The church with “long COVID”: navigating the opportunities and pitfalls of “online church”
Author: Bryan Cones
Bryan Cones is a presbyter in the Episcopal Church, serving in the Diocese of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. He earned a PhD in liturgical and practical theology from the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia, in 2019. |
The long duration of the COVID-19 pandemic—18 months at this writing and counting—has likely now introduced permanent changes to the way Christian assemblies pray together. Adaptations have included recorded service watched simultaneously or asynchronously, livestreamed services from Morning Prayer to eucharist, creative attempts to use Zoom or other video communications applications to create something new, and more recently “hybrid” services that include both an in-person assembly and an online group, often “present” through a large screen in the in-person place of prayer. These many approaches have been conceptualized in different ways, but by and large reflection on them has been positive—a hopeful sign of the ability of churches to adapt to a challenging situation, with a few notable exceptions.
This trend is apparent in almost any conversation about the apparent success of these experiments. Many delight in the informality of the online “worship experience,” noting how wonderful it is that children show up in their pyjamas. Others are grateful that new leaders have cropped up, now freed from the intimidating formality of the in-person worship. Others have remarked that homebound persons and persons with impairments related to age or ability can now “Zoom in” without having to fight unwelcoming spaces. Online worship seems to offer a freedom from engaging the troublesome obstacles that litter most spaces for worship, or the sometimes stodgy formality that views the unscripted interventions that mark the participation of children as insufficiently solemn. Even more, online gatherings can reconnect former members or join newcomers across great distance. So why not embrace it?
As a working pastor and liturgist during this time, I have had opportunity to explore online prayer, particularly a Zoom service that has also been livestreamed. I recognize and have written about how these modes of prayer offer different ways to participate—more voices offering prayer, an active “chat” feature of thanksgiving and intercession (“Virtual worship has become the people’s work,” Christian Century, 11 August 2020, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/virtual-worship-has-become-people-s-work). Still, I am increasingly troubled by the direction these attempts are taking. While there has been plenty of ingenuity and creativity, there has been decidedly less critical reflection on just what is happening. To put it bluntly, few seem concerned that the fundamental and primary symbol of properly liturgical prayer, the embodied, gathered assembly, is quickly dissolving into a relatively passive online audience led by a few technological hierophants who prepare an “experience” to be viewed and consumed. The messiness of the everyday incarnation embodied in so many people gathered with their different needs has been reduced to a collection of faces on a screen; if they are watching a livestream, even their faces may be absent. The body of Christ convened in liturgical prayer is suffering a virtual dismembering.
Admittedly, many in-person celebrations render most of those gathered a watching audience, which is perhaps why the “participation” offered in the online environment is so attractive. But the fact remains that, by and large, the absence of assembly movement and song, of bodily gestures and actions, of washing with the same water and eating the same food render most members of the online gathering passive consumers of a “worship experience.” Nothing I have engaged online has suggested to me an assembly partnering with the Holy One to suggest by their gathering, if only partially and for a moment, the “reign of God” Jesus announced. Indeed, much of what I have seen, and reflections upon it, have signified a further surrender to the reign of the internet empire, by which Christianity’s most powerful resistance to the commodification of everything is reduced to yet another video on a Facebook feed, complete with floating hearts and upraised thumbs. It seems an opportune time to consider how this “long COVID” is affecting Christian common prayer, for better and for worse.
A virtual “body of Christ”?
I take for granted that the most basic symbol of Christian liturgy or common prayer is the gathered church, convened to do its co-work with the living God in Christ through the washing of baptism, anointing with oil and prayer, and sharing a meal in memory of Jesus, among others. Each of those “liturgical symbols” require the primary one—the gathering—to function, and it is through that meeting that Christ is present in the here and now. I would go so far as to say that, in the absence of the embodied, gathered assembly, there is no liturgy, at least as practiced with undeniable consistency over the centuries.
That is not to say other forms of prayer are not valuable or important, only that do not replicate the deep patterns of prayer when bodies gather together. In The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World (Abingdon Press, 2016), Deanna Thompson writes powerfully of being accompanied through cancer by an “online church,” which she notes was both a surprise and a kind of personal conversion to virtual ministry. Yet even her examples of virtual ministry are generally rooted in a pre-existing embodied encounter with other people, or eventually lead to one. The digital remains dependent on the analog—in this case the human “material” of gathered bodies.
That said, many have insisted that online worship, like its in-person counterpart, is still “embodied,” in that there are bodies on the camera side of every screen. In her book @Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (Routledge, 2017), Yale liturgist Teresa Berger invokes St. Clare of Assisi’s mystical vision of a eucharistic celebration from her sickbed as if viewed on medieval TV as an example of “virtual communion” from the patron saint of television. While that story can be a helpful illustration of the connection among a church’s members experienced online, it may stretch an analogy to the breaking point: If online worship is sufficiently “embodied,” then why bother sitting together at table for a meal, or tumbling into bed for sex? These basic activities—which incidentally both have analogs in liturgical traditions of both eucharist and marriage—can also be pursued virtually. Yet in these cases, too, the fundamental sensual and incarnational dimension of each is absent. Without an actual symbol—the embodied, gathered assembly—the language of “embodiment” is in danger of sliding toward something disembodied and conceptual.
It may be that online worship reflects a type of “embodiment” when individuals or families are gathered in their own homes and connected through cameras, microphones, and screens. There are indeed bodies on the ends of those wires and signals. And yet properly liturgical embodiment is relational, dependent interaction between and among other bodies. One cannot baptize oneself, offer oneself the kiss of peace, share communion with oneself, lay hands on oneself and pray. Assemblies signify in and through those embodied interactions, and a “spotlighted” ordained minister, whether on Zoom or Facebook Live, cannot substitute cannot sufficiently simulate what only the assembly can do when gathered in person. The Gospel of Matthew (18:20) suggests it doesn’t need to be a large group—only two or three. Even at the height of the pandemic such a gathering would not have violated the requirements of public health.
Dealing with the devil
Online worship is tricky beast, since it proposes an embodied gathered assembly by analogy, mediated by ever more powerful technologies that engage the senses. Short of teleportation, however, these technologies produce only analogues of embodied presence. That does not mean they are without value, but in the end they produce only pieces of an embodied assembly—far short of the fullness of the primary symbol. In fact, by simulating the assembly in such a powerful, even attractive way, they risk reinforcing the audience mentality inimical to good liturgy, along with a primarily consumer approach characteristic of online media. As case in point is the embrace of social media for common prayer, particularly its manifestations on Facebook, both recorded and live. Few technologies have achieved such overwhelming penetration as Facebook and its companions and avatars, including Twitter and Instagram. The political and social divisions exacerbated by their use—which I have experienced in the churches I serve—and reported effects on the well-being self-esteem of young people signal that assemblies may be playing with fire.
Further, reports that Facebook sees churches as its next major conquest should chill the hearts of the faithful, with its promise of “connections” driven by “influencers” and the social media savvy. Elizabeth Dias of the New York Times recently reported that Facebook is actively seeking to partner with faith communities, and some churches see an opportunity to digitize the “Great Commission” in the Gospel of Matthew (28:19) to “make disciples of all nations” (“Facebook’s Next Target: The Religious Experience,” 25 July 2021). While these platforms at first seem like evangelical opportunities, the devil is, indeed, in the details. Watching even a livestream is still just watching—even if interacting via chat or floating emojis. Viewing a video asynchronously is a further step away. How can watching a video be anything other than “consumption”? As Atlanta, Georgia Hillsong pastor Sam Collier put it, Facebook offers the opportunity “to directly impact and help churches navigate and reach the consumer better.” He quickly corrected to “parishioner,” of course, but the point remains.
In the end the limits imposed by the online environment conspire to render most members of the online gathering “watchers,” consumers of digital media. Those with technological and media savvy can generate products similar to what one might find on YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook, but in the end these efforts produce near copies of those products. It can be hard to tell the difference between the well-produced efforts of an “influencer” and those of many churches—except that the “influencer” is likely better at manipulating the media and their viewers. Besides, is “influencing” what Christians are after when we gather for prayer? Unless we are willing to assign Christian prayer and preaching to the level of TED Talks or spirituality podcasts—likely less well produced—churches should give serious thought to just how Christian prayer might appear online and in what form.
Remedies for What Ails Us?
Admittedly, this may all seem like so much resistance to the irresistible march of technology, akin to denouncing the printing press by which so many gained access to a new invention called “the Bible.” Perhaps there is something to that critique—widespread literacy and broad access, after all, led to widespread Christian renewal. And yet Christians are still living with the problematic effects of that piece of early modern technology, not least a certain imprisonment of the “word of God” in print and the diminishment of its free movement in the proclamation of the scripture and its interpretation in the assembly. Like that book, online worship threatens to flatten the encounter with God, rather than open space for the free and unfettered divine movement among those gathered. Still, it seems unlikely that churches will suddenly abandon their online experiments, especially given the need to stake a place in an increasingly virtual public square. As Berger points out in her book, the “virtual church” was already a fact before COVID, and it is likely to continue long after the pandemic recedes.
And yet the churches might discover some remedy for the effects of this “long COVID” by applying a critical gaze to what is going on now, with the principles of good liturgy in mind. First among these would be to evaluate every online attempt at prayer for its tendency to slide toward a product to be consumed by a user. While a participation beyond “watching” (and maybe commenting) is limited online, it is still possible, at least by using the variety of voices that appear on the screen. This alone take a small step toward diminishing the domination of the meeting by the “spotlighted” minister and suggesting that those virtually gathered are actually doing something together. But given that such participation will be largely verbal and aural, online prayer would be better restricted to the kinds of prayer that are also largely aural and verbal, particularly the various services of word and prayer available in many denominational traditions. Those liturgies that require a prayer of embodied action—touch, bath, meal—are best left to when the assembly can gather again. If anyone is in such danger as to require such embodied prayer as the pandemic burns on, “two or three” among the vaccinated can surely bring the assembly to them.
A further step away from a “consumer” mentality would be to abandon recorded services altogether. A gathered assembly must be convened at a specific time and place; online it can at least observe a shared time. If some portion of the service must be recorded for sharing, perhaps the readings or preaching may be made available after the fact, as many churches do on their websites and social media pages already. The most intimate acts of the assembly—in the online context, prayers for the church, the world, the dispossessed, and one another—ought not be made available, any more than we would leave the recording of a baptism online for anyone to stumble upon. Liturgy may be public, but that does not mean the faces of the faithful need appear online in perpetuity without restriction.
Finally, as Thompson argues in her book, and perhaps most importantly, we must see our online attempts at common prayer as a complement to, rather than replacements for, in-person gathering. Like taking communion to the sick and homebound, online worship can be a way to extend the gifts of the meeting to those unable to attend. It cannot, however, be an excuse not to address what prevents their attending in person, including the obstacles presented by buildings or patterns of prayer that exclude bodies with impairment or the rambunctiousness of children. If anything, we might allow the gifts we have discovered in online prayer—seeing each other’s faces, a wider range of voices in leadership, new opportunities to share prayers and thanksgiving—to find a place in our in-person gatherings.
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