ABSTRACT
Before jumping into an exploration of religious communities’ engagement with the internet it is important to start with reflection on the factors which shape the religious response to media in general. While Judaism, Islam, and Christianity each have their own unique history, belief system, and religious rituals, they also share commonalities, especially when it comes to the basis for their interactions with media. In the introduction I propositioned that these three religions’ patterns of media negotiation are guided by three factors: (1) how they define their distinctive communities around issues of interpretation of core beliefs and practices, (2) their tradition of interaction with their sacred texts, and (3) their unique understanding of religious authority (i.e. leadership roles and community hierarchies) serving as the primary guide to their responses to text and community. These areas, I argue, are crucial to consider when attempting to understand a religious group’s response to any new form of media, especially the internet. The internet as the network of networks represents a collection of diverse software, networking applications, and forums allowing for innovative forms of religious interaction and ritual engagement to occur. In many respects it is a hybrid technology combining different text, images, and sound into a new media forum that serves as a digital playground of new opportunities for sharing and experimentation. While it is considered a new media, the opinions and concerns raised about use of the internet by many religious users are not new and can be clearly linked to base concerns about how religious groups frame the idea of community, authority, and written media or texts. Religious views of media are readily informed by one’s conception of reli-
gious community. It is not only their affiliation with a specific set of beliefs and a tradition, but how those practices are lived out that defines a religious community. The boundaries of a particular religious community are established by agreed-upon standards of interpretation based on a particular groups’ understanding of the role text plays in the community and what authorities have the right and responsibility to guide these interpretations. Therefore groups with more conservative or literalist interpretations of their sacred texts and a high reliance on recognized religious authorities to dictate those interpretations
often have a stricter understanding of communal boundaries than others, as seen in the ultra-Orthodox Judaism or Shia Islam. This varying sense of boundaries and obligations means that religious faith traditions are unlikely to have a monolithic or unified response to a given media. Rather responses are negotiated and dictated by the life patterns of the specific group to which religious believers belong. For this reason, when it comes to media like the internet one can expect that, for instance, Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians will differ on the sources they turn to for advice regarding technology use and the extent to which certain innovations are encouraged or embraced because of their histories and view of authority. Therefore it becomes important to consider not only the tradition a religious community comes from but also the particular characteristics and lived practice of the specific group when reflecting on media use. Also, because tradition and teachings instruct religious communities on
how sacred texts should be interpreted, handled, and performed it must be recognized that these instructions also form the basis of a philosophy of communication. This means that within a given religious community there are inherent, embedded rules of how media should be treated and conceived of, arising from communal beliefs. Observing the relationship of the community to its sacred text as a sort of base media can provide clues to these unspoken guidelines. For example, Orthodox Jews consult both oral as well as written texts in the process of interpretation and encourage a high level of intellectual and dialogic engagement in order to attain textual meaning (Jaffee, 2001). Yet they will not physically touch the Torah, because it is considered holy, and is created through a highly regulated process laid out in Torah law. The advent of the printing press thus raised unique Halachic problems. Could sacred documents such as a Sefer Torah, tefillin (psalms), or mezuzoth (blessings placed at the doorposts of homes) be printed in light of traditional and accepted mitzvoth (rules). Over time, mitzvoth were adopted by many groups related to the art of printing to allow for wide acceptance of printed prayer books and other documents. However, the craft of handwriting certain sacred texts is still revered and preferred by some Jewish groups. Thus the digitization of texts through the internet again has raised issues within Judaism about the production of sacred texts. The flexibility or rigidity of interpretation of rules surrounding sacred text sets the tone for how a religious community views and treats the written word in general. Those in the Jewish tradition who highly value dialogic discussion and engagement with sacred text over the sole deferment to the interpretations of recognized rabbis and interpreters have also historically had a greater openness towards using other printed materials such as newspaper to facilitate a cultural connection through the Jewish Diaspora (Blondheim and Blum-Kulka, 2001). This means a Jewish community’s relationships with and beliefs about religious texts may have bearing on their views of different forms of mass media. Thus what a religious community believes about the use and role of text within the
community plays an important role in guiding future media use. Paying attention to a community’s historical approach to text can provide important indicators of how they will approach and decipher new forms of media. Finally, it is argued that religious responses to media are informed by a
community’s view of religious authority, especially in relation to the interpretation of sacred texts. For instance, Shiites often defer to recognized imams for the application of the Koran, while Sunnis may refer to a preferred legal tradition to help in their understanding of Koranic meaning. For one, religious authority is based on specific authority roles; and for the other, authority comes from recognized religious structures. Yet for both the source of authority sets the boundaries for acceptable meaning-making. Identifying what a religious community considers to be a source of religious authority in relation to text may serve as an indicator of what sources will hold authority in the future engagement with media. This leads to another commonality: religious leaders play an important role in relaying or mediating meaningmaking about official sources of information. Christian religious leaders’ advocacy of the use of the printing press for religious dissemination and proselytization created a baseline of tradition within Protestantism that has enabled future generations to advocate the use of radio, television, and as we shall see later, the internet for evangelization (Eisenstein, 1979; Walsham, 2000). By presenting the printing press as God inspired and created, leaders not only blessed its use, but in many respects compelled their communities to utilize it (Loach, 1986). Seeing media technology as a God-given resource to be embraced for religious purposes is a legacy and belief clearly seen in many Protestant Christian groups’ media usage, especially in an era of televangelism and religious internet use. Thus how religious leaders present a given technology and the rhetoric they employ may open or close doors for future media technology to be introduced to that community. Thus it is in careful observation of religious groups’ engagement with “old media”, as it were, that we begin to comprehend the factors influencing their decisionmaking regarding new forms of media, such as the internet.1 These claims that community, text, and authority serve as key pointers to understanding religious engagement with new media must be tested. So in this chapter we now turn to one of the defining media of the information age and consider whether or not these claims hold true in relation to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian engagement with the internet. The internet has become a space populated by users who have readily
brought their faith online with them, and as a result have developed a myriad of cybertemples, online prayer chapels, religious discussion forums, and information portals that enable them to live out their faith in a networked environment. Yet, as suggested above, the choices made by religious internet users are often strongly informed by the religious communities they belong to. These choices related to internet use and innovation are also often guided by previously established views about religious authority, community,
and even older mediums such as printed text. Thus even in an age of new digital media, religious internet users frequently act in line with the trajectory set forth by their community’s negotiations with previous media. In order to consider this more fully, this chapter explores Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perceptions of the internet. This begins with a general overview of the rise of religious information on the internet, outlining the dominant forms of religious use. This leads to an investigation of how each of these religious traditions and different groups within them have responded to the internet. Through surveying how voices within each religion have critiqued as well as advocated the use of the internet, a link is made with discussions in the book’s introduction. It demonstrates that one’s beliefs towards religious text, authority, and community also plays a significant role in determining one’s position about the nature of the internet.
