Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

Virtual Reality and Christian Identity: B: Virtual Reality Challenges Church, Preaching and Sacraments

Abstract: Digital-based virtual reality increasingly defines our Postmodern religious environment. This Postmodern digital environment challenges Modern and Pre -modern understandings of church, of preaching and the sacraments in many ways. In this essay we discuss three specific challenges. Cyber-networking challenges traditional categories of church, denomination and sect. Communication as bare information without context and purpose redefines preaching’s rhetorical setting. Postmodern use of global rites and symbols attacks the link between sacramental rites and their narrative meaning.

Introduction

In this essay, Christian theology, the institutional church, preaching and the celebration of the sacraments meet Google. More prosaically, this essay identifies and explains three specific challenges cyberspace poses to Christian life and practice. This essay is the second half of Essay III in this series on Christianity and Postmodernism. The first half developed Marshall McLuhan’s and Jean Baudrillard’s theses that the digital image is changing our relation to ourselves and to real objects in the world. In this second part of the essay I apply Baudrillard’s thesis to Christian theology, the institutional church, preaching and sacraments.

Appropriate Expectations

At the end of the last essay we announced the above stated application of Baudrillard’s teaching about cyber hyperreality to Christian theology, Church, preaching and sacraments. Realistically, in this second part of the essay, we can develop only one key point each about theology, church, preaching and ministry in the light of Baudrillard’s key ideas. To think that in this essay we could execute a complete assessment of every aspect of Christian identity and practice would be, obviously, unrealistic.

In this essay we identify real challenges posed to Christian self-understanding and practice. We do not promise solutions and answers to these challenges. Readers should not conclude that this essay is negative because it only talks about challenges and problems.

First, this essay’s section on Christ as Image of God identifies a positive Christian starting point for Christian reflection about images. That section says that Christian theology has great resources for reflecting about images in Postmodern culture. Jesus Christ, the perfect Image of God, is the divinely given starting point for all Christian reflection about human images. That God the Father eternally generates His own perfect Image, the Word and Son, and that Jesus Christ incarnates that perfect Image, provides an unsurpassable starting point for reflection about human-made images, including digital images. Second, identifying problems and challenges accurately is the first step to effective response to challenges and problems. In these two senses, this essay contributes positively to the current reflection on the Christian community in a Postmodern era.

Quick Summary of Essay III, Part A

In the first part of Essay III we explained key ideas of Jean Baudrillard, a major Postmodern analyst. We focused on his major thesis that digital images, codes and models, in combination, generate a virtual reality (his word is “hyperreality”) that destabilizes and “de-realizes” what Modernity accepted as the “world of objects.” Postmodern societies are being deeply shaped by the digital revolution. People enjoying “connectivity” and Internet access engage digital virtual reality in the Internet, on TV, in digital cameras and recorders, on mobile phones. This virtual reality supplements (Baudrillard says, “is replacing”) the world of real objects in our postmodern consciousness. Not that worldly objects disappear , but our relation to digital images of real objects is reshaping our relation to these real objects, to the point, Baudrillard says, of eclipsing that relation.

This ever more omnipresent and effective cyber world, Baudrillard says, deeply affects our relation to the world of objects. But it also deeply affects our own identities, our self-understanding, 1 because in Modernity self-hood was defined in relation to real objects in the world.

Modernity’s “world of objects” consisted of things (both Nature and human artifacts) and human bodies. The reality of natural things and human bodies was defined for Modernity essentially by Renee Descartes’ fundamental distinction between “thinking thing” (res cogitans), and “extended thing ”res extensa.) By “thinking thing,” Decartes meant the human mind, more specifically, human subjectivity, self-awareness, self-consciousness. By “extended thing,” Descartes meant objects in the world, including the human body, whose weight, length, width, etc. can be measured.

The world, for this Cartesian worldview, consists of two radically different kinds of things: subjects and objects. This worldview was deepened and “solidified” by Isaac Newton’s mechanical physics, especially his laws of motion. Immanuel Kant’s, in his Critique of Pure Reason, questioned whether the human subject could truly know things in themselves (Dinge an sich) or only objects as the forms of our understanding shape the sense date we receive through our bodies. (Dinge fuer uns). However, Kant never questioned the basic Modern, Cartesian duality between subject and objects in the world.

Astrophysics and microphysics have each radically changed our scientific understanding of the world of objects at the cosmic and the subatomic level. Einstein’s Special and General Theories of Relativity led to a paradigm change from the Newtonian mechanical world view by proposing that mass is not immutable but is relative to energy and the speed of light. At the cosmic and subatomic level the scientific view of objects has radically changed from that of Descartes and Newton. However, for ordinary living, the Cartesian-Newtonian-Kantian understanding of objects defined Modernity’s understanding of the world of objects.

Digital images, whether in ads, on TV, on the World Wide Web, digital photography, or digital models and codes used for robotization in production, for making medical diagnoses, for satellite surveillance and cartography, are deeply altering this Cartesian, Newtonian and Kantian world view, and is changing our sense of ourselves. Recall how the first moon shots of the earth gave global residents a new sense of belonging to what Marshall McLuhan called a “global village”. The previous essay explained thee ways Baudrillard thinks digital images change our relation to the “real world.”

First, digital images, on TV as events and spectacles, on the Internet as virtual reality, but also in other media as marketing tools inscribing consumer products with personal meaning, combine to generate what Baudrillard calls hyperreality, a reality more vivid, more segmentally-aimed, more imagination-shaping, more entertaining and attractive, therefore more seductive, also more easily accessible, than real objects in space and time. Increasingly Postmodern people, especially younger people, prefer to live in this world than in the “real world”. In this sense, virtual reality is real, has its own shaping force on consciousness. 2 As difficult as defining “virtual” may be, virtual reality is intruding itself as an alternative world of subjects and objects alongside or within our “real” world of subjects and objects. Increasingly, says Baudrillard, this virtual world is eclipsing our real world , and, then, radically changing us as “subjects” in relation to real objects in real space and time.

Virtual reality is changing our relation to “real subjects and objects, ” secondly, because virtual images of real things are becoming the standard that real, worldly objects must meet. In Modernity, the image (maps, theater performances, paintings and even traditional photos and movies,) was “just a copy” of “the real thing.” A portrait was praised for being “true -to -life.” Actors were praised for a “life-like” performance. Real objects were the norm for their images.

Granted, sculpture and painting moved with Monet, van Gogh, through Dada, Cubism and Surrealism, art left real objects behind. But for most people, such art became irrelevant and incomprehensible. Most Modern people accepted that late Modern art wanted to create a counter-world, perhaps in protest against or to awaken consciousness of the ugliness or meaninglessness of the “real world” of industrial mass production and WW I. Thus, even in a protest, revolt or consciousness- raising, the “real world” of objects remained, even for Dada, the reference point. The first Dada artists, performing at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich’s bohemian neighborhood, Niederdorf., needed the Modern bourgeoisie citizen as an object to outrage, challenge or attack. For Moderns, the real object was/is the standard, the norm, against which the image is measured for its usefulness or veracity.

However, Baudrillard reminds us, in our Postmodern Age, the image has become the norm, and Postmodern people are actively bringing their bodies and worldly objects “up to speed,” to match their brightness, attractiveness, message- drenched images. Thus, ad images inscribe in our minds the “sign value”, i.e., the self-identity meaning, of owning a Volvo (not a Lamborghini); wearing jeans (not a skirt) , owning a Timex (not a Rolex) riding a Harley (not a Vespa). If I wear a suit, carry Timex and drive a Volvo, I am less likely to be pierced and tattooed than others. Thus, digital images aren’t just more interesting than real objects; they are defining the meaning and value of real objects. In Modernity, originals judged their images; in Postmodernity, images judge the originals.

Third, living, moving and having your being outside virtual reality is very difficult. Increasingly digital images define our relations to others, define the global flow of money, goods and define the corporate identities allied and alienated from each other. The sonogram helps define the pregnant woman’s relation to her fetus and the CAT scan defines the caregiver’s relation to an Alzheimer’s patient. Capital investments, outsourced production, international trade and travel all depend today on digital images. Digital images define our groups, our ethnicities and our national loyalties, creating “we’s” and “they’s,” enemies and friends around the globe. Digital images, codes and models structure every aspect of modern life. If I go up to heaven, the digital image is there (moon shots); if I go down to hell, the digital image is there (photographs of the insides of an erupting volcano.)

Moreover, Baudrillard points out, revolt, complaint, protest and dismissal of the virtual world is subverted by virtual reality itself; the protest becomes a news item on TV, a major form of digital technology.3

This essay accepts Baudrillard’s major thesis that virtual reality is a “hyperreality,” increasingly “de-realizing” our Modern world of objects and deeply affecting our sense of selfhood. Accepting Baudrillard’s thesis, we here identify challenges4 we think hyperreality raises for theology, church, preaching and sacraments.

The Word of God and the Cartesian World of Objects

In this section I present theological reflection on Jesus Christ, the Image both of God and of true humanity. This theological reflection intends to identify a starting point for Christian reflection on Postmodern hyperreality.

Christian identity and Christian practice is image- driven. That image is Jesus Christ, the perfect image (eikon/ikon) 5 of God. Believers relate to God through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ images true humanity in God’s sight. In this specific sense, the Christian life is image- defined and image-driven. Christian identity and practice are not primarily oriented to objects or defined by objects in this world or subjects in this world, including our own subjectivity. Christian believers know themselves as related to God, to others and to themselves through Jesus Christ, the image of God. 6

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible—all things have been created through him and for him.7

Christians therefore can understand Jesus Christ as the Image of God in relation to the Second Commandment (against making idols). 8 God forbids humans to make idols, reserving to Himself the right to image Himself as God wishes in relation to His chosen people. The Second Commandment, thus, is a blessing and, simultaneously, an assertion of God’s Lordship. Forbidding idols creates an open space free of our false, and therefore destructive, images of God. And, by forbidding idols, God reserves an open space for Himself to make Himself known truly and as and when he wills.

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Being in an Image-defined relation to God, to us and to the rest of creation is basic Christian teaching. From this standpoint, Christians should engage the new world of digital images, virtual reality, which is transforming human relation to the domain of worldly things.

The main point we want to make in this section is that Christians should not be frightened or bewildered by the power of images, including the human-made digital images that define cyberspace and virtual reality. Digital images are, after all, only human-made tools, serving human ends. Jesus Christ is God’s image, God’s self-image. Christians believe that this Image is not just a lesser copy of the original but the Incarnation of an fully divine Image. Christian life is grounded in this Image, the image by which God opens His divine Life to us to include us in it for our blessing.

God defines Godself through the Image, Jesus Christ, and defines our relation to Himself also through Jesus Christ, the image of the “new person.”9 Classical Christian theology, especially traditional Trinitarian theology, therefore, positions the contemporary Christian community well to deal with digital image-driven Postmodernity.

Baudrillard’s teaching that virtual reality/digital images are “de-realizing” the Modern understanding of objects in space and time is by no means the same as Christian teaching. Baudrillard may be an atheist/cynic/despairing in traditional religious terms.10 In these essays we are certainly not proposing Baudrillard as an “anonymous Christian”11 or a “prophet” of Christian truth. Far from it. But Baudrillard’s insistent focus on the significance of digital imagery for the creation of a new, Postmodern environment, can be taken in stride by Christian believers. Christians are no strangers to images and to human existence determined by images. This is our first claim in this essay.

In the rest of this section we want to spell out a bit further this cornerstone of Christian faith.

Christ the Mediator

One place to start in the matrix of Christian teaching is that Jesus Christ is the “mediator between God and humanity. Jesus Christ, the Image of God, defines our relation to God. One aspect of that relation is knowledge of God. As the Prologue to John’s Gospel and to the Letter to the Hebrews says, God makes Himself known through Jesus Christ, His Eternal Word12 made flesh. God images Godself perfectly in human form in Jesus Christ. We can access God, not through a digital image but through God’s incarnate, enfleshed, humanized image—Jesus Christ.

Christ the Redeemer

A second dimension of our relation to God is redemption, expressed in such key words as forgiveness, reconciliation, atonement and salvation. At the center of these key Christian categories is God’s Son, as incarnate in human being representing us. We sinners, as outside of Christ are unholy, sinful, and disobedient, in Christ are clothed with his perfect obedience and service to the Father. In Christ, we are righteous, holy and acceptable. Christian faith holds that we have no standing before God based on our own innate goodness or achievements. But in Christ, as Word made flesh, we are able to be in a reconciled, peaceful, joyful relation to the Father, through the Holy Spirit. In Christ, we are graced with Christ as the Image of true humanity, and as our advocate and mediator; we can share in and through Christa and the Spirit, in the divine life of mutual love in God. For Christians, this world of objects in space and time is not the defining context for our relation to reality.13 Our relation to God determines our true relation to the world of other creatures including to us. And Jesus Christ, the of Eikon Dei, determines this relation.

Christ, Agent of Creation

A third basic aspect of Christian teaching is that Jesus Christ is agent of creation, all creatures being created and sustained through the Eternal Word of God, and in Him finding their coherence and relationship to each other. That is, Christ, the Image of God not only determines our relation to God but also defines who we are in our selves and in our relation to other beings. We are related to the objects in the world not as Descartes, Newton and Kant taught directly in subject –object immediacy, but in and through Christ.

Here, Christianity picks up the great theme of human being created in the image of God in the First Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. Chapter One of Genesis speaks of man and woman, together, created in the image of God. The meaning of this teaching in the context of the Old Testament, is that man and woman, together, are granted the privilege and responsibility of stewardship over the rest of creation, a pastoral stewardship imaging God’s pastoral care of creation. For Christian understanding, this theme of humans created in God’s Image is included in a wider framework. The wider framework is Jesus Christ, the perfect Image of God. Christ, in his true humanity, is the model and formative Image for our future transformation. Christians believe they do not yet know what they shall be, but do believe that they are being transformed into the image of Christ, who is the image of God. 14

Christianity teaches we are created in God’s image. This belief includes the teaching that we are created in and through the perfect Image of God, Jesus Christ. One implication of this teaching is that making images is natural, a God-given potential, for human beings. Christian theology has, historically, not done justice to humans as image-makers. The major tendency, both in the iconoclastic controversy of the early church and in the Reformation period, was the danger of images and the problem of sinful imagination. These themes are not false, but Christian theology today has to rethink its doctrine of human imagination and human ability to make images. Like sexual generativity, intellectual generativity and product creativity, imaginative generativity is not per se sinful. These capacities are ways God creates us to share in, show forth and be shaped by His divine generativity. These natural abilities are fallen and sinfully used. But theology should make a balanced assessment in the light of Christ as Redeemer and the Holy Spirit as sanctifier.

II The Modern Church in the Age of Postmodern Networks

One of Jean Baudrillard’s persistent themes is that Modern categories used for analyzing society and guiding social and individual actions are less and less helpful in the Postmodern Age. In our last essay, we mentioned that Baudrillard in his earlier years belonged the camp of neo-Marxist social analysts. In his later writings he felt frustrated with key Marxist analytical categories of use value, exchange value, class conflict, dialectic and revolution. He thought that both Marxist and Capitalist theory assumed the same economic and social categories: utility, capital, labor, production, technical progress, industrialization, use value and exchange value. Baudrillard came to think that in the Postmodern Age, not production but reproduction; not use value but sign value; not scarcity but a sea of images, not “economic man” but “spectator, “ require new ways to think about social organization.

Modern Conceptions of the Church

Roman Catholic

One of the controlling images of the church at the Second Vatican Council was that of “the people of God.” This image was innovative in several ways. The image suggested that the Church is first of all people, indeed a community, a koinonia. 15 The church, as the people of God, is not an institution or organization. The image suggested also that the Church is underway in history. The Church, as the people of God is not static, floating above time and space. The church is a people underway, like Abraham, like the Israelites wandering in the desert, a people in via. 16 This theme is the focus also of Chapter VII of the Lumen Gentium, Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and Her Union with the Heavenly Church.”

This innovative self image of Vatican II, is integrated with an even more central image of the Church in Lumen Gentium. This more central conception is the Church as a sacred mystery, as a sacrament of salvation. The Church is the body of Christ. As the community of which Christ is the Head, the Church shares the Life of God. And as a visible society on earth, the Church, as a sacrament of God’s salvation, exists to represent, proclaim and mediate this salvation in and to the world.

Therefore, the visibility of the Church, the Church as an institution in the world with buildings, a hierarchical ministry, a central human figure, does not, in official Roman Catholic self-understanding, contradict the Church as a sacrament or mystery of salvation. The visible church incarnates God’s saving grace, especially as the steward of the sacraments and in its magisterial (i.e. teaching) office.

The third chapter of Lumen Gentium , the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, “The Hierarchical Structure of the Church with special Reference to the Episcopate,” focuses on this link between the Church as a sacred mystery and corporate sacrament of salvation and the church as a visible institution. According to this self-understanding the Church is a grace mediating institution. This grace comes from God and is administered to the laity through the ordained ministry of the Hierarchy, priests, and bishops and, crowning the hierarchy the Pope.

The hierarchical nature of the Church and especially its authority as focused in the Pope and exercised on and through the other Bishops and the priests of the church was especially emphasized in the nineteenth century. Two dogmas of Vatican I, 1870, express this centralization of authority and emphasis on hierarchy.17 One dogma declared the infallibility of the Pope when speaking ex cathedra (i.e., in his role as Vicar of Christ on matters of doctrine and morality. The second dogma declared the Pope’s immediate and universal jurisdiction (i.e., that Pope’s ecclesial authority reaches immediately into every diocese , overriding the authority of the local bishop.) This teaching and jurisdictional authority defines papal primacy. In his person, especially in the twentieth century warm personalities of John Paul, II and to a lesser extent, Benedict XIV, Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope is a personal image representing the Church as both a mystery of salvation an as a hierarchical structured organization.

What is Modern about the Roman Catholic Church?

Vatican I’s dogmas of papal infallibility and universal, immediate jurisdiction culminated a long defensive struggle by the Roman Catholic Church against the challenges of Modern Enlightenment rationalism and secularism, and against Italian political encroachment on the Vatican State. In this struggle the Roman Catholic Church increasingly opposed what it called “Modernism.” The Modernism opposed was formation of individual conscience and opinion outside the framework of church authority and also democratic aspirations. This opposition to “Modernism” was expressed in the Vatican’s publication of the Index of Forbidden Books and its disciplining and/or excommunication of theologians who were perceived to contradict or even question official teaching.

Thus, the Church appeared and appears to many as not Modern, butas Pre-Modern. But as hierarchically organized with centralized authority, the Roman Catholic Church is typically modern, earning it the description of “the largest corporation in the world.” The Roman Catholic Church is also highly burocratic, not so much at the parish level but more so at the diocesan, provincial and at the Vatican levels. Postmodern life-style, horizontally organized, not vertically, represented by the network , not by the chain of command , is a key challenge to the Roman Catholic Church.

b. Protestant

In their self-understanding, the Protestant Christians subjects of God’s gracious self-opening in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This self-opening of God is grounded in God’s own Trinitarian life of mutual openness. In relation to human beings, God’s self-opening, begun and continued with the People of Israel, reached its unsurpassable culmination in Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. In God’s self-giving in Christ and the Spirit, humans can experience being made right with God (justification by grace through faith) and empowerment for sharing God’s self gift through witness, preaching and the sacraments.

For Protestant self-understanding, believers cannot possess God’s gracious self-opening. Believers can only share in God’s self-giving in Christ. And they can share in this self- giving only in the actions of proclamation and of service of the neighbor. Humans can never own or possess God’s gracious self-sharing love. Divine self-giving is God’s action; humans can not possess or control this divine self-giving. Christians cannot “have” or “own” God’s grace in Christ; they can only share in it, and this sharing can only occur by proclaiming it and imaging it in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and through service to the neighbor. Roman Catholicism’s language of “being” a sacrament of salvation and “being given” the authority to teach true doctrine and administer the grace-giving sacraments rubs against the grain of Protestant self-understanding.

With this Protestant focus on the action of proclamation and service, Protestant Christians naturally start thinking of the Church at the level of the congregation. The local congregation is where the gospel is preached, where God is worshipped and where believers receive the motivation and perspective to witness and serve in the world. Thus Protestant Christianity understands themselves as congregation- based. Indeed in many Christian sects and in the Congregational, Presbyterian and Baptist Traditions, the local congregation, not the diocese or hierarchy, is the church.

In this congregational setting, the Bible is the center of authority and the central function of the ordained leader is Proclamation of the Gospel. An ecumenical leader once contrasted the Protestant to the Roman Catholic self-understanding, saying that in the Roman Catholic understanding, a person’s relation to God is determined by his or her relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. In Protestant self-understanding, a believer’s immediate relation to God in faith determines a person’s relation to the church.

A Common Feature: The Gathered Community

Both Roman Catholicism, especially in its Modern (19th century) form and the Protestant Churches (which belong largely to the Modern era) have one ecclesial feature in common. This is the importance of the gathered community. For the Roman Catholic tradition, the people gather chiefly to receive the sacramental grace mediated by the priest through the celebration of the Eucharist. For the Protestant, the people gather to hear the Word of God preached. Preaching the Word of God can cause conversion to God’s self-giving, and can strengthen believers for service. 18

People coming together in physical and visible proximity are assumed in both the Modern Roman Catholic and in the Protestant understandings of the Church. However, at least in the West, where Postmodern attitudes are strongest, fewer and fewer people are attending church. And, where the gathered, institutional church tries to exist, deep divisions —radical pluralism, not variety in unity —are the norm. Also, church attendance can no longer depend on denominational loyalty. In the family, parents who wish to communicate the faith through family prayer, Bible study, and common church attendance find these increasingly difficult. In Germany for example, the two major traditions —Roman Catholic and Protestant—are termed “Volkskirchen”. The word means “People’s Church.” This term applied in an earlier age when a great majority of the population belonged to one church or the other and the administration of each church covered the nation’s geographical boundaries. 19 Now only a tiny percent of either tradition attend church services and the numbers of those canceling their membership in the church each year exceeds new members from any source. Leaders of both ecclesial traditions acknowledge that people today don’t respect authority claimed from outside the—whether from the church’s teaching office or from the preacher’s interpretation of the Bible.

On the other hand, religious believing and spirituality is booming. The bookstores are filled with books on religion. Small town notice boards are filled with announcements about religious workshops and lectures. The ecological movement has a spiritual aspect; “a green spirituality” exists. How do we explain the changes?

In this section, we propose that an important aspect of the information revolution, the electronic network, is a clash point between Modern Christian views of community and Postmodern experience and practice of community. Central to Postmodern human association in the Network. We use the Postmodern network as a challenge to Modern Christian understanding of congregation-centered koinonia.

Network Connectivity

Among the most salient features of digital networks20 are:

In Networks, individuals initiate membership. Membership in a Network is not something given, something one is born into, as is membership in a family, in a nation, or ethnic group. Nor is membership a gift, as is membership in the church through hearing the Gospel or receiving the sacrament of Baptism. Relating to others in an electronic Network is chosen and constituted by the Network member. Becoming and remaining part of an electronic Network is an individual, voluntary choice. Similarly, exiting from an electronic Network is usually also at the free initiative of the individual member. 21
Network relationships may be based on Modern social organizations, such as family, neighborhood, church, business, school, the military, club or voluntary organization. But electronic Networking goes beyond the borders of these Modern organization structures and sometimes begins and continues completely independently of these Modern social organizations.
Personal identity in an electronic Network can be largely anonymous. Network members can know one another outside of cyberspace, and the electronic Network can sustain a personal relationship or group membership established outside of cyberspace. But electronic Networks do not require ever having personally met other members; personal “real life” encounter is not essential to an electronic Network.
Network connectivity is almost completely private. Exceptions are some nations, China for example, which monitor chat-rooms and Internet bulletin boards for politically “subversive” communications. Law enforcement officials in most countries also try to monitor individuals in child pornography Networks. Otherwise, electronic Networks are private and individual.
Closely related to this last point, networks are “cool,” here meaning they don’t demand full commitment; the user controls “exposure” level. One can “lurk” in a network chat room, read blogs and bulletin messages or make your presence known. With a maximum of convenience and access to information there is a minimum of hassle—no requests to provide your name and address; no in- your- face requests for donations; no emotional calls for becoming a believer,; no need to schedule a meeting with an information giver. Networks confront users with no parking problems, web sites and chatrooms seldom close their doors. One can participate in a Network at many levels of “presence.”
Cyber-networks require no bricks and mortar buildings. Family members share a space; a congregation shares a church and meeting hall; students share lecture halls, dorms and administration buildings. Electronic Networks exist in cyberspace, in virtual reality. Of course material things—personal computers, servers, Internet providers—are needed for electronic networking. But public meeting spaces, brick and mortar buildings, are not required.

What do these features of electronic networks, a very Postmodern mode of associating with others, mean in relation to Modern Christian self understanding of the Church as a gathered community?

Toward answering that question I explore next three category contrasts assumed by Modern Christianity.

Believer/Unbeliever

This distinction is fundamental to Pre-modern22 and Modern Christian self-understanding. In the Churches and in some Denominations, a believer was defined as someone who was baptized and belonged to a local Christian congregation, attending services in the physical building of the church. In other Christian denominations and sects, a believer was identified less by baptism and parish membership as by an experience of conversion and a verbal confession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, which, however, normally involved membership in a local church.

The Constantinian Age disintegrated at the same time the Postmodernism Age expanded.23 Digital Networking, contact with members of other religious traditions, access to information about other religious traditions exploded and the believer/nonbeliever distinction became less and less helpful. Not that more and more people stopped being religious; rather, belief took non-Christian forms. The New Age cults are only one aspect of this diversification of belief. Conversion of Postmodern people to Buddhism and Islam is widespread. These people would call themselves religious believers, but not believers in Christianity.

The believer/unbeliever distinction also doesn’t help deal with the many Postmodern people who would identify themselves as Christian believers but who don’t attend regular worship. “I am religious, but I don’t belong to any church.” From the standpoint of Modern Roman Catholic and Protestant self-understanding, this attitude is wholly illogical. To receive the grace mediated from God by the priest in the sacraments, one must be a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church and attend mass regularly. To hear the Gospel, one must attend Church and hear the sermon.

What can be the basis of a notion of “believing” or “being spiritual” but not going to Church, not belonging to an ecclesial body? The answer in part, at least, lies in the direction of a notion of religious belong and religious commitment and the possibility of these without physically gathering in a building in order to learn of spiritual traditions and expression of one’s spirituality. That notion of belonging and commitment is possible in cyberspace and electronic networking.

Church/Denomination/Sect

The nineteenth century religious sociologist and theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923)24 developed three “ideal types” of Christian community in history: Church , Sect and “Mystical Community.” His own interest focused on the independent and separatist movements of the Left wing of the Reformation, because Troeltsch thought positive modern values of separation of church from state, tolerance among church bodies, and the principle of free –association derived more from these traditions than from the Churches. However, later religious sociologists developed a slightly different three-fold division: Church, Denomination and Sect.

As the Postmodern era began to unfold, beginning the middle of the last century, these “classical” modern distinctions for church sociology have become less and less useful. We have referred already to the tiny minority of the population, at least in Europe, who attend either the Roman Catholic Church or the Protestant Denominations. . The same is true of the Church of England, in its theological self-understanding fitting into Troeltsch’s “church type.”

The classical Reformation traditions coming from the Reformation were Lutheranism Calvinism. The major western Christian denominations, therefore, are centered on a specific sixteenth century Reformer (e.g., Luther and Calvin, and to a lesser extent Zwingli) whose teaching they felt should continue to define their theology. As children of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, Denominations defined themselves originally in contrast to late Medieval and Renaissance Roman Catholic Church. Denominations understood themselves to embody a biblically- grounded reformation of Roman Catholic abuses in teaching, polity and practice.

Simultaneous with the emergence of the new Information Technologies, including TV and the Internet, this three-fold distinction of Church/Denomination and Sect is less and less helpful.

Denominational leaders are the first to report that the concept of Denomination is less and less meaningful. Denominational loyalty is disappearing. A young family moving to a new location in the United States is more likely to seek a parish that meets their personal, and evolving criteria of needs and standards. A personal match between congregation hunters and congregations, especially the pastor, is more important than prior denominational membership.

What used to be called the “main line” denominations —the Lutheran, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians— are now commonly termed the “side-line” denominations. Their numbers are shrinking steadily. Their large city churches are struggling to sustain themselves.

Throughout the world new Christian groupings are beginnings, completely outside the framework of the traditional Churches, Denominations or Sects. These Christian communities are nondenominational or post-denominational.

We suggest that looking to new modes of electronic connectivity plays a major role in Postmodern changes in religious sociology.

c. Diversity in Unity

Throughout the Modern period, the major Churches—Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican—and the mainline denominations –Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, Methodist– understood themselves as being diverse within a unity. Anglicans, for example, were distinguished within their Communion, between “High Church,” “Broad Church,” and “Low Church.” As bitter as the tensions among these parties sometimes were, Anglicans understood themselves as sharing a consensus of faith and practice, defined by the Creeds, Collects, Morning and Evening Prayer Services, Catechisms, Holy Communion Services —all available to church goers in the Book of Common Prayer.25 Diversity in unity, and unity in diversity were a self-identified Anglican trademark. But university in diversity was also part of the essential self-understanding of all Modern Christian bodies.

When Diversity Becomes Radical Pluralism

The Baptist denomination, Anglicanism and Roman Catholics, to name just three ecclesial bodies, are now coping with a Postmodern phenomenon within their own ranks: radical, divisive pluralism. Diversity in unity means members acknowledge differences but sense a basic unity. Postmodern pluralism, inside and outside the churches is where people sense difference that “go all the way down” separate them from their neighbors. In the context of Postmodern pluralism, the discourse of diversity in unity is unrealistic and less than truthful. The leadership of the Anglican Communion has been searching for the last twenty years to discover what “instruments of unity, ” e.g., the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Provincial Primates, the Lambeth Conference, can hold their Communion together in the face of radical pluralism just within worldwide Anglicanism itself.

Radical pluralism in Christian self-understanding, along with radical pluralism in life-styles in the larger culture, developed simultaneously with the digital revolution in communication. The electronic Network provides a perfect vehicle for, and symbol of, this radical pluralism. Christian Networks transcend the traditional boundaries of denominations and churches. Traditionalistic, Progressive and Liberal Anglicans find more in common with traditional, progressive and liberal Christians in other Christian bodies than they do with others in their own church. Electronic Networks bring these new, cross-denominational groupings in contact with one another.

The point is that the traditional category of diversity in unity, and the sub-categories of traditional and liberal, high church/broad church/low church are less and less helpful in coping with how Christians are actually relating to each other in the Churches.

The Churches have certainly used the new electronic media. Every parish or congregation that can afford to uses church related software for membership, finances and production of Sunday worship leaflets. Churches, Denominations and Sects —to use the traditional Modern terms—at the local, regional, national and international level use email, satellite transmissions, electronic networks, and web pages. In the 1970s and 1980s TV evangelism was popular. Today, the Vatican is staging mass spectacles, for instance the funeral service for Pope John Paul II, the World Youth Rally in Cologne, Germany and visits of the Pope outside of Rome. But this appropriation of Postmodern electronic media does meet the contrast between people associating in Networks and people associating in brick and morar buildings as the gathered church.

Preaching in the Information Age

Classical Lutheran and Anglican definitions of the church include preaching the Gospel and celebration of the Sacraments of the Lord (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper) as essential practices of the true Christian Church. Especially in the Protestant denominations, and also in many Sects, the act of preaching and hearing the sermon is the focus of the gathered Christian community. Since the Second Vatican Council, biblically based preaching has taken a more central place in the Roman Catholic Church.

Particularly in the Presbyterian (Calvinist/Reformed) tradition, but also in the Lutheran, Baptist and Methodist traditions, the sermon was biblically based. Often explaining a particular verse (expository preaching) defined the content and structure of the sermon. Thematic preaching often started with the subject of a biblical text and related that subject to contemporary life. More recently, narrative preaching has invited hearers into the structure and dynamic of a biblical story. In many cases the preacher chose the biblical passage or theme.. In the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions, a lectionary– appointed biblical readings for each day, and especially each Sunday, set the biblical text for the sermon. Christian preaching aimed at understanding God’s Word, written, and applying that to Christian believing and living today.

Underlying all Christian preaching is the shared Christian belief in the inspiration of the Bible. The Bible is, for Christian faith, not only a collection of ancient texts. The Bible is Scripture, i.e., a text inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is God’s Word, written. Christians also believe that God, the Holy Spirit, not only guided the writing of the biblical texts but works in the practice of preaching and hearing the sermon today. The Christian premise of preaching, and the basis of whatever positive anticipation remaining for preparing, delivering and hearing sermons, is that God can speak a divinely authoritative Word in and through the biblical writers’ and preacher’s human words.

In this sense, the Christian sermon is intensely purposeful communication. Whether expository, thematic, narrative in style or method, the sermon is not just a transfer of information. The sermon’s purpose is to let God’s Word, that is, God’s very reality as Lord and Savior, speak to those listening for the purpose of conversion and strengthening of faith. The sermon’s purpose is very radical: confrontation of human beings in the present with the Word of God, for judgment, for forgiveness, for solace—for the calling forth or deepening of faith, hope and love.

Two factors define the meaning of the sermon as proclamation of the Word of God. One is the intention of the preacher’s words, which the preacher can state explicitly, or which is implicit in what the preacher says and how he or she says the words of the sermon. The second “meaning-defining” factor is physical setting of the sermon. That setting is usually the gathered Christian community often in a church building. This setting, this environment, greatly defines the meaning intended by the sermon as an act of communication. The church setting helps define the homiletic action as a religious act, more specifically, mediating through human words, God’s Word to people today. 26

Two key features of much communication in the Digital Age create a new environment for all communication. This new environment especially challenges Christian preachers and hearers.

Information Without Meaning or Context

Normally, communication of any kind has two essential aspects. One is the “information” that the communication contains. The second is the communicator’s purpose in giving the content. The first aspect is the “what” of a communication action. The second aspect is the “so what” of the communication action. The first aspect is the “content” of the communication action; the second is the “why” of the communication action.

The academic discipline of linguistics identifies many purposes of communication. Even if I merely say, “It is raining outside, “ my purpose could be maintaining relationship. Many acts of communication have not further purpose than actualizing a human relationship. A second purpose could be encouraging someone to take an umbrella if they go out. Other communication acts are performative in nature: making a promise, taking a vow, confessing a faith. In these speech acts, the purpose is one with the act of speaking. Other purposes are to entertain (as in telling a joke) or to instruct (as in teaching) or to command (as in giving an order). Normal communication is, thus, twofold. Something is communicated-the information. And the communicator’s intention is conveyed—the purpose.

A decisive factor of much communication in the digital world of TV and the Internet is that information is provided without any explicit meaning or purpose. The “what” abounds. The “so what” is often hard to find.

The most obvious and familiar example is the modern news. The TV news announcer states that the DOW Jones Average fell fifty points. On the TV screen images of Wall Street or of a graph which a falling red line appear. A moment later, the same TV News announcer is saying that a tornado is moving toward Key West, with accompanying images of churning waves, driving rain and wildly bending tree limbs. Next, the TV announcer describes the arrest of a famous rock star for drunken driving, of course with images. Typically, the last news item a “happy” story; say, two brothers finding each other after being separated forty years, of course with a close-up of the tears of joy. These “news items” are wholly disconnected. Nothing meaningful connects the drunken rock star, the earthquake and the long lost brothers. These news items are without context or connection. But context and connection are decisive for meaning. Without them information is almost meaningless.

Such digitally conveyed information is high on facts. The electronic news business intends to be accurate in its information, even if the information later proves to be inaccurate. What most electronic communication lacks is a clear purpose. After most TV news items, a listener could rightly say, “Well, so what?”

Very important for understanding Postmodern challenges to the practice of Christian preaching or teaching is that without meaning, the actual effect of information flow is spectacle and entertainment. Sitting in one’s living room’s entertainment center viewing the arrest of a rock star or the approaching hurricane thousands of miles away, or even watching scenes of violent conflict provide a kind of entertainment. The stated purpose of most news programs is to inform citizens. The actual effect is entertainment. This entertainment brain conditions viewers to become disengaged spectators. Baudrillard says that when this can become addictive leaving viewers dazed and passive

The actual purpose, at least of all commercial TV programs, including the news, is commercial. The program content designed to be entertaining, vivid; shocking intends to deliver an audience to the advertisers’ commercials. Entertainment is the effect; making money is the unstated, implicit purposes of a great deal of electronic communication, especially on commercial TV.

The image of surfer, gliding over the water is appropriate for much use of the electronic media. . Surfing is not just channel hopping; actually, TV viewing itself is a kind of surfing —skimming over the surface of reality in their images.

The Postmodern Age is characterized by communication containing massive amounts of information and a minimum of communicative meaning or purpose. Combining these two factors in information- rich, meaning- poor messages, allows the receiver of the communication, the TV or Internet user, complete freedom to interpret the information as he/she wishes, to use the information for any reason he or she wants wants. This is the new communication context for preaching.

How do modern preachers respond to this challenge of information without meaning? One observable trend in preaching to Postmodern congregations is decreasing the length of the sermon. Modern preachers know that listeners, whose consciousness has been shaped by hours of TV and Internet use each day, are less and less able to follow complicated chains of thought. Gone are the days when crowds, standing outside for hours, would listen to the Lincoln –Douglas debates. People will watch TV for three hours a day but will hardly listen to a sermon that is twenty minutes long. Preachers, like public school teachers, know they have to claim and hold the attention of people whose consciousness and sensory system has been conditioned by years of TV, video games, the Internet, cell phones with cameras and iPods. And they know that during pro football season, church services cannot cut into game time on TV. One adjustment to the Postmodern Ethos is shorter sermons.

Another discernable trend in homiletic strategy moving away from the expository sermon toward open-ended styles of preaching that allow listeners to engage the sermon in their own individual ways. One such open-ended style is “narrative preaching.” A narrative sermon unfolds a story. This story can be from the preacher’s own life—one of those “let me share with you” sorts of sermons. Another story could be a parable or other biblical narrative text. A third story could be from a novel, a movie or a play. The defining feature of a narrative sermon is that the story is not used to illustrate a point made abstractly; rather, the story is the content of the sermon.

Why do narrative sermons seem to work with Postmodern hearers? Probably because narrative homiletic strategies highlight content —the story—but dim the meaning—the point of the story. This lies in the nature of story itself. Stories, like symbols and metaphors, as Postmodern philosopher Paul Ricoeur points out, are open to several interpretations. This polyvalence of meaning distinguishes symbol-rich communication from, say scientific discourse that aims at explicit, unambiguous meaning. By adopting narrative homiletic strategy, the preacher accommodates himself or herself to the Postmodern hearer. The Postmodern hearer wants to discover his or her own meaning, not be told what to think. Telling stories allows listeners to find themselves among the characters and the action of the story. For this reason, narrative preaching acknowledges that listeners are coming to the story from many directions, and each can find in the story what he or she finds helpful.

Narrative homiletic strategies are like the recourse to Jungian Archetypes that marked many sermons in the seventies and eighties. Some preachers, at least in the Episcopal Church, appeared to find more inspiration in the writings of Karl Jung than in the Bible. Jungian Archetypes are kinds of symbols and images. Such preaching may have relativized the Bible—making Bible stories mere illustrations of eternal Archetypal truths. But the preachers of Jungian sermons astutely sensed that their hearers had moved beyond the Gutenberg era to that of the electronic image.

TV Evangelism

The important point to make about TV evangelism was already made by Marshall McLuhan. His dictum that “the medium is the message” meant two things. The channel of communication —direct speaking (oral/aural) , printed word, electronic media — profoundly shapes both the meaning of the content and the human sensorium by which we receive messages. Second, McLuhan said that epochal changes in media, such as the shift from the culture of the book to the culture of the electronic image, eventually shape institutions.

If Mcluhan right, Christians should ask what kind of medium TV is. Many kinds of programs are on TV. Educational TV exists. TV documentaries are broadcast. Wild life and nature programs exist also. But most observers agree, TV, basically, an entertainment medium. TV develops in viewers a passive, spectator consciousness. The multitude of channels in most parts of the world allows viewers to quickly and easily shifts from a program that bores them. Many of the features of Networks—low self-exposure, convenience, speed –mark TV watching also.

Using electronic media for preaching risks allowing the medium to subvert the purpose of preaching. TV evangelism may be a valid new practice for the church. Before doing so, however, Christian preachers should work through the question whether the electronic medium they use will McLuhanize their purpose—placing their preaching in the framework of entertainment, spectatorship, event, and the listener attitude of “take-it-or leave it.

Celebrating the Sacraments

Before we identify a major challenge posed to Christian sacraments by the Postmodern digital age, let us summarize at least one standard, traditional Christian understanding of the sacraments.27 Having this picture fresh in mind will help us understand one major Postmodern challenge to the sacramental life of the church.

Classical Christian teaching about the sacraments is that they are a gift of God by which God works to conform human life to that of Jesus Christ. God, in and through the sacraments, acts to draw human beings into the horizon of God’s own Trinitarian life, joining them to Jesus’ human nature and to Christ’s form of love and obedience to the Father in the Holy Spirit and with Christ’s love for human kind, in obedience to the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God uses the sacraments to conform people to Jesus Christ.

In this essay we underscore one key aspect of this traditional understanding of the sacraments in order to identify a major challenge of the information revolution. The key factor is that, for classical Christian understanding, sacraments are not a human invention created for individuals to actualize themselves according to individual’s self-chosen visions, projects and goals. Rather, for classical Christian teaching, Baptism and Eucharist are “sacraments of the Lord..” The major purpose of celebrating the sacraments is to freely open oneself to God’s Holy Spirit joining us to Christ as Savior and Lord. For classical understanding, celebrating the sacraments is God working on us, not we working on our self-defined actualization.

In Baptism, the believer is joined with Christ in his redemptive death and his resurrection from the dead. In the Supper of the Lord (Eucharist/Mass/Holy Communion) , God sustains the believer, now a member of the Body of Christ, with Christ’s presence and reality, under and in the forms of bread and wine.28 The sacraments are actions of the church only in a secondary sense. Primarily, traditional theology teaches, God is the agent in29 the sacraments, and God’s intention is sanctification, conforming individuals and the Christian community to the true Image of God and Humanity: Jesus Christ. The church celebrates the sacraments in obedience to God’s will perceived by faith in Jesus Christ. For classical Christian understanding, sacraments are ways God is forming us, not ways we are forming ourselves.

The Postmodern digital landscape has two features that directly collide with this classical understanding of the sacraments. One is the culture of “individual use” that the electronic media sustains and intensifies. The explosion of knowledge that electronic media has allowed intensifies the individualizing process that began at the beginnings of the Modern era. People use the electronic media for their individual purposes. They use the Internet, TV, DVDs, etc. to get what they want—whether information, entertainment, personal contacts, or consumer goods. Corporate bodies—governmental, business, voluntary organizations, etc — use the electronic media to pursue their commercial, political, organizational projects. The electronic media are individually “user driven.”

Also, the electronic media are individualizing in the sense of “leveling”. The information ocean in cyberspace presents itself to each individual regardless of race, gender, economic resources, or sexual preference. Cyberspace is an equal opportunity employer. In relation to the Internet, watching TV, a DVD, everyone is equal.

Baudrillard concludes from cyberspace’s democratizing force that traditional sociological categories apply less and less to Postmodern Society. Upper Class/Middle Class/Lower Class; High Brow/Middle Brow/Low Brow; Owners/Workers; Capitalists/Proletariat; male/female; homosexual/heterosexual/ developed world/developing world are increasingly passé in the Postmodern Age. The Modern categories of social analysis, Baudrillard reminds us, don’t help us to cope with the new flows and patterns of human relationship in the Postmodern world.

What do these two aspects of Modern individualism, intensified by the digital information revolution, mean for the Christian sacraments as classically understood? The classical understanding thinks top down and shaping from above: God is acting through the means of the sacraments to conform human life to the God-like form of Jesus Christ. The environment of virtual reality, however, is horizontal: people enter this environment and live in it to establish relationships they perceive will advance their own interests, reach their worldly goals or find or define their identity or further their own self-realization.

Christian sacraments, classically understood, are part of a hierarchical structure that includes teaching authority in matters of faith and morals and institutional authority reflected in ordained and lay leadership. The basis of this hierarchal structure, in Christian understanding, is the transcendent God. God acts “from above” through the church’s ministry, preaching and sacraments to conform human life to God. Modernity, in its affirmation of individual thinking and political emancipation challenged this hierarchical structure. The Information Revolution and cyberspace intensify these Modern tendencies.

Of course, a horizontal theology of the church and the sacraments is conceivable. In fact recent Liberation, Feminist and Process theologies work often with a model in which God is immanent in the world. One version of the 1960’s Death of God theology even claimed that God has died in his transcendence (as Father) and exists wholly immanent in the creation.

This immanence model can be a plausible basis for a non-hierarchical notion of the grace of the sacraments. 30

This theological model accommodates the horizontal human relating typical of electronic networking and the Internet. However, this model has difficulties with basic Christian theological beliefs, such as God’s freedom and ability to intervene in the world for salvation in human history.

In the Postmodern Age, religious authority, hierarchy, sacral aura, rituals and ceremonies are by no means passé. On the contrary, they are booming. But the foundation is different: these traditional structures are now related to and used in a Postmodern way, namely individual self-determination, self-expression, self-realization. One Postmodern individual feels free to ignore traditional political, religious, cultural authority.31 Another individual is free to affirm it as his/her only anchor in a churning Postmodern sea; another individual is free to pick and choose among authoritative religious teaching according to his or her own wishes, tastes and needs –supermarket religion.

This analysis helps explain why New Age religious movements are true symptoms of life in Postmodernity. The electronic media, global tourism and business travel based on global information transfers, open everyone to a global religious menu. Chinese traditional medicine and Indian Ayurveda travel with lightening speed to villages in France, England, Germany and Denmark as quickly as Coke and Big Macs migrate to Taipei, Kunming and Madras. The global religious menu not only has main courses of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It also offers regional specialties, e.g., Hopi, Bantu, Eskimo and Voodoo rites and ceremonies. Users can do more than just look at these dishes; they can order them and taste them, and in any combination they wish.

Given these intensifications of individualism and religious self-culture in the digital environment, New Age movements truly reflect the new religious culture.32 These New Age religious movements, e.g., those organized around past-life regression, channeling, cosmic convergence and self-help, have Postmodern individualism and global access to information at their center and as their driving force. These movements document Postmodern spirituality of self-initiated, self-directed identity search, identity achievement, identity enhancement. The radical difference from the “top-down” structure of the classical Christian sacraments could not be clearer.

This emerging and fast engulfing cyber-environment “trains” people, both inside and outside the churches, to engage the Christian sacraments as instruments of identity search, identity security, identity rescue and identity development. The digital images filling the cyber environment draw Christian sacramental images —water, bread, wine, oil —and their rites into their own orbit. Once in that orbit, the rites of washing and communal meal join analogous rites from other religions (e.g., washing before Islamic prayer and the festive meals after sundown during Islamic Ramadan). In that orbit, these analogous rites are placed at the same level with Christian sacraments. At that they level, they become assimilated to all the other kinds of other cyberspace images —ad images, event images, erotic images, news images, corporate logos, brand names, i.e., market offerings users can relate to for fun and profit.

The various Christian communities have responded in different ways to this challenge of the Postmodern Age. The Roman and Anglican Catholic traditions moved their altars from the back wall into the center of the sanctuary, with the celebrant facing the people and the congregation, which gathers as a circle around the altar. These liturgical changes accent horizontal, face-to-face community and weaken the notion of grace coming into human life from beyond it. Another strategy is offering the consecrated elements to all, a gesture of hospitality and accessibility. Thus, some Episcopal bishops allow opening the Holy Communion to everybody, of all ages, whether baptized or not.33 By contrast, Roman Catholic official teaching34 is moving in the opposite direction: re-insisting that the Eucharist is closed not only to the non-baptized but to non-Roman Catholic Christians and that Roman Catholics should not participate in the sacramental rites in other Christian communities. This adds an aura of sacredness, set-apartness from the profane. This is attractive to many turned off by much they meet in the Postmodern environment. Post Vatican II liturgies and changes in many Denominations, explored folk and jazz masses, up-close and personal Holy Communion styles, and more contemporary language and hymns. Again, in the opposite direction, Pope Benedict XVI recently affirmed celebration of the mass in Latin.

Yet, the cyberspace culture is spreading ever faster, increasingly defining the life-world of Postmodern people. For Christian leaders, concerned with the Christian sacraments this will mean at least three things.

i. People outside the church and increasingly people inside the church will be “using” the sacraments for their own individual identity searches, identity security, and identity enhancement. Participants in the sacraments will increasingly define the meaning of the sacraments for them. The church’s classical teaching and interpretation of that meaning will be only one option among many others.

ii. People outside and inside the church will relate to the formal aspects of the sacraments, ignoring the narrative meaning of the rite as taught by the church. The rite or ritual as form and event will be important to participants. The author experienced this powerfully in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Shanghai during a Taize prayer service. The focus was on forms of community—people gathering in one sacred, candle-lighted space, communal singing and communal prayers. What the thousands of younger Chinese present personally meant in this liturgical process was left to each of them individually to interpret.

iii. The leaders of the institutional church will find it difficult to insist on the classical theological interpretation of the sacraments in their preaching and teaching. Some will welcome receiving this authoritative teaching, expecting it. Other’s will politely listen, but reserve a place for their own agendas in participation in the church’s sacraments. Others won’t know why they want to participate in the sacraments; they will be drawn by the rite, ritual and ceremony as form in itself. Being told that a particular theological meaning attaches to the ritual form will evoke disinterest or irritation.

A major challenge of the Postmodern digital culture to Christian sacraments is Postmodern appropriation of rites and ceremonies for self-initiated identity discovery rather than for receiving a grace which God defines and mediates through the church.

Conclusion

In this essay we followed Baudrillard’s leading idea that the “hyperreal” world of digital images is changing people’s relation to things, organizations and knowledge. Applying his key idea to Modern notions of church, preaching and sacraments, we identified three challenges for the Christian church in the Postmodern era. Cyberspace opens a new realm for human association that does not require physical, face-to-face presence—simply assumed as essential to the nature of the Church. Cyberspace is a realm of information without meaning, generating a Postmodern consciousness oriented to entertainment and enjoying the play of images on the surface of the screen/mind. This Postmodern consciousness is little prepared to cope with the demands of the Christian sermon, where information is driven by profound purposes—proclamation of the Gospel, calling for faith, deepening of commitment. The Postmodern consciousness cultivates radical individualism, invites and enables identity quest. Sacraments for the church are acts of the transcendent God who offers in and through the church grace for repentance and renewal. Postmoderns perceive rites and ceremonies as on the same level and as opportunities for individual self-defined, self-oriented exploration.

Each age presents the Christian community, the People of God, with new challenges and new opportunities. This was certainly true in the Pre-modern and the Modern eras. When challenged, the first task is identifying the challenge, sensing its profile, its structure and dynamics. This was the task in this essay. In the next, we plan to focus on the human subject, which Baudrillard, Foucault and other Postmodern writers claim is disappearing or is gone for ever.

The Rev. David Scott, Ph.D.

Professor of Theology and Ethics, Emeritus,

Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Viriginia

Murnau, Germany

March, 2007

davidscott1234@aol.com