Online worship and livestreaming

Whilst I am disquieted about the uncritical embrace among so many in the churches of the normativity of livestreaming and recording worship to be viewed online, I can see that such initiatives have been valuable to many during the time of lockdown and relative social isolation.  It has provided a way for people to continue to engage at some level with corporate and liturgical worship.

My concern is with the acceptance of online worship as normative.  The present Archbishop of York has been speaking recently of the Church of England as a 'mixed ecology' church. This rather odd-sounding phrase appears to mean that online worship is here to stay as part of the mainstream of the Church of England's liturgical worship, to be engaged in alongside and equally normatively with traditional in-person, or embodied, worship.  Indeed, the communications team of the Church of England now quite naturally speaks of worship being 'online or onsite', and in that order.

There is, in my view, a significant downside to and a danger in this mentality.  I was speaking with a colleague recently who told me that one of her parishioners told her that she preferred Zoom worship to having to go to the church because she could watch it on the settee in her pjyamas with a cup of coffee.  My colleague was perfectly relaxed about this, whilst I will admit to being horrified.  It seems that there is a very real danger of reducing worship and sacred acts to something more akin to entertainment, and turning participants into spectators - which is ironic, given that so much emphasis has been placed for decades (rightly) on encouraging greater lay-participation in the liturgy and other aspects of ecclesial life.

This would appear to me to be part of a wider and by now, well-established cultural trend.  It is a trend especially noticeable in the field of sport.  There are more people than ever with subscriptions to Sky Sports and BT Sport and yet fewer people than ever actually participating in sport.  My own main sport is cricket and I can think of several clubs which no longer exist, several clubs with fewer teams than in the past and other clubs fearful for the future, often citing a lack of interest among the young.  My local rugby union club, which fifteen years ago fielded three teams every Saturday, folded altogether a couple of years or so ago because it could no longer find enough players even for one team.  When did anyone last see a group of children or teenagers having an impromptu (as opposed to official) game of football or cricket on a school field, in a park or in the street? Yet, prior to the pandemic, many pubs were thronging with people clustered around a big TV screen watching several Premier League football games every weekend.

The language used by those in the churches providing online worship shows the extent to which they have travelled down this road already, and is troubling.  My own diocese provides online worship at least every Sunday (and on other occasions), and tells us that we can 'watch it later if you prefer'; as we might say when commending a TV programme to someone before mentioning I-Player.  I have flagged this up politely on several occasions but I can never elicit a response.

For me, what emerges from all this is a theological issue which needs serious reflection.  It is to do with the orientation of worship.  A traditional understanding would be that worship is something offered by people, by the Church and by individuals, to God.  Much of the language we now hear suggests that worship is offered by the person or group of people people 'putting it on' for other people; instead of defining the activity of worship 'vertically', we are now defining it 'horizontally'.  I am not saying that an online act of worship cannot be oriented in a godly way; rather, that the language used usually suggests otherwise, and that this cannot but affect the way in which people conceive of worship.  It is similar to the impression given on some church noticeboards when, after listing all the various acts and times of worship, it says 'something for everyone' - which I have seen more than once.  We are commodifying worship, and no-one seems to be taking any notice of what is going on.  I have to say that if the churches think they can compete realistically in an entertainment market-place, they are going to have a rude shock, sooner rather than later.

When Archbishop Sentamu was enthroned in York Minster at the beginning of his archiepiscopal ministry in 2005, he drew a distinction between what he called 'consumers of religion' and 'disciples of Christ'.  Those in authority in the churches may like to consider that many (most?) of these consumers/watchers of the product on offer, and who are usually referred to, patronisingly, as a 'new fringe' will not be contributing to the coffers.

One final point: it is unarguable that one of the clearest trends of the last couple of decades is the increasing isolation of many people, and a similar trend towards individualism.  The churches have been a key antidote to these trends for some, especially older, people.  Encouraging more people to spend more time in front of computer and other screens is likely to exacerbate any feelings of isolation.  It is time for the leadership of the churches to actively encourage people back to corporate worship as a shared enterprise, along with other aspects of church life which help to build up our local communities and afford many opportunities to share quality time with those we may otherwise never even meet.