Abstract
The study of digital religion examines the influence religion and new media have upon one another. In recent decades, scholars of media and religion have paid increasing attention to the religious uses of new media. As the Internet has become embedded in our everyday lives, digital media increasingly informs the practice of religion, the things adherents do to enact their beliefs and express religious identity, the things adherents do to demonstrate their affiliation with a religion or religious community. This chapter examines the ways religious practice occurs within digital environments through the lens of religious ritual online. By considering the particular meanings and ways rituals are enacted through media, we identify how religious ritual highlights some of the common forms of religious practice found online.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
The puja is an offering to one or multiple deities performed in daily rituals which is a central component to Hindu devotional worship in domestic spaces (Jacobs 2007).
- 2.
godlife.com/jesus2020/. Accessed: September 9, 2016
- 3.
lds.org. Accessed: August 21, 2016.
References
Bell, Mark, and Taylor C. Boas, 2003. Falun Gong and the Internet: Evangelism, community, and struggle for Survival. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 6(2): 277–293.
Campbell, Heidi. 2005. Spiritualising the internet: Uncovering discourses and narratives of religious internet usage. Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 01: 1. http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/5824. Accessed 21.08.2016.
Campbell, Heidi. 2013. Introduction: The rise of the study of digital religion. In Digital religion, ed. Heidi Campbell, 1–22. New York: Routledge.
Cheong, Pauline Hope, and Charles Ess. 2012. Twitter of faith: Understanding social media networking and microblogging rituals as religious practices. In Digital religion, social media and culture: Perspectives, practices, futures, ed. Pauline Hope Cheong, Peter Fischer-Nielsen, Stephan Gelfgren, and Charles Ess, 191–206. New York: Peter Lang.
Decker, Adrienne. 2014. Dashomancy, or curating the magical experience: Remediations of pagan spirituality and sacred space. Master’s project. Eugene: Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore, University of Oregon.
Durkheim, Emile. 1995. The elementary forms of religious life. New York: Free Press Publishing.
Grieve, Gregory. 2010. Virtually embodying the field: Silent online meditation, immersion, and the Cardean ethnographic method. Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 4(1). http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/11296. Accessed 21.08.2016.
Grieve, Gregory, and Kevin Heston. 2011. Finding liquid salvation: Using the Cardean ethnographic method to document Second Life residents and religious cloud communities. In Virtual worlds, second life, and metaverse platforms: New communication and identity paradigms, ed. Nelson Zagalo, Leonel Morgado and Ana Boa-Ventura. Hershey: IGI Global.
Gregory Price Grieve, and Daniel Veidlinger (eds.). 2015. Buddhism, the Internet, and digital media: The pixel in the lotus. New York: Routledge.
Grimes, Ronald. 2002. Ritual and the media. In Practicing religion in the age of the media: Explorations in media, religion and culture, ed. Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark, 219–234. New York: Columbia University Press.
Helland, Christopher. 2013. Ritual. In Digital religion, ed. Heidi Campbell, 25–41. New York: Routledge.
Homans, George. 1941. Anxiety and ritual: The theories of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. American Anthropologist 43: 164–172.
Hutchings, Tim. 2013. Considering religious community through online churches. In Digital religion, ed. Heidi Campbell, 164–172. New York: Routledge.
Jacobs, Stephen. 2007. Virtually sacred: The performance of asynchronous cyber-rituals in online spaces. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12(3): 1103–1121.
Lövheim, Mia. 2004. Young people, religious identity and the Internet. In Religion online: finding faith on the Internet, ed. Lorne Dawson and Douglas Cowan‬, 59–73. New York: Taylor & Francis.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬
MacWilliams, Marc. 2004. Virtual pilgrimage to Ireland’s Croagh Patrick. In Religion online: Finding faith on the Internet, ed. Lorne Dawson and Douglas Cowan‬, 223–238. New York: Taylor & Francis.‬
O’Leary, Stephen. 1996. Cyberspace as sacred space: Communicating religion on computer networks. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64: 781–808.
Smart, Ninian. 1996. Dimensions of the sacred: An anatomy of the world’s beliefs. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stamper, Amber. 2013. Witnessing the web: The rhetoric of American e-vangelism and persuasion online Theses and Dissertations, English. Lexington: University of Kentucky.
Turner, Victor. 1972. Symbols in African ritual. Science 179: 1100–1105.
Zaleski, Jeff. 1997. The soul of cyberspace: How technology is changing our spiritual lives. San Francisco: Harper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH
About this entry
Cite this entry
Campbell, H.A., Rule, F. (2016). The Practice of Digital Religion. In: Friese, H., Rebane, G., Nolden, M., Schreiter, M. (eds) Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten. Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08460-8_38-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08460-8_38-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-08460-8
eBook Packages: Springer Referenz Sozialwissenschaften und Recht