No sooner than when the communication network had been established among computers worldwide, users of different religious affiliations started using it for religious purposes. We observe that from the year 1983 onwards religious sites have been established and some religious discussion groups have started discuss-ing religious issues. The exchange of information focusdiscuss-ing on religious and moral
1 During the live broadcast of religious programs on the radio and TV on religious days and nights, people display an emotional participation as presupposed by the media religiosity, rather than attending the temples or actively performing rites at home. Thus, the classical congregational structure loses its importance, to be replaced by a new form of religiosity made up of a sense of individual or mass religiosity and devotion, as it were.
Digitalization and Religion 21
issues has taken place through the religious sites. Along with the religious sites set up in America by followers of many different religions such as Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, many other virtual churches and temples were later opened to the access of loggers in different parts of the globe. Groups of different religious affiliations, when they came to know computer networks, realized its utility and started using them (Ferre, 2010: 689).
Comprehensive surveys on the relations between religion and digital networks have been performed in different countries. Heidi Campbell, one of the researchers of this field, in his book When Religion Meets New Media (2010) investigated how the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist communities responded to the Internet and mobile phones. She is not directly interested in the acceptance or rejection of communication technology vehicles, because, in addition to some old reserves that the religious groups have vis-à-vis the communication media, modern religious groups may take various attitudes. She is rather interested in the fact that ‘the com-munities bring their way of life in harmony with technology’ or that ‘they bring the new technologies into harmony with their way of life’. For her, there are interesting cases in the reactions of religious groups towards technology (i.e. in rebuilding themselves to come into harmony with novelties). Such a situation requires both the religious group members and their leaders to seriously think about finding the tech-nology that is suitable to themselves. On this subject, very striking results have been found especially among the Jewish and Muslim communities. With respect to exter-nal factors with a technological origin that try to intrude into the life of sincere and strictly practicing believers, for example, the Orthodox Jews, though they endorse the use of cell phones in principle, they ban the use of them in some applications.
They also have reservations about connecting to the Internet because it includes a lot of tempting content. They also forbid advertisement films, gambling, and audial and visual cell phone messages used by friendship services. Israeli cell phone com-panies take measures to prevent the use of unwanted applications through the use of Kosher software and barcodes showing the official endorsement of the Rabbis.
Thus, communication among Orthodox Jews is conducted by means of the Kosher communication device that prevents access to undesirable communication and al-lows users to communicate only with permissible numbers. For example, this cell phone prevents users from initially reaching some numbers and controls incoming calls. Calls to numbers unendorsed by the Kosher software are charged a fee that is two or three times higher than calls made to endorsed numbers. In addition, those who call any numbers other than that of the fire department, the police, and the ambulance during the Sabbath are subjected to different punishments, including the confiscation of the cell phone used for that call (Ferre, 2010: 690).
Mehmet Akgül 22
While the Orthodox Jews tended to limit the use of cell phones through Kosher software, Muslims found ways to add more religious applications to cell phones.
The Muslim groups offer free software that can be set up in different types of smart cell phones. Such applications offered to the pious users include those for finding the Kaaba direction for performing ritual prayers, informing users of daily ritual prayer times, providing live connection to Mecca for daily ritual prayers, reciting aloud certain formulas of prayer, reading and listening to the Qur’ānic verses and the prophetic Traditions, and reciting certain passages from the Qur’ān as a neces-sary component of the ritual prayers, while others include e-book series from the main religious sources and visual teaching of the bodily worships.
In her applied case study on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups, Campbell tried to find out the responses and reactions of religious groups to digital com-munication media, whereby she aimed at discovering the approaches of religious groups to ‘technology use in shaping religious-social life’. The premise of this approach is that ‘religious groups take an active role in making the decisions on the technology use’. The responses given by religious groups to the use of digital communication media are composed of four successive steps. In understanding what kind of responses are produced by religious groups to digital communica-tion, knowledge of the group’s tradition and history of the media use is both important and necessary as a first stage. ‘What kind of positions do the groups take vis-à-vis the media and how do they use them’? In the second stage, ‘What are the core values and beliefs of the groups’? ‘What kind of conceptions deter-mines the group position in using or not using the media’? In the third stage,
‘the way the media’s ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ are evaluated by the group is investigated’.
‘How is the group discussing, negotiating, and practicing the decision, positively or negatively, on the media?’ In the fourth stage, the discourse of the group is analyzed, in which the conception of technology takes shape. ‘How does a new religious community practically use the new media and explain to their member their rules and bans on the media?’ Lastly, Campbell, she lists the reasons that new media are easily used by religious groups as the following: to disseminate and propagate religion, to communicate the fixed/core beliefs to people, to facilitate the communication network for strengthening the group’s choice, to influence larger social sections, and to help to practice the rites. On the other hand, if media use meets resistance, she lists the reasons for this as follows: the media give their members free access to secular content, and the uncontrolled use of the media undermine and shake the interpretation of the sacred traditions and texts as well as the authority of religious leadership (For more information, see Campbell, 2010; Ferre, 2010: 690).
Digitalization and Religion 23
It is clear that there is a differentiation, positive or negative, in the religious groups’ attitudes towards media use. So, how should one assess these results? On the other hand, in so far as techno-scientific developments having linear progress, how will religious content and knowledge put in circulation in the domain of the changing communication means and the media be shaped in the future?