I perceive a need to better organize the religious purpose of my leadership ministry. Some of you are familiar with my static website (gone as of 2020). While this blog will remain my virtual office, the site will become the repository for a virtual church. Just about anyone can point to my blog and say, “That’s my spiritual elder or one of my spiritual advisers.” The terms for using my services remains the same as always: If you ask, I serve you. However, far fewer of you would be willing to point to my static site and say, “That’s my religion.” The distinction is how far you are willing to go with it. Anyone can read it for whatever reason, but the static site will be more organized to present a firmer religious identity. What follows is a draft of the introduction.
Faith is one thing; religion is another.
Faith is the human response to a spiritual apprehension. Faith is roughly synonymous to commitment and trust in the unseen, unknowable power and majesty of our Creator. It stands above and beyond reason, with demands that are eminently unreasonable. It all hearkens to a life beyond this realm of existence. Faith is the tension of remaining a human within a fallen domain, yet in contact with something on an entirely different level of reality.
Religion is the implementation of faith. The distinction is critical because religion as a human activity does not require faith, but faith requires a religion. Religion assumes a faith and serves to organize the demands of that higher realm. Inherent in religion is a sense of shared faith between humans who seek some means to give shape to their common apprehension of the Spirit Realm.
A virtual religion is one where that sharing of faith is more or less confined to expressions and interactions via electronic devices on a network. An online fellowship is still people expressing their common faith experiences, but typically unable to meet in the flesh. No one denies a great deal is lost that way, but it does not make it any less a religion, nor any less valid.
At the same time, it adds options not otherwise available. On the one hand, it’s the same faith, the same shared apprehension of spiritual reality. On the other hand, it opens yet another kind fellowship entirely. A virtual religion can be in addition to a meat space religion with no interference between the two. This is entirely apropos, since the network world is so radically different from human space. Indeed, the network is itself a parable of the Spirit Realm.
Aside from a warm hug or handshake, you have almost nothing to lose by engaging a virtual religion. That is, it matters not a whit how you appear or your physical abilities. It is virtually impossible to check up on your real world behavior, and your network congregation must take you entirely at face value. Yes, you can utterly deceive your virtual church, but it gains you almost nothing to do so. Indeed, if you are able to carry off such a deception, there is virtually no harm to them. Unmasking you as a fraud has no real effect on them. There is a sense in which your online persona is as real as your fleshly self for the same reason as it is separate. The only meat space investment in your virtual persona is the time required to put on your virtual show.
Of course, it assumes you have the equipment and some means to access the Internet. There is nothing anyone can do to democratize it any more than it already is, but we know some few souls would be excluded by this. That makes each of us as members of this virtual fellowship a conduit into meat space for our shared faith.
Thus, content is everything. In this, it is very much a religion, a human activity in pursuit of spiritual dimensions.
