Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of The Virtual

Society of Christian Ethics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics.

http://www.jstor.org

Society of Christian Ethics

Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of The Virtual Author(s): George D. Randels Jr. Source: Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, Vol. 20 (2000), pp. 165-179Published by: Society of Christian EthicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23560838Accessed: 07-07-2015 21:24 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 138.9.64.25 on Tue, 07 Jul 2015 21:24:35 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scethics

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23560838

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp



Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of The Virtual1

George D. Randels Jr.

Abstract

While Christian ethics utilizes various frameworks and tools, Stanley Hauerwas contends that narrative, character, and community are the cmcial ones. This paper

utilizes these aspects of Christian ethics to analyze cyberspace, juxtaposing them with Sherry Turkle's (and others') ethnographic studies of cyberspace. It then

argues that while Hauerwas's critique of liberal society applies more aptly to

cyberspace, his critique contains its own difficulties and internal tensions.

Nevertheless, the critique and its difficulties, especially the sectarian charge,

provide insights for framing Christian ethics in cyberspace.

This paper's title is not merely an attempt at clever alliteration. In fact, the

terms virtuous and virtual have the same Latin root of virtus and share the

meanings of essence and quality (i.e., type), although they of course differ in

many other respects. Both concepts have been part of Christianity from its

inception. Virtual reality and virtual community are not new or foreign concepts to Christianity, nor are attempts to understand connections between the real world

and things more ethereal. For nearly two millennia, theologians have considered

the church as both a physical and a metaphysical entity, distinguishing between

the church as it exists and its true, but not yet extant, form, and considering it as

both a universal community of shared belief and a local community of place. Christians commonly believe that the Kingdom of God is a type of virtual reality that is both here and not here. And in the daily life of the church, the literal bread

and wine of the Eucharist are also the virtual body and blood of Christ.2

Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 20 (2000): 165-179



166 The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics

Christianity, then, has always upheld a type of virtual reality, and the church

perhaps has always been a type of virtual community, although never exclusively such, with only one foot in virtual reality (VR) and the other in real life (RL).3

While Christianity may have experience in conceptualizing the virtual in relation to the real, as well as virtue being an important concept for Christian

ethics, contemporary cyberspace is not, of course, the Kingdom of God. It more

closely resembles what Alice found on the other side of the looking glass, but

needing a computer mouse rather than an RL kitten to have a VR Red Queen.

Cyberia clearly is no koinonia, but home to a wide range of individuals and virtual

communities, and even the areas set aside as virtual churches are wide open to

non-believers who are not there for a conversion experience.4

In this paper, I want to discuss some of the challenges that cyberspace presents for the church and Christian ethics, and extend the age-old debate concerning the church's relation to the world, to its relation to the virtual world. Pope John Paul II has issued a statement entitled, "The Church Must Learn to Cope With the

Computer Culture,"5 but coping is only part of what the encounter will entail. My primary conversation partners in this endeavor are theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and "cybershrink" Sherry Turkle. Although Hauerwas has yet to

broach cyberspace in his numerous essays, he says much concerning the cmcial

roles of narrative, character, and community for Christian ethics, in contrast to the deficiencies that he finds in liberal society. In this regard he provides several useful starting points for discussing the church's relation to the Net, and the Net's potential impact on the church. What makes Hauerwas especially important to

this project, however, is not just that he provides a Christian critique of liberal

society, but that he provides a postmodem critique of liberal modernity. In her excellent book Life on the Screen, Turkle contrasts modem and

postmodem conceptions of humans and computers in her discussion of personal

identity and the Internet. She contends that the postmodem account is more

convincing and that cyberspace is thoroughly postmodem. According to Turkle,

"Computers embody postmodem theory and bring it down to earth."6 Postmodem

theory becomes concrete in connecting VR and RL. For my money, Turkle

largely succeeds in making her case regarding the Internet's capacity to shape—or at least assist in shaping—personal identity. That makes Hauerwas doubly important here, because he provides some insights for addressing cyberspace on Christian and postmodem terms.

Challenges for Christian Ethics in Cyberspace

Hauerwas makes several interrelated criticisms of liberal modernity, confronting it for its own inadequacies and contrasting it with his vision of the church and Christian ethics.7 Three of these criticisms seem especially pertinent as challenges for Christian ethics in cyberspace, and I consider them more apt in



Cyberspace and Christian Ethics 167

this new context than they are in RL. Difficulties with the Net include an inordinate focus on individualism, some disconnection of history and identity, and contributions to the fragmentation of self, society, and ethics. I will now discuss each of these three interrelated points.

Individualism

I need to be clear that I refer here to a negative sense of individualism. At a

basic and mundane level, it involves a conception of the person primarily as an

isolated, autonomous, and often anonymous individual rather than as part of a

larger community. Charles Taylor calls this perspective "atomistic individualism."8 Its more nefarious form connects with nihilism, self-indulgence, and a selfish preoccupation with acquiring individual goods like fame and power. This negative sense contrasts with the good kind of individualism. The latter

respects human dignity and diversity, and views the person not as isolated but as

individual-within-community.9 Atomistic and excessive individualism is a

problem with the larger domain of cyberspace. Let me quickly add, however, that I do not think that this is the entire story, as extant virtual communities such as the

WELL clearly show.10 Negative individualism nevertheless provides a challenge

for "Nethics," just as it does for Christian ethics. In spite of the sensationalized stories in the popular media regarding excessive

individualism and the occasional cretins we encounter on-line—e.g., the boy who obtained my credit card number to access pornographic web sites, and the outright criminals like Kevin Mitnick—describing cyberspace as I do meets much resistance from many cyberian commentators and runs counter to much of our on

line terminology. The terms "Internet," "World Wide Web," and even "multi-user

domain" (MUD) suggest an interconnected network of persons that diminishes

even the separatism of RL individualism. John Seabrook contends that the virtual

world not only evades this criticism of atomistic individualism but also counteracts its more insidious form. He goes so far as to characterize going on

line as being "closer to socialism than anything most people in the United States

experience at home." In cyberspace, one fives in a hive, where people can wander

in at will, not in walled separation. According to Seabrook, a private home in the

real world uses walls to keep the world out, whereas a homepage on the web drills

a hole in those walls to let the world in. Moreover, cyberspace creates virtual

public areas where people can gather in chat-rooms or participate in forums.11

Douglas Rushkoff argues that cyberspace explodes the anonymity and

irresponsibility of both VR and RL because "there are hundreds or even

thousands of potentially critical eyes watching every entry. A faulty fact will be

challenged, a fie will be uncovered, plagiarism will be discovered. Cyberspace is

truth serum. Violations of cyber morality or village ethics are immediately

brought to light and passed through circuits of the entire datasphere at lightening

speed."12 And even one Christian ethicist, Ingrid Shafer, goes so far as to claim




that the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular provide the early stages of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's "noosphere," and thus the development of the "collective consciousness" and global mind of humanity.13

In spite of the social aspects of the Net that Seabrook notes, I would argue that when considered in its entirety, cyberspace is primarily individualistic rather than

communitarian, although there clearly are aspects of community. These aspects

are better seen, however, as islands in a sea of individualism, or villages along the more expansive information super-highway. Usenet data indicates that lurking, rather than active participation, is by far the norm.14 As Seabrook's own account

indicates, he surfs the Net alone, scanning for information. This activity, as the

surfing metaphor implies, is a solitary undertaking of a lone individual. As I have noted elsewhere, the "popular metaphor 'information super-highway' connotes an

express route for individuals to get where and what they want as quickly as

possible. A super-highway allows us to minimize intersections with other roads, and so avoid connections with others. We remain isolated in our vehicles as we

travel. The metaphor encourages viewing the Net strictly as an infrastructure for

achieving individual needs, a narrow focus on self."15

Of course, this isolation is not absolute. Many automobile and truck drivers have cellular phones or CB radios, and at the beach one can strike up a conversation with fellow surfers. As Seabrook notes, there is much

communication and sharing of information among Net-surfers. Nevertheless, e

mail and on-line discussions are quite limited in depth and scope, most of which are akin to electronic postcards or a noisy cacophony of one-liners. Most

communication is faceless with a diminished sense of propriety. We may more

readily perceive full-fledged persons when we see their home pages, but these

documents quite often are strictly an extension of one's interests, and sometimes

exercises in self-indulgence. Unlike a community, or even the socialism to which Seabrook alludes, there is only a very limited sense of common good in the larger domain of cyberspace. If my own on-line experience is any indication, radically decentralized libertarianism or anarchism carries the day, or at least receives the "loudest" support.

Rushkoff is right about the Net's potential to make people accountable, and to cause them to think carefully before acting. The Net can be a publicity test that makes "would you want it printed on the front-page of the New York Times" pale in comparison. Just as clearly, however, the anonymity cyberspace provides is

stronger. As Rushkoff himself notes only two pages later, the veil supplied by a

previously unused WELL account furnished one otherwise extremely considerate

WELLbeing the opportunity to develop an annoying alter ego. 'Tree of his

regular identity, he could be whoever he wanted and act however he dared with no

personal repercussions."16 Although the bad sense of individualism is more of a

problem in the wider domain of cyberspace than in frue virtual communities like the WELL, obviously they also face this kind of difficulty, and not just from outsiders trying to crash the party.




On MUDs, anonymity reigns. That fact does not, however, make them a

necessarily vicious social structure. Turkle notes several cases and cites several

reasons why anonymity can be good, providing opportunity for psychological (and I would add, moral) self-improvement. People who have personal and social

difficulties in RL can improve themselves and connect with others in MUDs.

They can experience personal growth, and community can indeed develop.17 Nevertheless, MUDs do remain primarily individualistic. Pavel Curtis, creator

and chief wizard of the MUD LamdaMOO, notes that the anonymity permits

players to be known only by what they explicitly project, and that it encourages some of individualism's excesses. He notes two causes: "the offenders believe

(usually correctly) that they cannot be held accountable for their actions in the real

world, and the very same anonymity makes it easier for them to treat other players

impersonally, as other than real people."18

Rather than the noosphere forecast by Teilhard, the Net is a collage of infinite

parts that are just as likely to collide as they are to collude. The links provided by the Internet and World Wide Web do not unify humanity into a collective whole,

although they do connect some portions of it and facilitate the exchange of

information. Shafer is quite right that the "contact and mingling of often widely diverse worldviews" brings an "opportunity for increased inter-human

understanding." She is also quite right that this coalescence is not our only option; but, rather than only the single alternative of dividing into "antagonistic shards," I

see another option of various, smaller communities, given the diversity of human

practices and interests. While some of these communities will be xenophobic and

withdrawn "into private ideological fortresses," that is not the only option besides

the Teilhardian vision.19 Other types of virtual communities can and do exist.

Atomistic and excessive individualism contrasts sharply with the church, most

other forms of community, and most visions of ethics. The challenge is to find

forms of accountability other than authoritarianism, the thing cyberians fear the

most. If my experience is any indication, it will prove difficult just to get many of

them even to see that middle ground exists between individualism and tyranny. In

spite of the fear that Christianity embodies the latter, Christian ethics more aptly resides in that middle ground, as I discuss below.

History, Narrative, and Identity

For individuals and communities, a sense of history is crucial for identity,

providing both descriptive and normative significance. Historical narrative tells us

what we have been and who we are, and provides guidance regarding who we

should be and what we should do. Such narrative thus connects closely to

communal and individual character. Philip Selznick rightly contends that "The

bonds of community are strongest when they are fashioned from strands of shared

history and culture. They are weak and precarious when they must depend on

very general interests or abstract ideas."20 On the Internet, newsgroups and chat




areas typically are not communities, because they most often concern not even so

much general interests but rather narrowly focused particular areas of interest

divorced from one's larger range of interests. These loci can, however, move in

the direction of community as their history and culture develops. In cyberspace, historical conceptions of identity for both communities and

individuals are not readily produced. Cyberspace functions somewhat like Hauerwas's understanding of liberal modernity as the "project to create social

orders that would make it possible for each person to have no story except the

story that you would choose when you had no story."21 Modernity, then, resists a

historical story in favor of a foundational one. In cyberspace, a foundational account surfaces primarily regarding the Net as a whole. In some sense, this

foundational story is no myth, but factual. People on the Net do enter the new

frontier of cyberspace with no prior VR common story, starting from virtual zero at their initial log-on. It is often assumed, especially with the explosion of Internet access across the globe, that users as a whole have nothing in common but their

natures as self-interested autonomous individuals.22 The frontier mentality is

commonplace, that is, the desire to be free from mies or restrictions, particularly from RL sources. Many cyberians would choose to keep telling an anarchist or

libertarian story. In his Cyberspace Declaration of Independence, John Perry Barlow declares that virtual selves should be immune to the sovereignty of RL

governments in favor of whatever occurs on-line. "We believe that from ethics,

enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge ....

The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the

Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis."23

While that declaration is a start, the Golden Rule is necessary but insufficient for community, although Barlow's notion of an emerging governance indicates an

intuitive understanding that historical development is integral to community formation. A cyberspace example of community formation can be found in the

MUD known as LamdaMOO. Julian Dibble observes that Pavel Curtis's attempt to move LamdaMOO in a "New Direction," from wizardocracy to more of a

democracy, initially met with inertia. When it comes to inventing self-governance, participants did "what any other loose, amorphous agglomeration of individuals would have done: they'd let it slide."24 The crisis of how to deal with a VR rape roused the LamdaMOOvians to action, however, providing a significant shared historical event that turned the "agglomeration" into a community.25 As Selznick

notes, a community's character reflects, among other things, "a heritage of

significant events and crises."26 Without this heritage to provide historical identity, there can be no community.

Regarding individuals, cyberspace permits them to subvert not only VR

history, but also RL history. Not only can people choose the story that they would choose when having no on-line story, they also can do so repeatedly. MUD, IRC, and chat-room users especially can be unencumbered selves, making up any




number of stories about themselves, creating different identities as they go along. Users can even create their own worlds that others may enter. But viewing VR

activity in relation to RL sometimes indicates a postmodem attempt to subvert

one's RL history. While playing a role in cyberspace can strictly be recreational, on-line personae can serve as a means to escape RL history. In some cases, the

escape can lead to depression, addictions, and alienation from RL.27 In other

cases, computer users already experience RL alienation, and so VR provides a

means to experience a better life. Turkle notes how one user, a 23-year-old college

graduate named Josh, lives an entirely different life on MUDs. According to Josh, "I live in a terrible part of town. I see a rat hole of an apartment, I see a dead-end

job, I see AIDS. Down here [in the MUD] I see friends, I have something to offer, I see safe sex."28

Other Turkle interviewees show that die evasion of RL history by individual

MUDders can be only apparent, however, because several on-line personae could

easily fit within a continuing RL history, even if not in a coherent VR history. For

example, a social misfit called Gordon seeks to improve his RL character through wearing various cyberspace masks. Rather than merely playing in the MUDs, Gordon creates various personae to work on developing aspects of himself,

discarding them when they outlive their psychological usefulness. This process of

creation and recreation "has heightened his sense of his self as a work in progress. He talks about his real self as starting to pick up bits and pieces from his characters."29 A sense of personal history is key for RL character and personal

development, even if only disconnected portions of that history appear in VR.

Gordon's virtual life apparently contributes greatly to his RL moral development. If Martha Nussbaum is right about literature's importance for moral development, the vicarious experience proving cmcial because "we have never lived enough,"30

then MUDs and other virtual venues also have the potential to prove morally

useful, and with an additional dimension because of their interactivity. Besides the RL ramifications, users may also exhibit virtual growth. Dibble

notes that most newbies on LamdaMOO assume that the place is "a vast playpen

in which they might act out their wildest fantasies without fear of censure." Those

that stick around, however, eventually change. Users can express a sense of

history and develop good character in their VR roles. "Only with the time and the

acquisition of a fixed character do players tend to make the critical passage from

anonymity to pseudonymity, developing the concern for their character's

reputation that marks the attainment of virtual adulthood."31

A sense of history thus seems necessary for the development of communities

and good moral character. Cyberspace provides the means for subverting or

evading history, hindering such development. Yet it also provides the opportunity for new communities to form and for individual moral development. The

challenge for Christian ethics here is to discourage attempts to evade RL history and to encourage good forms of community and moral development, linking the

virtuous and the virtual. Gordon's example indicates that even anonymous virtual




experience can lead to positive RL moral development, but it is more likely to

occur in more transparent encounters, especially those that extend from VR into

RL, such as Howard Rheingold's account of the WELL.

Fragmentation

The multitude of personae and interests expressed on-line indicates that

cyberspace is rife with fragmentation. Traditionally, the church has always grappled with some version of fragmentation. The Christian, as simultaneous saint and sinner, faces an internal war of nature and spirit. Tension also exists between church and world. As postmodem theory and computer technology make

clear, however, these dualisms are too simple. Rather than simply nature and

spirit, we have several "natures"; rather than simply the church and the world, the

church encounters many different "worlds." Hauerwas seems right that ethical

uncertainty arises not from a lack of action guides, but from having a host of

them, competing for our loyalty.32 Uncertainty also arises regarding how to

interpret and apply some of the action guides that clearly pertain in a given

context.

The various RL allegiances of users combined with cyberspace possibilities and attachments create an even more thorough on-line fragmentation. Kevin

Kelly, executive editor of Wired, in praising the Net notes that "every participant [is] responsible for manufacturing truth out of a noisy cacophony of ideas, opinions, and facts. There is no central meaning, no official canon, no

manufactured consent rippling through the wires from which one can borrow a

viewpoint. Instead, every idea has a backer, and every backer an idea, while

contradiction, paradox, irony, and multifaceted truth rise up in a flood."33 The

enormous number of voices free from various real-world "shackles" makes

fragmentation even more prevalent on-line than in RL.

Fragmentation, however, is not only "out there," but, like cyberspace, is also

internal. Hauerwas also seems right that it can be difficult to maintain coherent moral identity because we are pulled in different directions by our various roles and convictions.34 Cyberspace can provide potentially exponential increases in internal fragmentation, through the ability to join various newsgroups, listservers, chat areas, and MUDs, and the liberty to create legion on-line personae. As an

example of increased fragmentation, consider Turkle's discussion of Doug, a

college junior who plays four characters in three MUDs, and has discovered that

using windows to play his characters simultaneously allows him to split his mind into pieces, turning parts on and off as needed. Besides his MUD windows, his

computer usually displays another one that contains a school project. According to Doug, "RL is just one more window, and it's usually not my best one."35

Fragmentation is an unavoidable aspect of the postmodem condition, whether or not one ventures on-line. The challenge is what to do about this fragmentation, and discern its ramifications for Christian ethics, both in terms of individual and




communal character. How does one sort through the "noisy cacophony" and the

multiple windows with character and integrity? The clearest example of character is a person with an all-consuming purpose,

a unitary view of self. We tend not to meet such persons in real life. And if we do

meet such a person, we tend to consider him or her a fanatic, as somehow not

quite human. This seems to be the reaction of Michael Lewis when he initially encountered the bond salesmen on the forty-first floor of Salomon Brothers.

According to Lewis, "They expressed no interests outside selling bonds, and they

rarely referred to any life outside Salomon Brothers. Their Uves seemed to begin and end on the forty-first floor; and I began to wonder if I wasn't about to enter

the Twilight Zone."36 Although some fundamentalists or traditionalists may con

tinue to hold the unitary notion of self as a model for character, purity of heart

may involve willing more than one thing. The model is unrealistic in the

postmodem age, unless one withdraws from the wider world, and maintains a

stand-alone rather than networked computer.

A more promising model conceives character as wholeness, with balance and

connection rather than unity. Turkle and Hauerwas both argue for a version of this

view, but neither does so satisfactorily. Turkle's conception of the "multiple self'

falls short through the contrasts that she makes with the unitary view of the self.

Whereas her understanding of the unitary self maintains integrity through

repression, censuring internal and external deviance, the multiple flexible self, with open lines of communication, provides greater capacity to acknowledge

diversity, within ourselves and among others. Apparently tolerance is the selfs

core aspect. "We do not feel compelled to rank or judge the elements of our

multiplicity. We do not feel compelled to exclude what does not fit."37

One problem with Turkle's view is a potential lack of coherence—

communication among the selves is necessary but insufficient to provide it. Some

aspects of self may prove ultimately incompatible with one another, and the goals

that one seeks. A second and related problem is the lack of moral outlook other

than the liberal virtue of tolerance. This virtue is important but insufficient for a

complete life, Christian or otherwise. Moreover, this virtue cannot avoid ranking or judging the intolerant aspects of oneself and others as things that fail to fit

Turkle's vision, then, is too decentered to achieve a sense of wholeness.

Hauerwas avoids these problems, but he tends to move too far toward the

unity view, especially after his earliest publications. In his early work, Hauerwas

comes close to a wholeness perspective, although some of his language is

problematic. On one occasion he uses both the metaphors of "hierarchy of

priority" and "mix or connection" in the same paragraph to describe character. Yet

in spite of using the term hierarchy, he apparently wants to avoid the rigidity of a

unified character. Rather than "dominating purpose," character is a "characteristic

way" of doing things, or a "general orientation."38 Nonetheless, the language of

hierarchy proves troublesome because it would be difficult to show the adequacy of a single hierarchy. Hauerwas's other metaphor of "mix or connection" implies




pluralism rather than unity. A pluralistic conception would hold that no single hierarchical ordering of virtues—even if they are all Christian virtues—is

adequate for all circumstances, thus allowing for flexibility. Hauerwas moves closer to the unity view in his later work, although he would

not deny that our selves have many parts. These diverse parts require discipline, however, and so he argues that the character necessary to sort through our various

stories should be formed through the church. Through it one acquires the ability to discriminate and set priorities.39 Christianity must order and modify the other narratives without denying their existence.

Clearly Hauerwas is right that Christianity claims priority over the other

aspects of our Uves, and so to be a good Christian means that one's other stories must be adapted to it. This view does not mean a complete return to unity, but by itself it is not a sufficient balance either. Missing is any sense in which the other stories can also modify the Christian story.40 Christianity is dynamic, not static. It is marked by both continuity and change, the change resulting from various

events, encounters with other worldviews, and technological innovation. This

point brings me to the last section, which concerns the connection between the church and the world.

The Church and the (Virtual) World

What is, or should be, the relation between the church and the real and virtual

worlds? Hauerwas's postmodern understanding offers a good point of departure.

Rather than an ontological distinction as per traditional Christianity, Hauerwas

distinguishes church and world as different outlooks and orientations. The world consists of anyone who does not adopt the Christian story.41 Yet as Barry Penn HoUar notes, the distinction that Hauerwas draws between church and world is

not absolute at an institutional or sociological level.42 Just as fragmentation is both

external and internal, Hauerwas also casts the church/world dichotomy as an

internal division. This internal church/world division apparently replaces the traditional nature/spirit dichotomy, dropping another ontological distinction. The world thus includes those aspects of the self that the Christian story fails to

permeate. Internal fragmentation means that both church and world exist in individual Christians.

As Hauerwas's notion of character indicates, he considers the first task of the church to be forming character, that is, training people how to engage the world

properly. Christians must look inward to the church and its tradition to obtain resources for interpreting and engaging the world, not outward to the larger society. To develop the skills to "help us recognize the possibilities and limits of our society... the church and Christians must be uninvolved in the politics of our

society and involved in the polity that is the church." The church should be "the

primary polity through which we gain the experience to negotiate and make




positive contributions to whatever society in which we find ourselves."43 For that

reason, the church must recover its integrity as a separate and alternative political community.

Several theologians and Christian ethicists have criticized Hauerwas and his

church/world view as sectarian. For example, James Gustafson contends that

Hauerwas offers a seductive "sectarian temptation" for isolating Christianity from

"the wider society and culture of which it is a part." He criticizes Hauerwas for

believing "that there is, or can be, a kind of Christian tribe living in a kind of

ghetto whose members are (or can be) shaped . . . almost exclusively by the

biblical or Christian language or narratives." Gustafson finds such a view

dangerous and absurd; clearly Christians can and do participate in the world's

other communities.44

The sectarian label itself is value-laden, connoting a negative judgment, and it

seems justified given some of Hauerwas's rhetoric. Nevertheless, Hauerwas

vehemently rejects the sectarian label, and in one respect he clearly is "not guilty" of the charge. Hauerwas does not call for a withdrawal ethic, stating explicitly in

Christian Existence Today that it would be indefensible to claim that Christians

may live only in the church. "Christians rightly find themselves members of many communities."45 Whereas Gustafson posits only two options—complete

involvement in society or complete withdrawal from it—Hauerwas focuses on a

middle ground of selective participation. The concrete specification of this

selectivity cannot be determined in the abstract, but is contingent on the particular context of actual societies. Christians require interpretive categories to ascertain

whether and how to participate.46 In this regard, Hauerwas emphasizes that while

Christians must first look inward, they must then, and only then, look outward to see where their beliefs and interests coincide with the world's.

The withdrawal ethic is not the whole of the sectarian charge, however.

Gustafson also worries about the "tribalism" of a too radical inward gaze or focus.

The sectarian temptation isolates "Christian theology and ethics from critical

external points of view in order to maintain the uniqueness or historic identity of

Christianity."47 Hauerwas is far less successful in evading this charge of

epistemological sectarianism. Although he has on a handful of occasions admitted

that the church is open to external criticism, noting that God can come to the

church "in the form of a stranger,"48 such admission is both rare and sketchy.

Clearly the church has changed through its encounters with external sources.

Hauerwas himself makes good use of Aristotle, an outsider who has been a

traditional friend of the church, although not always regarded as such. The church

has also been modified by scientific and political discoveries, theories, and

practices. Like any community, the church changes in its encounters with a

changing world. These encounters are not only with traditions, cultures, and ideas, however,

but also with technology. While I agree with Pope John Paul II that Christians

should seek to "understand... and to interpret [computer technology] in the light




of faith," and to use it "to assist in promoting greater universal justice, greater respect for human rights, a healthy development for all individuals and peoples, and the freedoms essential for a fully human life,"49 he is naive if he thinks that

computer technology will not also influence Christianity. This technology may require the church to reinterpret itself and its sources, re-emphasize or de

emphasize parts of its tradition, or adopt new points of view, even as the church

also influences the use of computer technology. As an analogy, consider the

impact of Gutenberg's printing press on Christianity. This technology enabled the Protestant Reformation. Without it, the scripture could not get into the hands of a

newly literate people, and it would be difficult for Martin Luther to speak of the

"priesthood of all believers." Although he may somewhat overstate the case, the

cultural critic Neil Postman is on the right track when he claims, 'Tools are not

integrated into the culture; they attack the culture. They bid to become the

culture."50 One cannot merely use tools; one is changed by using them, or by

others' use of them. For this reason, I find Stephen O'Leary and Brenda Brasher

convincing when they argue that Christianity in cyberspace will undergo a "subtle

but profound transformation, one that parallels the historic evolution of

Christianity as it resisted, adopted, and adapted the concepts and method of classical rhetoric."51

So what might that transformation look like? I can only venture a hypothesis here, just as providing an accurate prediction during Gutenberg's time would have

proved difficult. Although the term "sect" remains problematic as per Gustafson's

critique, it may nonetheless provide the best conception of the church in the age of

computer technology, as long as it explicitly avoids the sectarian temptations of

withdrawal and isolation. Turning Ernst Troeltsch on his head, the sect would be

the normative, positive ideal-type, with the capital-C Church as the negative ideal

type. The church as local community actively engaging the world fits squarely within the Christian tradition. Unlike the capital-C Church, it would not seek to direct the entire culture, on-line or off-line, providing a good fit with the computer environment, too. In its engagement with the world, the Church-type worked well in medieval culture, but not well at all in liberal modernity, and especially not with

contemporary cyberspace.

A postmodem church extending into VR would not be hierarchical, centralized, or authoritarian, nor would it be isolated or seek to be impervious to external influence. To avoid these things, it would prove useful to appeal to various internal resources, and not only to the technological environment.

Utilizing Catholic social thought, for example, one could apply a crucial

component of it—the principle of subsidiarity52—to the church itself. This

principle rejects unnecessary centralized authority out of respect for human

dignity and local communities. In this case, those local communities would be both virtual and real (never exclusively the former). One potential model for the cybersect church is John Howard Yoder's conception of the church as a voluntary

community. This conception offers a third way between negative individualism




and authoritarianism, where the individual participates in and consents to an

authority. In this regard it respects the good kind of individualism and coerces no one to join, while offering the benefits of Christian community.53

NOTES

'An earlier version of the paper, entitled "The Church in Cyberspace: Whose Platform? Which Operating System?" was presented at the Computer Ethics and Moral Theologies Conference, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA (March 1996).

2Stephen O'Leary notes that the Eucharist provides precedent for virtual religious rituals in

"Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64/4, (Winter 1996), 789.

'Michael Heim distinguishes seven possible meanings of virtual reality, ranging from the wide (anything artificial) to the narrow (full-body immersion). Among the seven, I would opt for interaction ("any electronic representation with which [one] can interact"), because it is not so wide as to be vacuous, but is broad enough to include textual and graphical interfaces.

Beyond these mundane definitions, Heim suggests that VR provides "augmented reality," and contends that its essence "ultimately lies not in technology but in art. . . . Rather than control or

escape or communicate, the ultimate promise of VR may be to transform, to redeem our awareness of reality." This ultimate promise is likely beyond the capacity of computer

technology, but overlaps nicely with Christian theology. See The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), chapter 8.

4Stephen D. O'Leary and Brenda E. Brasher, "The Unknown God of the Internet:

Religious Communication from the Ancient Agora to the Virtual Forum," Philosophical Perspectives on Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. Charles Ess, (Albany, NY: SUNY

Press, 1996), 250.

5Pope John Paul II, "The Church Must Learn to Cope With the Computer Culture," (27 May 1989); available via WWW, http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/jp.ii/ computer-culture.html (accessed 10 January 2000).

'Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 18.

7See just about any of Hauerwas's various essays. In this paper, I primarily rely on the

essays in A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in

Christian Ethics, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), and Christian

Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living In Between, (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1988).

'Charles Taylor, "Atomism," Communitarianism and Individualism, ed. Shlomo Avineri

and Avner de-Shalit, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 29-50. 'Hauerwas apparently accepts this kind of individualism, although not by name, and

prefers to describe it strictly from within the Christian tradition, calling the church not only a

community of character, but a community of characters "because it enables the diversity of gifts and virtues to flourish." (Community of Character, 3; emphasis added).

10The WELL is an acronym for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. See Howard Rheingold, The

Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,

1993). "John Seabrook, "Home on the Net," The New Yorker, (Oct. 16, 1995), 66, 68.

"Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, (New York:

HarperCollins, 1995), 36.

"Ingrid Shafer, "Cyberspace, Evolution, and Teilhard's Vision of Cosmic Love"

(presented at the Computer Ethics and Moral Theologies Conference, Virginia Theological

Seminary, VA, March 1996) and "WWW, Teilhard, and Family Values for the Future,"




http://www.bsc.nodak.edu/English/webgeist/ingrid.htm, (accessed December 18, 1999). See

also Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Formation of the Noosphere," The Future of Man, tr.

Norman Denny, (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 14B. Reid, Usenet Readership Summary Report for January 93 (also February, March, and

May 1993); cited by Margaret L. McLaughlin, Kerry K. Osborne, and Christine B. Smith, "Standards of Conduct on Usenet," Cybersociety: Computer-mediated Communication and

Community, ed. Steven G. Jones, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995), 91-92.

15George D. Randels Jr., "Virtual Communities and Virtuous Reality," Information Technology (Nov-Dec 1996), 3.

"Rushkoff, Cyberia, 38.

"Turkle, Life on the Screen, chapter 7. 18Pavel Curtis, "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities," available

via anonymous ftp at ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/MOO/papers/DIAC92.*. "Shafer, "WWW, Teilhard, and Family Values for the Future."

20Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 361.

"Stanley Hauerwas, "Knowing How to Go on When You Do Not Know Where You Are: A Response to John Cobb, Jr.," Theology Today 51/4 (Jan. 1995), 564. This statement is perhaps a refinement over his earlier contention that "liberalism teaches us . . . that we have no story." (Community of Character, 84.) If so, it probably indicates that Hauerwas is now sensitive to a criticism several scholars have made of this latter characterization of liberalism. Instead of a

strictly foundational account, liberal modernity itself constitutes a story. "Until recently, however, cyberians probably had a common RL story. In 1995, John

Perry Barlow contended that they were fairly homogenous, consisting primarily of "white males under 50 with plenty of computer terminal time, great typing skills, high math SATs, strongly held opinions on just about everything, and an excruciating face-to-face shyness, especially with the opposite sex." (John Perry Barlow, "Is There a There in Cyberspace," Utne Reader, (Mar Apr 1995), 54.) That description no longer holds true five years later, with a more diverse range of people world-wide accessing the Internet today, although justice issues regarding access

clearly remain. "John Perry Barlow, "Cyberspace Declaration of Independence" (8 February 1996);

available via WWW at http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/sean/declaration.htmI (accessed 10 January 2000). Barlow's declaration was sparked by the Telecommunications Decency Act. I agree with Barlow in rejecting this particular piece of legislation, which was eventually found

unconstitutional, but think that his declaration goes too far. 24 Julian Dibble, "A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit,

Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society," The Village Voice, (Dec. 21, 1993); available via gopher from gopher://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/CO/related/ NVR/VillageVoice.txt.

25Ibid.

26Selznick, Moral Commonwealth, 361.

"See, e.g., Robert Krauft, et al, "Internet Paradox: A Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-being?" The American Psychologist 53/9 (Sept. 1998), 1017-1031. For a critique of the study, see Jill Rierdan, "Internet-Depression Link?" The American Psychologist 54/9 (Sept. 1999), 781-782.

"Turkle, Life on the Screen, 239.

"Ibid., 190. 30Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 47.

"Dibble, "A Rape in Cyberspace." "Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 4. "Kevin Kelly, "The Electronic Hive: Embrace It," Harper's, (May 1994), 24.

"Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 6.

"Turkle, Life on the Screen, 13.




"Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.), 69.

"Turkle, Life on the Screen, 261-262.

"Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics, (Trinity University Press, 1985,1975), 120; and Stanley Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Theological Reflection, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, (1981, 1974), 69.

"Hauerwas, Christian Existence, 15-16; and Community of Character, 96. 40Hauerwas does make the occasional remark that Christianity can or even should be open

to external challenge. These are, however, only occasional remarks, and I am tempted to say that

despite his voluminous writing, I can count them on one hand. 1 will discuss this point further in the next section.

■"Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, 100-101.

42Barry Penn-Hollar, On Being the Church in the United States: Contemporary Theological Critiques of Liberalism, (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 137.

43Hauerwas, Community of Character, 74. "lames M. Gustafson, "The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church,

and the University," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society 40 (1985), 90-91.

"Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 15.

"Ibid., 11.

"Gustafson, "Sectarian Temptation," 83.

"Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, 11.

49Pope John Paul II, "The Church Must Learn to Cope With the Computer Culture."

S0Neil Postman, Technolopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, (New York:

Vintage Books, 1992), 28.

"O'Leary and Brasher, "The Unknown God of the Internet," 234.

52"Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their

own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the

same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of

its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social and never destroy and absorb

them." Pope Pius XI, Quadregismo Anno, (May 15, 1931); reprinted in David M. Byers, ed., Justice in the Marketplace: Collected Statements of the Vatican and the United States Catholic

Bishops on Economic Policy, 1891-1984, (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference,

1985), 79. 53John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics and Gospel, (Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 22-26.



Cyberspace and Christian Ethics: The Virtuous and/in/of The Virtual

Documents