I've been giving some thought lately to the sacraments and SL. It was all kicked off by a comment I read somewhere else, by someone else, to the effect of, "If anyone ends up trying to administer sacraments in SL, it'll probably be the Episcopalians who do it first." Which I took as both a badge of honor and a hex sign all at the same time!
Specifically:
1. What would be the efficacy of a sacrament administered through SL? Beyond that, what would be the benefit? (I'm using "efficacy" in the sense of how theologians use it, and "benefit" in the sense of how everyone else uses that term.)
2. What are the pastoral implications?
3. Do virtual environments change our way of thinking about the doctrine of "real presence"?
4. What if anything does this mean for Anglicans in particular - a way of being Christian that encompasses such a wide diversity of opinion about sacramentality?
5. Are there some sacraments that should never attempt to be realized in a virtual environment?
6. What's the difference between, say, genuflecting through a SL gesture and doing it in real life? What role does embodiment play?
7. What's the difference between, say, being told of your absolution through an electronic exchange versus being in the presence of another actual person who pronounces it using means that are immediately perceptible and filled with a million nonverbal cues?
Anyone else interested in this topic?
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16 comments:
An excellent post. I lead the Anglican Community in Second Life and I can report that the Ecclesiastical Law Society based in the UK has created a working group of theologians and cannonical lawyers tasked to consider these very issues. So your thoughts are most welcome.
Very interesting.
My thoughts go to the holy communion. If one person or group in Colorado log in through Skype and web camera with a group in New Zeeland and one in Sweden could they share bread and wine? Is it enough if a priest in let say Colorado reads the word of institution and leads the mass? Will those words from Colorado get a hold on the bread and wine in NZ and Sweden? Or do we need a priest also in those places to handle the gifts?
That was an example outside Second Life (SL). If we then take this question inside Second Life we have yet another problem. Inside SL we use avatars. Through Skype we are ourselves directly. So if we are sharing communion through our avatars there are more questions rised.
Mikael -
I am impressed with your interest and enthusiasm for this topic, and I am convinced that if more people took the time to understand what's at stake in this (~30-40,000 users in-world at any one time), they'd develop an interest in it quickly. But so far it seems that a relative few of us are giving it much thought at all.
If we take SL out of the equation and go straight to Skype or some other video-enabled transmission device, then we have removed a significant barrier and the sacrament is more accessible for people. Just to take your example (the one you emailed, not the one on the blog) of a group of ministers in the same geographic area working together:
1. Anonymity is no longer nearly as available as it is in SL. Yet I'm not sure that it matters much in churches - at least not in the American expression of church, where people are tending to choose options that allow them to be anonymous worshipers.
2. Not only could you be significantly less anonymous, you wouldn't necessarily be allowed to "inhabit" another's skin the way you do in SL unless you chose to misrepresent yourself, and again, that puts us right back to the old question about what it is about this technology that is fundamentally different from physical reality.
3. Ministers and congregants within the same geographic area, working under the authority of the same bishop, with the same presumptions about the function of the rubrics and liturgical parameters, and sharing perhaps semi-related theological understandings of the efficacy and function of the sacrament (okay, okay - when has this ever happened? but still...): all of this lessens barriers. But the part of the theoretical point of SL as I understand it is to provide a "smaller world" where everyone around our larger world can gather. In SL, the point is to gather people together despite their differences. The example you cite of a Skype type communion automatically minimizes that point out of a bias toward similarity, but if you did any sacraments in SL you would have to contend with this fact of not only jurisdiction but also an understanding of what a sacrament is and does - which I hope is part of what's happening with our friends at Lambeth right now.
4. Sooner or later we're going to have to ask the question (#7 on my list) of what role actual human contact plays.
I see this shaking out in one of four ways or permutations therof, most likely options being first:
1. We're told not to do anything for some set amount of time, and then are given strictly interpreted directions for how to "try out" one or two things the way seminaries do in their field education and "lab" classes, through very controlled learning moments, and then are asked to provide feedback about how we think it went. This goes on for some time until something - who knows what? - happens.
2. We're told to offer nothing in the way of a sacrament, and the issue is retired to theoreticians.
3. In the lag out of Lambeth, the whole thing becomes a liturgical free-for-all, with people offering the sacraments without doing the due legwork and/or basically ordaining themselves to be mediators of sacraments. It all falls apart when folks begin to be asked to provide L$ for the sacraments, and an avatar named Martin Luther nails theses on a virtual church door.
4. Someone designs a set of gestures for church life - making the sign of the cross, offering absolution, ingesting bread and wine, and so on - and some glossy U.S. publication catches the story, setting the whole thing on fire. Then a question of type/theory becomes a specific issue located within a person (and his or her avatar), and it becomes much more ethically compelling stuff.
We need a person with a theological imagination like Rowan Williams' to put a series of questions to a panel of experts the way he did with Windsor. Of course, how many people have suggested the exact same thing about their pet project, issue, or cause? Thank God for people like Mark Brown who have been willing to bring this in front of the right people.
Torey
I mentioned Skype cause I think in Sweden this would be a first step to try this out. If you share bread and wine using Skype, or some similair web camera option, you will have well defined groups participating. Then the "authority" of the priest remains. I know authority and SL/virtual worlds don´t go hand in hand but the first step to try communion in new ways could be this.
When I discuss this with priests in Sweden they tend to talk about have important it is for them to "know" if the gifts, the bread and wine, are handled with at least some sort of holiness. If they can see the gifts through a web cam they are more pleased.
Taking the sacraments to SL is yet another step. Question is if you then have to handle with how each person running their avatar behave with the sacraments sitting in front of their own computer screen? No problem, you may say, but the ones I´ve talked to are a bit reluctant.
In SL the priest who are leading the mass can´t see whats happening back on the other side of the screens. This will be a problem for some priests, a bit scared of the almost total anonymosity this will lead to. I suppose.
/Mikael
Greetings Torey, good to see the engagement in this important topic. Would you be open to putting your thoughts together in a one to two page paper? I would love to disseminate it amongst the group who are considering this in some detail.
Ok I can think of some issues to consider:
Are the sacraments (bread and wine) properly or virtually consecrated. If you are ordained then not an issue, but the rest of us mere mortals will need to get previously consecrated stuff, and then will we in the comfort of our own homes drink the rest of the chalice to ourselves (mmm may have an appeal to some).
Then there is an issue regarding the authenticity of self in your avatar. Some most definitely believe it is alright to act out sin as it is 'not real' so the same then would apply to the sacraments on that premise.
Then what about births deaths and marriages? Not only Ecclesiastical law but secular minefield. My SL partner is my RL husband. I took a note of fancy to get dressed up and renew the vows. Vidz reply? "Once was more than enough" ( I am in reflection on this I may become a widow... visiting times will be)
On a serious note though SL relationships are an absolute psychological headache. I have had to 'counsel' so many.
Then there are those who for whatever reason are unable to attend real churches. This can be a blessing, but can also be a really bad excuse for those who cannot separate from the computer but still need to relate as a human to others. Feel a real hug now and again.
I am not sure 'What Jesus Would Say', possibly ... "why you lot hung up on law I came to set you free." Perhaps we are being too 'sad-to-see' and 'far-to-see'
OK that is a really bad pun.
God Bless Loo (Lorraine)
Mikael -
Though I've only been a priest for three years and change, I had to long ago abandon much concern for what people were "doing" with the sacrament. So long as the priest has every indication that people desire to receive (and possibly even be transformed by) the bread and wine, the pronouncement of absolution, the unction, etc. - insofar as this is accomplished, then what else am I responsible for as the minister of the service? I am to teach regularly about the grace, signs, and meanings of the sacraments, and I am to study, pray, and serve so as to be a wholesome example in Christ.
Part of the hangup for me is that I am also to ensure (as the U.S. Prayer Book intones) that (a) no recipient of the Holy Eucharist is leading "a notoriously evil life" and that (b) "there is [no] hatred among members of the congregation" (p. 409), as these may be barriers to admission to the Eucharist - temporary barriers, it is hoped, so that they may be honestly worked through and godly resolution sought. In virtual environments this could be rendered a maddeningly impossible task and could be what we in the States call a deal-breaker.
Perhaps these thoughts clarify; perhaps they muddy the water further still.
Oh, and Mikael - You raised another key question, which is the reception of physical elements on the receiver's end. I must honestly say I hadn't thought about anyone actually taking real bread and wine on the other side. In your Skype example, who knows; the liturgical side of me says it would be far better for the teleconferencing participants to be sent preconsecrated elements to consume in the context of the liturgy. In the U.S. this would mean an abbreviated form of service for the portion of the service referred to as the Liturgy of the Table.
For me this was simply grappling with the notion of an SL avatar-priest consecrating SL object-elements to be "consumed" by an SL avatar-congregant. Bringing physically real bread and wine into the equation is enough to make my head spin!
Mark - I have a lot going on but may find a few minutes here and there to begin synthesizing thoughts. I will also ask some trusted associates, who know far more than I do, for their take as well.
Mark Brown directed me to this blog's thread. I wrote about this recently on my spirituality and liturgy site & say it better there than repeating my points again here:
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/worship/matters_files/virtualsacraments.html
Blessings in Christ
Bosco
http://www.liturgy.co.nz
Hi Torey
You wrote: "...an SL avatar-priest consecrating SL object-elements to be 'consumed' by an SL avatar-congregant."
For me that is no problem. When I attend a SL worship as Stones Halderman (my avatar) I can through this avatar share a prayer with the other in church, I can listen to the sermon, I can chat outside the church afterwards. Through my avatar I can feel a sort of fellowship with other people who are behind their avatars.
But when it comes to mass it´s not enough leting my avatar receive bread and wine. I am not my avatar in that way. For me it is important to feel the taste of bread, to smell the aroma of the wine, to eat and drink.
So on my side of the screen I need the gifts in my hand and mouth.
By the way, I´m not sure my avatar Stones Halderman is a christian ; )
And, just one more thought...
If I let my avatar go to mass in SL I can be with him in my heart. For me that will be a eucharist in heart. That is a good thing for me. That is sharing life.
But in some way it is not the same as a RL eucharist.
Both of them are good, but they are not the same.
Mikael - Ack! Christian avatars?! Now there's a lovely wrench.
I think few would disagree that unless the theology of the eucharist shifts significantly, it may not do to go getting bread and wine out of the kitchen. What do others think about reception of physical elements?
i just wonder if the "presence of christ" can be within a virtual sacrament. or would we only have a "virtual christ" present? at least we don't have to worry about virtual flesh & blood like the roman catholics! LOL
There has been a surprisingly negative article about all this at Anglicans Online.
I respond here:
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/worship/matters_files/secondlife.html
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