In the age of coronavirus, what does God think of our new digital spirituality?

These days I am engaged in serious reflection on the nature of public worship today.

In my synagogue, when we begin our sabbath services, the amount of technology is unbelievable. We installed a few years ago a livestream camera so that anyone around the world can participate in our services. The response had been positive. It benefits folks who are mostly shut in or who live part time out of town and part time on Hilton Head Island and means they can stay in touch with their congregation year round. That is well and good.

Now we have taken this technology to the next level and it is mind blowing. We installed screens and can include Zoom technology. We livestream services and can have guest readers for the prayers. Zoom has certainly made a huge difference in spreading the net of congregant participation.

Add to that a new software our religious movement came out with this summer called Visual Tephillah or Prayer.

So in a coronavirus world, not only can we watch the service live-streamed and invite people to join in reading the liturgy but we can project on a screen each and every prayer so that if one does not have a prayer book all we have to do is watch through the livestream and see the prayers along with the clergy leading the service.

Religious institutions are breaking new ground with prerecorded music which can be added to the rest of the technological achievements in our worship services. It is clear that all these changes force clergy and congregant alike to stretch new muscles in terms of adapting to and learning how to work with the computer, tablets, or cell phones in a religious setting.

I have watched services on You Tube as well.

It is amazing to witness what technology offers us today.

Yet we all know and yearn for the day when we can return safely to our respective sanctuaries for communal worship. We long to see our friends and sit beside them and greet them after services and grab a nosh at the dessert table.

Yet my sense is that we will be using these options long into the future in the post COVID19 world.

As watch my production team set up the technology and monitor it during the services and as we lead the services wearing our masks and face shields, I ask myself a question: Where is God in all of this technological apparatus?

In other words, does all the attention to the technology and the attempt to make the worship experience accessible to everyone enhance the experience or diminish it?

Are we focusing so much time keeping our masks on and face shields straight or fixing the unforeseeable glitches in the internet connections that we loose something of the spiritual connection?

Or is it the opposite?

I imagine asking God if He likes what we are doing? Is God shrugging shoulders saying, “Do what you have to do! It’s not like it was in the days of the Bible. Things were a lot simpler then.”

At least when people are sitting in the pews, we can see if they look like they are engaged in the prayerful moment or not.

But when I look into the ceiling where the livestream camera is mounted, I have no idea what people are doing as they watch the services.

Are my congregants sitting on the couch?

Are they relaxing by the pool and watching the service on the their computer?

Are my congregants able to create a mood for themselves that enables them to concentrate and get into the spirit of the moment?

We are living in an age of digital spirituality.

I teach Bible classes on Zoom and lead worship on the altar of digital sanctity.

People seem to like it and give us mostly positive feedback.

Yet I can’t help but feel sad for our folks who do not have the access to or the knowledge to operate computers or tablets and who feel left out. How do we meet their needs?

We all need to be careful that when we watch the services from our homes that we not only focus on watching but preserve the intention of prayer as if we were sitting in our favorite pews inside the house of worship.

That is absolutely the biggest challenge and the one that I am guessing - or at least hoping - that God is most concerned about, too.

This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 1:34 PM with the headline "In the age of coronavirus, what does God think of our new digital spirituality?."