AQA GCE Religious Studies
AS Unit E Religion, Art and the
Media
Dr Debbie Herring
Senior Tutor, Urban Theology Unit, Sheffield
Specialist in Religion and Culture
PhD in Contextual Theology in Cyberspace
Guidance on use of the Internet
All students, of whatever age, should be encouraged to use
the internet safely in accordance with the school’s or
college’s policy, and under guidance of what is considered
appropriate for their age and ability. None of the sites
mentioned in this presentation can guarantee that free,
unsupervised access is free from risk.
AS Unit E, Topic 4
Cyber religion and TV religion
• Religion on the Internet
the variety of material related to religion on the Internet;
the opportunities and challenges of the Internet for
religion and religious responses to them; virtual religion
• Religion on television (TV)
televangelism, its nature and impact; the presentation of
religious themes in popular broadcasting, e.g.
‘The Simpsons’; traditional religious broadcasting; the
significance of religious broadcasting for religion
Why these topics are different
• In all other topics, the students have limited or
no knowledge, and it is the task of the teacher to
supply facts and knowledge in structured and
organised ways
• In these topics, students have a lot of
knowledge. It is the task of the teacher to help
them organise, analyse and evaluate that
knowledge
Religion on the Internet
• Content
– the variety of material related to religion on the
Internet; the opportunities and challenges of the
Internet for religion and religious responses to them;
virtual religion
• Issues arising
– is the Internet an asset to religion? (Specification)
– does it trivialise religion? (Specification)
– relationship of virtual religion to real-life religion
From “One Possible Approach to
Delivering the Specification”
• The Internet as a way of engaging in
religious activity
AND
• Virtual Religion
From “One Possible Approach to
Delivering the Specification”
• In the above document, it is suggested
that you look at engaging in religion online,
and virtual religion as two ways of
considering the uses and effects of the
internet. I’m going to briefly suggest ways
into this by looking at some examples and
exploring ways they can be used
Challenger Memorial Service
On 28 January 1986, the US space
shuttle Challenger broke up 73 seconds
after lift off, killing the seven crew on
board. An early online community,
Unison, held an online real-time memorial
service on 29 January
Challenger Memorial Service
From http://www.ecunet.org/history.html
Two events in 1986 cemented the relationships that were
forming between the individuals and the denominations that
coexisted on Unison at that time. The first was the crash of
the NASA spaceship, Challenger, on 28 January 1986. In
response to the tragedy, Fred Dudden, owner of the Unison
system, contacted Gordon Laird of UCHUG, and asked if
there was some way to conduct an online memorial service
for the Challenger crew, their families, and for all those who
mourned the loss
Challenger Memorial Service
Overnight, Gordon, and Unison staffer, Diana Campbell,
organized an entire memorial service, led by four pastors of
different denominations: Gordon, Jim Collie (PCUSA),
Michael Henderson (United Methodist) and Curt Ackley
(United Church of Christ). Most of the parts of the service
were read-only notes, but there were several places in the
service for people to post their own prayers, and their
thoughts about the tragedy. The service ended with a
"coffee hour“, conducted in the Speakeasy section of the
system, where people could express their sadness about
the explosion, and their thanks to those who created the
memorial service. Reading the service today, it has lost
none of its poignancy; one can only imagine the impact it
had at the time of the crash
Challenger Memorial Service
http://www.glaird.com/memserv.htm
Challenger Memorial Service
http://www.glaird.com/memserv.htm
Church of Fools
www.churchoffools.com/media-resources/hi-res-images.html
From May to September 2004, the Methodist Church and
the online Christian community set up and ran the Church
of Fools using a 3D online gaming environment with usercontrolled avatars. You may not be familiar with this kind of
thing, but you can be pretty sure the majority of students
are!
St Pixels
Some of the people who had been involved in the Church of Fools set
up and migrated to St Pixels when Church of Fools closed. This is
mainly text based interaction
Second Life
Second Life is a 3D simulation environment where users
create and personalise their own space, interact, and share
public space in real time. It lists around 50 churches,
several of which have significant numbers of members
ichurch http://i-church.org/cms/
Set up by the Anglican Diocese of Oxford as
an online community and church
Other faiths
The major world faiths have engaged with the possibilities of
the internet in similar ways, though there are generally fewer
spoof sites. I’m going to focus on Christianity, but the same
exercise can be applied to any or all of the other faiths,
e.g.
Passover Seder and other Jewish festivals at online at
http://www.chabad.org/
Online Puja (Hinduism) at http://www.kalighatonline.com/
Guide to Salat (Islam) at http://muttaqun.com/salah.html
Buddhist meditation online at
http://www.buddhanet.net/insight.htm
Sikh Hukamnama at http://www.sikhnet.com/hukam
Religion Online vs Virtual Religion
The significant differences between looking
at religious material online and virtual
religion depends as much on the viewer /
user as on the content
Content
• Some religions / churches exist ONLY
online
• Some religions / churches are online
offshoots of major denominations or
movements
• Some religions / churches are part of the
work and life of real-life church
communities
User
1. Some people look at online religious
sites
2. Some people interact with online
religious sites
3. Some people engage in religious activity
using religious sites
Only the third can really be described as
“Virtual Religion”
Issues around religion online and
virtual religion
Participation
interactivity which contributes to the
whole-group experience, singing, praying
Community
many dimensions to community, not all of
which can be done online
Physical
actions
prayer movements, movement around
the worship area. Text-based actions,
avatar movements
Presence
pilgrimage, gathering, priesthood
Props and
consumables
offerings, sacraments, candles, incense
Ninian Smart The World’s Religions
Ninian Smart offers a taxonomy for
evaluating religion. He suggests that
religions have a number of “dimensions” all
of which contribute to the whole experience
of religious life. Some religions emphasise
specific dimensions and downplay others.
This is a useful tool for evaluating religious
activity online
(summary at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A19645167)
Ninian Smart The World’s Religions
Seven “dimensions of religion”
• The Practical and Ritual Dimension
• The Experiential and Emotional Dimension
• The Narrative or Mythic Dimension
• The Doctrinal and Philosophical Dimension
• The Ethical and Legal Dimension
• The Social and Institutional Dimension
• The Material Dimension
Evaluating cyber-religion
Various manifestations of cyber-religion can be
evaluated using Smart’s dimensions. I suggest
questions such as:
How, if at all, does this site / experience deal with
ritual / emotion / narrative, etc?
One way of comparing virtual and real
manifestations of religion is to use Smart. This
can be done generically, or with reference to one
specific religion or denomination / church
Religion on television (TV)
• Content
– televangelism, its nature and impact; the
presentation of religious themes in popular
broadcasting, e.g. ‘The Simpsons’; traditional
religious broadcasting; the significance of
religious broadcasting for religion
• Issues arising
– Is TV an asset to religion?
– Televangelism: cult or religion?
– Popular TV: does it trivialise religion?
Religious Themes in The Simpsons
Series 8, episode 8 Hurricane Neddy
First aired in the US on 29 December 1996
Springfield has been hit by a hurricane. We
pick up the episode as Homer Simpson
emerges from the house as the wind dies
down
Actually…
The house falls down, Ned goes mad and it
takes a lot of therapy to restore his faith and
sanity. But there’s enough in just 5 minutes
of the episode to work with
Variety of themes
Portrayal of religious people: members of the Flanders
family, Revd Lovejoy.
Questions about religious faith and practice: why do
bad things happen to good people? Approaches to
prayer (Marge and Ned)
Christian living: Ned’s prayer is all about keeping rules
Biblical interpretation: “I feel like Job”, “a tad melodramatic”,
“Job was right-handed”
Ethics: Responding to adversity
Philosophy: The problem of evil, the nature of miracles
How are themes portrayed
• With humour
• Presented in such a way that the viewer
can evaluate positively or negatively
• Even in episodes like this, it is not ‘about’
religion. It is ‘about’ the Simpsons and
their friends, and religion is a taken-forgranted part of their lives
Promotes or undermines?
• Humorous, mass media, cartoon
presentation makes this accessible to a
very large constituency of all ages and
abilities
• Takes the fact of religious belief and
practice seriously
• Introduces serious religious themes
But…
• Shows key religious practices, such as
prayer and the Bible being misused
• Portrays Christians as confused and / or
hypocritical
• Does not allow for extended development
of big questions
Extending the scope
Using this analysis of The Simpsons, one way of
moving forward is to watch other kinds of TV
programme (US and UK sit-coms, soaps, drama,
documentary, chat shows) to identify some of the
same or similar themes and compare the
treatment of them. It’s useful to try and include
things that the students are likely to be familiar
with – try Hollyoaks, Vicar of Dibley, as well as
explicitly religious programmes such as Songs of
Praise and things from The God Channel.
Interweaving both parts of the topic
• Smart’s dimensions of religion provides a useful
analytical tool for TV as well as for internet
religion
• Questions about portrayal, themes, ethics, etc.
can be asked about both media in the same
terms
• Open exploration of how far TV represents
reality or virtuality may intrigue and challenge
students
Remember…
Students live in a culture where the
distinctions between real and virtual are
blurred, where there is a continuum
encompassing
–
–
–
–
–
face-to-face reality
mobile phone conversations and texts
internet messaging
internet resources
TV, terrestrial, cable and satellite
So…
…they are going to find these topics
exciting, challenging and relevant to their
lives
If you can tap into that, this could be the
best fun you ever have together in the
classroom.
Enjoy!
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