Chester Street Uniting Earth Ministry Lacuna Group


Online Faith Communities and the Construction of Identity: Some Reflections.

Posted: 06/05/2009


 

Some months ago I became interested in the topic of online faith groups and the extent to which these groups can foster genuine community and spirituality. Due to an increasing prevalence of these communities (Second-Life Churches being only one exaggerated example), questions are beginning to be asked about the implications of addressing spiritual/faith issues in an online, transient world that collapses time and space. To compliment my reading I asked a number of people, young and old, to offer some reflections as to whether they consider the online faith community a legitimate way of expressing and participating on the life of faith. 

One of the things consistently expressed was exasperation in regards to absurdity of web-based faith communities. The major stumbling block here was the issue of honesty and identity. It was argued that healthy community can only be developed when individuals are present in an open, honest way that reflects their true identity. Because of the anonymous nature of the online environment it is all too easy to construct exaggerated or deceitful representations of ones identity. You can literally be who you want to be at any time. Accountability and transparency are thus subverted with the end result being a rather superficial spiritual development based on the limited knowledge of the constructed self. 

I believe that the issue here is one of physicality. The underlying assumption of the above critique is that physical presence is the most legitimate expression of relationship. Non-physical community is, of course, accepted as long as it is subordinate to the physical community (within a spiritual context this usually means the attendance of Church on Sunday's). Like everything else, we are happy to embrace the Internet as an evangelistic 'tool', so long as it leads to an involvement in more traditional Church structures. The territory becomes problematic for us when participants in online faith communities claim that the Internet is not only highly valuable for the development of spirituality and community but is in fact more beneficial and relevant to today’s world than traditional Church structures. Such thoughts are simply too absurd for many to entertain. 

Yet there are some important reasons why we should rethink whether physical presence naturally leads to a more honest community. It's seems to me that it's not particularly self-evident that physical presence does a better job of forming healthy communities. The construction of identity, even multiple identities, is a reality of the pre-internet age as well. We need look no further than the T.V. evangelist scandals of the 1980's, where it became known that Pastor Jimmy was not exactly the Good Ol' Boy we assumed he was. True, the Internet does give the problem of identity construction more scope and prevalence, but it still seems somewhat hypocritical to single out the online world for something that surrounds us all, regardless of whether we know about it or not. In fact, the online faith communities might here issue us a challenge: how well do we actually know each other in our so-called 'real world?’ Can you be sure that a response to the question 'how are you?' is an honest one? How do you really know? Might they be constructing their answer to suit our social customs? Yes, identity construction and manipulation certainly occurs in the physical world as well. In all this we are reminded that before throwing stones at those who participate in web-faith it is important that we should examine our own physical communities and determine whether we actually embody a model worth imitating.  

Furthermore, questions need to be asked over the motivation of constructing online identities in a faith community context. Just because something is actually possible (identity construction) doesn't mean that It’s being practiced on the level that we may think. The media, of course, loves a good story about deceitful online practice, but for many the internet is a way of addressing deeply personal and spiritual issues within an unthreatening environment and with those with who they can empathize. In addition, the anonymity of the Internet is often of a beneficial nature. It allows a freer space for honesty and confession. A lot of innovative work is being done here in the realms of addiction, particularly in relation to gambling and pornography. In the online environment anonymity allows people to skip straight to the heart of the matter without worrying about the awkwardness of how others may view them on subsequent Sunday mornings. Here the non-physical dimension to community is having quite positive results.     

The construction of identity in such a context is therefore pointless and arbitrary and defeats the purpose of searching for a faith group in the first place. Someone who actually makes the effort to track down an internet faith group in which they regularly participate is unlikely to be constructing elaborate identities for their perverse pleasure. It's not impossible, of course. There are loonies everywhere. It's just that I wonder if it happens with the frequency we think.           

         

 

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