This chapter offers a contribution to the ongoing research into networked individualism in late modern society from the perspective of religion online. Using a sample of weblogs created by Australians involved in the “emerging church movement,” this chapter will explore how the Internet has enabled individuals to seek relationships with others and discern a religious identity beyond the confines of local faith communities and denominational institutions. Here we will see how those who use blogs to form religious networks must negotiate constructions of communal identities, not just offline, but within the blogosphere. These negotiations represent a postmodern quest for authentic religious expression and practice, which is found in the flow of information among a myriad of traditional and new sources.
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This chapter explores the use of blogging technology to fuel networked individualism’s impact on religious identity. It draws from a study of Christian bloggers in Australia to highlight how people use the technology to negotiate membership to Christian communities, both online and offline, and form their own relationships that foster faith identity. It suggests implications for the future role of religious institutions in public discourses on religion, the place of local faith communities in fostering religious identity of individuals, and the impact of being online on expressing religious identity offline.
For many Christians, participation in the local congregation or faith community is considered the basic cell from which one’s religious identity is formed. The congregation’s participation in a wider institution connects its members to a wider, even global, community to the effect that one’s identity could be defined by membership in a denomination: “I am Roman Catholic”, “I am Southern Baptist” or “I am Methodist”, for example. We know, however, that mobility and use of telecommunication technologies have meant people have a range of sources of religious information, and settings for social interaction (Giddens, 1991). Ecumenism has encouraged Christians to explore other expressions of Christian faith, while liberal pluralism has meant that Christian churches sit alongside, communicate with, and even compete with, other religions (Finke & Stark, 2005). As such churches in late modernity can no longer assume they are their members’ sole source of information, support and religious development (Bauman, 1998).
Recent research has shown that the Internet provides an alternative space for the construction of religious identity, free from the constraints of institutional authority, and with the potential to create and explore new symbolic practices (Lövheim & Linderman, 2005). Blogging also promises a democratisation of voices and the freedom to express personal views on public religious issues, and the capacity to create global networks to share information and resources, find support and care, and build trusting relationships (Beer & Burrows, 2007; Campbell, 2005; Cheong, Halavais, & Kwon, 2008). For those who feel excluded from, or silenced in their local faith communities, and those who find cultural and symbolic practices of local churches foreign, find in the blogosphere a place to say something and be heard.
A study of thirty such bloggers, from a variety of Protestant and Evangelical faith traditions in Australia, will be used a case study. These thirty use phrases like “in exile from their denomination”, “looking for something different”, or even “churchless” to describe their sense of affiliation with the tradition of their upbringing, and use blogging to confess their needs and seek like minds. Blogging promises the exploration and development of religious identity in an open parliament on the cultural, symbolic, institutional, economic and theological practices of the modern Church. Online they are introduced to a global movement of bloggers, sometimes called the “emerging church” or “missional” movement. They find here that discursive practices have developed that determine bloggers’ place within the movement, and that even patterns of authority have emerged. Ironically, those who use blogging to negotiate their place in the Christian Church offline discover that they must also negotiate their belonging to an online community.
This chapter asks, to what extent do these bloggers seek belonging in an online community, or simply a position within a network of connections, from which to construct individual religious identities? A study of posts and conversations in these blog sites, together with information collected from interviews with the sites’ authors, will show that bloggers in the study find in the blogosphere a place to explore their religious identities away from the constraints of institutional churches offline. Moreover, the study will show that while they identify with values of the online emerging church movement to varying degrees, generally they prefer to see themselves “on the outskirts” of the movement, rather than actively involved in it.