ABSTRACT
Can someone desecrate a virtual church? Is it possible to commit a “virtual” sin? Who would have thought, a few decades ago, that we’d ask what it means to “really” perform a religious ritual, or whether we need our bodies to do so? But given the recent proliferation of deeply immersive online experiences, these are exactly the questions we now ask. In the online virtual community Second Life, for example, one can find a “Catholic” church run by a nonpriest in priest’s digital garb, and people attending (and even sleeping through) services; a real-life Buddhist monk spreading the dharma; a replica of a Mayan temple with a real-life donation feature; and recently, a “prim” (a digital representation of a piece of wood, manufactured randomly) that some claim displays a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary. Clearly, there is religion in Second Life. But what kind of religion is it? In 2006, I co-led a team that conducted a series of interviews in Second
Life.1 Based on the responses it is clear that, in online environments, distinctions between sacred and profane, virtual and real, play and ritual break down, challenging our sense of what is “here” and what is “there.” Boundaries of all kinds-between play and ritual, between virtual reality and material reality, between the physical body and the digital body-are disrupted in online spaces like Second Life, raising questions about some of the most pertinent issues at stake in today’s discussion of virtual religion. What is happening today may seem strange, new, and fascinating for the study of religion and what it means for people to come together in a collective experience, but it also highlights the notion that religious experience has always been a form of imaginative “play.”
