Digitalising the Church: Clergy’s attitudes towards the Church’s mission online

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalisation of the Churches’ activities. Extensive research covers the evolution of digitalisation of religion, its content and tools. However, limited attention is paid to priests’ attitudes towards the Churches’ mission online. These attitudes highlight the way Churches reacts to digital apps and the use of the Internet. This article aims to explain how priests see and understand online activity of the Orthodox Church in society. It uses Romania as a case study due to its very good Internet infrastructure and active Church online. The qualitative analysis draws on 19 semi-structured interviews with Orthodox priests, conducted in January–February 2021. The results indicate that although there is a willingness among priests to use digital technologies for religious activities, the attitudes are driven by normative religion and sometimes by negativity.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital Orthodoxy
• Internet
• Orthodox Church
• priests
• Romania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See ‘Recommendations for diocese information divisions on their work in social media’ [Рекомендации по работе в социальных сетях для епархиальных и приходских информационных служб], http://sinfo-mp.ru/rekomendatsii-po-rabote-v-sotsialnyih-setyah-dlya-eparhialnyih-i-prihodskih-informatsionnyih-sluzhb.html.

2. I acknowledge that I am using terms that are disputed in some quarters, such as ‘religion’, ‘the secular’, ‘believers’ and ‘spiritual’. These are terms that the research subjects are comfortable using.