On May 30th, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley became the first to enter orbit on a private spacecraft, docking with the International Space Station on board SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule [1]. This is an impressive technical feat, one I had often wondered about since childhood: when would private corporations begin sending people into space? Had the launch occurred in Baikonur as has been customary for United States astronauts since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011, they would have been effusively blessed by a Russian Orthodox priest [2]. Religion may not be the first thing that comes to mind when somebody mentions technology or the tech industry, but the two share some strange parallels and overlap quite frequently.

When I returned to mass this past Sunday after a long hiatus due to the novel coronavirus, one of the most obvious changes was the inclusion of masks as part of the liturgy. Some theologians may well take exception to this categorization, but to me their inclusion was nothing if not liturgical; we were informed prior to the start of the service that masks were to be worn throughout, except for the lector, deacon, and priest during readings, homily, and Eucharistic prayers. All organized activity taken by the church during mass is in a sense liturgical, even something as simple as a lector sliding a mask down from his face to be better heard at the podium during the reading.

Masks are technology: a human artifice taken in an attempt to prevent the spread of a deadly disease. Over Pentecost Sunday they were seamlessly incorporated into worship with a few simple gestures and hardly more than a second thought. How many more times throughout church history have technologies been incorporated into worship or private devotion in order to meet societal, economic, or religious pressures?

The monk’s scapular comes to mind: “a garment first designed by monks during the Middle Ages as protective covering to be worn over their clothing when they did manual labor, such as in the fields or outside” [3], it was gradually adopted by religious laity as a sign of faith. The scapular worn by many today is much smaller and without the utilitarian focus of the original, but it owes its existence to this little bit of labor technology. To join the monastic order in spirit, faithful would wear the scapular. Eventually the intent of keeping the hem of one’s garment organized was replaced with the spiritual intent of following the monastic tradition.

It is tempting to draw parallels between scapulars and the covid-19 masks worn during mass. Both began as pieces of clothing technology, designed for specific utilitarian purposes; the former has had centuries over which spiritual implications have grown, whereas the latter will hopefully be obviated soon. There is also the trajectory of the scapular from a functional item worn by monks to a religious article worn by both ministers and laypeople, whereas masks are currently worn by religious and non-religious alike and carry no religious significance. Nonetheless, their presence at mass last Sunday was high up the list of things noticeable and acknowledged. Perhaps the spiritual significance of a mask at mass ends simply with ‘I care about your safety’.

There are many other interesting examples of boundary conditions between religion and technology; at Calvary Chapel, churchgoers enter a cavernous space commanded by large LED screens on stage and sophisticated audio systems. The congregation of a Catholic church is looped for the hearing impaired. Daily readings and meditations are sent out to a wide following via the Laudate mobile app.

Most of the time technology seems to take a back seat to whatever religious end it serves: I am largely unaware of the work developers put into creating the app that renders the official Catholic reading of the day, but keenly aware of the readings themselves. If religious ends always outshine technological ends where the two are involved, this would imply a hierarchical relationship between religion and technology. Religion provides ultimate meaning, whereas technology provides a means to an end.

This is of course too facile: the ends of technology and religion may not precisely coincide, even when they overlap. It is not always clear whether it is religion or technology that holds the ultimate goal. In 2016, when the latest wave of affordable virtual reality was young, I had the opportunity to try a GearVR app called “VR Church: The Bible” [4]. The experience promised an encounter with scripture, invoking the “Roman Room” memory palace. I was greeted with a beautifully rendered mediterranean hillside: pines and grasses rustled gently in the breeze while scrolls inscribed with Bible verses appeared in a circle around me at every stop along the path, harking to stations of the cross. While the developer’s intent was no doubt to create a genuine religious experience as when one encounters a moving Bible passage, the novelty of being in a three dimensional computer rendered world was distracting; I came away with at least as many impressions about the hillside, the flora, the wind, the light, and the monumental scrolls as I did the scriptures themselves. While moving, the effect did not precisely coincide with the app’s stated objectives. Perhaps, as Marshall McLuhan would say, “the medium is the message”.

This kind of tension between the ends purportedly served by technology and the implements of technology themselves is far from unnoticed by major religions of the world. Reactions and responses have been diverse: in 2012 an Orthodox Jewish rally against the pitfalls of the internet filled the Mets’ Citi Field baseball stadium. A proffered safeguard was tailor-made filtering software [5]. In 2013, Pope Benedict XIV offered a middling approach, calling for respectful, tactful evangelization over social networks while noting “the significance and effectiveness of the various forms of expression appear to be determined more by their popularity than by their intrinsic importance and value” [6]. Pope Francis soon followed, ebulliently calling the internet “a gift from God” while noting its “immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity”, “a network not of wires but of people” [7].

Broader Christianity also exhibits varied responses to this tension: John Thomas notes the irreplaceability of person-to-person contact, paraphrasing pastor Jay Kim in saying “what all of us crave, really - are authentic communities that prioritize transformed lives over splashy techniques for transmitting information and manufacturing ‘experiences’” [8]. Episcopal minister David W. Peters, colloquially known as “the TikTok priest”, adopts a far more pro-tech stance in arguing that the early church made use of the technology of Roman roads to carry the message of the apostle Paul [9], that “writing a story about the life of a person was a form of technology in its day”, and that “social media is really the town square of today” [10].

In the Encyclopedia.com entry on Technology and Religion, Frederick Ferré has this to say about cases where technology is at first rejected by the devout: “the challenge for religious thinking in radically novel cases is to wrestle with what, specifically, it is about practical interventions led by theoretical intelligence - from in vitro fertilization to germ line therapy or even cloning - that makes them unnatural in a bad sense” [11]. Assuming novel technology upsets the ‘natural order’ and this is what countervailing religious threads rail against, what steps can be taken to bring technological drive in line with the objectives of organized religion?

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever” per the Gloria Patri. Jaron Lanier, a founding father of virtual reality, observes that “technologists unambiguously make the future different from the past, irreversibly, and fast enough to have it whack us in the face in our own lifetimes, even when we’re still young”. Far from promoting technology as a kind of panacea which should be pursued for its own sake, Lanier notes that “tech manias come and go”. Although unequivocally stating that technology has made lives generally better, Lanier sees the main drivers of technology as real human beings. This is in contrast to the sense among many technologists that “A.I. will surpass humanity soon” in an inexorable singularity. Echoing the urgent messages of many religious leaders, Lanier says “technology creates a context in which we can and must think more compassionately” [12].

In the game Hyper Light Drifter, a protagonist struggles to learn the ropes of foreign technology while grappling with his own mortality. This is an excellent microcosmic metaphor for the struggle of faith in a rapidly changing world, hopefully one that can be met with compassion.

[1] Chang, K. (2020, May 30). Astronauts Dock With Space Station After Historic SpaceX Launch. The New York Times, Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/science/spacex-astronauts-arrival.html

[2] Vincent, J. (2015, April 1). Why Astronauts Get Slapped In The Face With A Cross Before Going To Space. The Verge, Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/1/8324707/astronauts-blessing-nasa-space-baikonur

[3] Emmons, D. (2020). Why Wear A Scapular? Simply Catholic, Retrieved from https://www.simplycatholic.com/why-wear-a-scapular/

[4] Shape of Sound Ltd. (2016, September 21) VR Church: The Bible https://www.oculus.com/experiences/gear-vr/1135979366469525/

[5] Savov, V. (2012, May 21). More Than 40,000 Orthodox Jews Rally Against The Internet At New York Baseball Stadium. The Verge, Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3033568/orthodox-jews-anti-internet-rally-new-york

[6] Blagdon, J. (2013, January 24). Pope Calls For Evangelism On Social Networks. The Verge, Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/3913480/pope-calls-for-evangelism-on-social-networks

[7] Toor, A. (2014, January 23). Pope Francis Says The Internet Is A ‘Gift From God’. The Verge, Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/23/5337508/pope-francis-says-the-internet-is-a-gift-from-god

[8] Thomas, J. (2020, April 20). Churches: Don’t Get Too Comfortable Online. Christianity Today, Retrieved from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/april-web-only/jay-kim-analog-church-online-digital-world.html

[9] Peters, D. (2020, April 16). See, I Zoom You With My Own Hand. Christianity Today, Retrieved from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/april-web-only/zoom-facebook-church-technology-epistles-apostle-paul.html

[10] Makalintal, B. (2019, August 19). We Interviewed The Priest From The ‘Hot Priest Summer’ TikTok. Vice, Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35dnz/we-interviewed-the-priest-from-the-hot-priest-summer-tiktok

[11] Ferré, F. (2020, May 7). Technology And Religion. Encyclopedia.com, Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/technology-and-religion

[12] Lanier, J. (2019, January 31). VR And The Problem Of How We Talk About Tech. OneZero, Retrieved from https://onezero.medium.com/vr-and-the-problem-of-how-we-talk-about-tech-d8a27e812c74