Stephen Jacobs

Virtually Sacred: The Performance of Asynchronous Cyber-Rituals in Online Spaces

This article explores how the design of sacred spaces and ritual performance are transformed in the move from offline to online contexts. A semiotic analysis of two websites—a Christian Virtual Church and a Hindu Virtual Temple—suggests the potential for demarcating distinct online sacred spaces, in a Durkheimian sense, in which devotees can engage in ritual activity. The article focuses on the performance of cyberpuja in the Virtual Temple and the posting of prayers in the Virtual Church. Interviews with the Web designers and an analysis of the sites suggest that the virtual is primarily conceived in terms of a simulation of the “real.” Consequently these sites are envisaged in terms of conventional notions of sacred space and ritual performance, rather than as something radically new.

Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace

The most surprising (and valuable) aspect of the study is that dealing with producers of new religiosity brings to the fore the degree to which these are small businesses, often run on a parttime basis. Certainly, the individualism both of service providers and clients is well brought out. This economy of spirituality, of a diversity of entrepreneurs, marks a useful contrast with corporate versions of religiosity which have invited cynical comment. A particular interesting point is the way these new forms meet real needs of a population suffering emptiness, depression, and ill-health in ways where the Swedish state funds and uses some of their services. Secondly, a very valuable chapter on Dalarna (Chapter 8), as a local context in a global world, brings well into focus the ubiquity of some new forms of religiosity. This chapter pairs well with Chapter 6 on the growing fashion of mindfulness as a form of attention focusing. The secularisation of Buddhism in this area and in relation to yoga comes over well. Thirdly, fairs, retreat centres, and health spas are well studied. In the case of the last sites, resistance to the notion that the activities involved are in any way forms of new religiosity emerges. The hesitancies of the Church of Sweden in regard to these activities arises, but in isolated cases. For outsiders to Sweden, more should have been provided on the wider context of religion. For instance, Catholicism seems written off as an immigrant religion, such not being the case in Stockholm. As often in these types of studies, mainline forms of Christianity are treated as residual, as if the case for the supposed stagnant nature of their forms of spirituality does not require inspection. Even if there is an extensive “grey zone” operating between religion and the secular and even if “silent entrepreneurs” qualify its comprehensiveness (22–7), this is a useful, solid work—thorough, alert, and containing much careful sketching of the topography of a shifting landscape and the new religiosity of Sweden; to that degree the study has much to commend.