By Callum Dunphy
Although it’s difficult to take any academic
treatise seriously when written by someone who describes Wicca as an ‘Ancient
Religion’[1],
since Wicca is actually a modern ‘religion’ (developed in 1952 by Gerald
Gardner, a retired - and presumably under-employed British civil servant),
Heidi Campbell’s book, “When Religion meets New Media”, is a semi- riveting
account of her view that religious communities of every sort - use and
interpret their use of the internet through the cultural constraints of their
existing and respective religious framework.
It doesn’t seem an enormous leap of imagination
to think that Hassidic Jews may have a slightly different tolerance for their
members interacting with the clamoring world of the Internet than an Evangelical
Christian – brought up to extol the virtues of the printing press and the
loudhailer – but Campbell is at her most interesting when discussing the
various accommodations made by each group to incorporate elements of the
internet that ‘fit’ their forms of religious traditions and experiences.
Hasidic Jews for example – whilst deriding new media for most forms of
communication - have apparently welcomed it as a tool to enable women to work
from home– or to be kept indoors like battery hens – depending on your
perspective.
Campbell’s second main point is that it is
fostering new and innovative forms of religious practice and thought – a point
not lost on the more reactionary elements of traditional religions who do not
necessarily welcome the rewriting and reinterpretation of their religious
tenets by the same people who edit Wikipedia-.
But Campbell’s main failing is her lack of
analysis about the impact of the internet. A feminist critique would surely see
the oppression in having yet another excuse to subjugate and isolate women in
the home. Surely any rudimentary critique would see a complete evasion of the
way in which religious groups have exploited the internet to solicit funds,
build followers, demean opposing groups and heighten religious tensions. Al Qaeda
has built a wave of global terrorism on the internet. Their traditional
audience of three rural sheep farmers has been transformed by their
understanding of the power of the internet to visualize, to proselytize and to
capture disaffected youth. Campbell’s work is interesting, but unforgiving
narrow.
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