예배 연구 주제로서의 ‘온라인예배 실행’

Abstract

Today, our daily life is dominated by online world, which changes the way of religious behaviour, let alone the way to get religious information. We have to look into how religious experience and practice change, as the new media mediated digitally brings about general change in religious-cultural situation. New media will change the way of their users’ existence and thought, and reconstruct the worship and the act of church through the media. But most of the preceding discussions on this subject reach negative conclusions based on the argument that online participation in worship lacks sense of community and bodilyness, which is a decisive limitation; the sense of community can be fulfilled only by the physical vicinity of the participants, and only the presence at public worship should fulfill bodilyness as the premise for the wholeness of human being. According to the opponents of online worship performance, the sense of community and bodilyness can be fulfilled by physical presence at brick and mortar space only, and it is the requirement for genuine worship. A question arises whether we can say that physical presence at brick and mortar worship should be the only participation, and related discussions are on actively underway worldwide. Numerous incidents of digitally mediated online worship performances appear worldwide, and they cross over different denominations or religious orders. If conception and acknowledgment of ‘participation’ should not be limited to physical presence, we have to go beyond the negative opinion about online worship, and yield a new understanding of participation in worship. Another question arises whether it is the prerequisite for the sense of community to be physically present at a specific brick and mortar venue. We have been witnessing incidents that online network serves as a site for collecting public opinion, and progressing to build online community not limited by physical space. Online communities are free from hierarchical order, seeking for egalitarianism of mutual and interactive communication. Anonymity in communication is another characteristic they have. Openness, flexibility in boundaries, simultaneity crossing spaces, and ‘representational space’ online as free space, build the foundation for online community. If online worship performance can build and maintain the sense of community on line, it can dispel the criticism for its lack of the sense of community. Liturgists can not ignore the calling of our time to maximize the opportunities given by online media and expand the prospect of liturgical studies, minimizing risks they could cause.