ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a set of stories that offers distinctive glimpses of sacramental practices in digital mediation. The different stories illustrate the quite dissimilar features gathered under the term "online sacraments" and hopefully put to rest any aspiration for "one-stop" answers. The chapter then establishes some theological ground rules on how to think – and not to think – about media, mediation, and sacraments. It presents two key sacraments, first, eucharistic practices, and second and much more briefly, practices of baptism, and inquires into processes of digital mediation surrounding these sacraments. In each case, the chapter examines not only what particular challenges digital mediation poses, but also what resources the liturgical tradition offers to think about a particular sacrament's mediations. On the basis of this inquiry, it then turns to identifying the questions to pursue as the church strives to live in a digital culture that does not grind to an analog halt when the word "sacrament" is invoked.
