visual engagement where "we allow what we're seeing to enter us."
Her method comes from the medieval tradition called Lectio Divina ("Divine Reading") in which monks would recite manuscripts as part of daily prayer. By putting Tibetan meditation mandalas and Byzantine religious icons on the screen, computer users can enter spiritual meditation, even while pages download. Lindemann says the luminosity of the images, combined with regular breathing and patience, can transform Web surfing into a holy sacrament. In fact, a 14.4 connection can actually help the process by delaying it, says Lindemann. "If you want to use the Web to meditate, it helps to have a slow modem."
In light of the transubstantiation of mouse and microchip, MIT theologian Anne Foerst challenged the over-mythologizing of technology. Looking at Heaven's Gate, the Human Genome, and even her own work at the AI Lab on Cog: The Humanoid Robot, Foerst lambastes the "spoiled mythology" of science.
"People now answer their existential questions with technology," says Foerst. "We, as theologians, have failed." As a result, the faithful need to wrest mythos back from the rational force of logos. "We must be careful not to put myth into technology," says Foerst. "We must decide how we're going to use it."
Many congregations, however, are wary of technology and have even driven their open-minded members into hiding. Baptist Patsy West, who came from North Carolina to attend the conference, told only her husband she was coming, because she was "uncomfortable" with telling others. "They're not comfortable with thought processes not like their own," explains West. "But faith communities need to interact with [technopagan ceremony] Burning Man.... That's our hope."
The sheer diversity of pathways toward the sacred reflects the interdenominational nature of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, says executive director Charles Henderson. The conference, in effect, serves to show there's not one sacred response to technology.
"So many people, when they think of religion, they think of Jerry Falwell ... that religion is about circling the wagons against change," says Henderson, a Presbyterian minister. "We want to get out in the middle of the whirlwind."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
