Religious worship online: A qualitative study of two Sunday virtual services

Abstract

This article examines the experience of online worship among 13 participants ‘attending’ virtual services in Cambridge. We focus upon an online formal Eucharistic service and a more informal Sunday evening non-Eucharistic service. After providing an overview of the literature on online religion, more specifically the possibility of a virtual religious community and the performance of online Eucharist, we present data from semi-structured interviews which were analysed through thematic analysis. The interviews reveal that virtual services, while better than nothing, have significant limitations in terms of participation, belonging, and the kind of religious experience engendered. While only two participants expressed the view that the virtual service was better than the live service, the majority found that the virtual service lacked a sense of connectedness. However, everyone agreed that it was different from a television broadcast in several important ways. The overall view was that celebrating the Eucharist was not possible online, because congregants could not actually partake of the bread and wine blessed by the priest which, for them, was an essential aspect of the ritual. For most people there was neither spiritual communion, nor a belief in consecration at a distance, leaving them feeling they were not really participating in the Eucharist. The participants in the study who engaged with both the Eucharist in the morning and the non-Eucharistic service in the evening generally seem to have preferred the latter. The data from this study are congruent with studies of diverse faiths which reveal the perceived importance of physical presence, contact and connection as being important for ritual effectiveness.

Keywords

Embodiment meaning methodology prayer religion ritual

This semi-structured interview study examines the experience of online worship among Anglican Christians in Cambridge and asks whether congregants like it, how the online version differs from its live counterpart, and whether they maintain that it is possible to conduct ritual, in this instance the Eucharist, in cyberspace rather than geographical space? Do participants in the online services feel a sense of belonging to a religious community, that is, they are connected to others, and do they feel they are actually participating in the ritual performance rather than just being spectators? We differentiate between belonging and participation as the former is more about bonding and identity, and the latter involves movement and speech.

The Internet has changed our senses of subjectivity, community and agency, has opened up new forms of social interaction, and provides new possibilities of religious and spiritual experience (Hackett, 2006). Compared with television broadcasts, the Internet allows for communal interaction through its audio and visual functions. Dawson and Cowan (2004) underscore the fact that the Internet significantly impacts religious practice. As Horsfield (2003) notes, digital technologies have major consequences for faith ideologies, religious practices and institutions. Ward (2006) argues that the Internet impacts the nature of communication and the senses of time and place, and the ways we see the world. Campbell (2013) notes that the term ‘[d]igital religion’ denotes religion which is performed and articulated online. She also argues that digital media are simultaneously shaping and being shaped by religious practices. Cyberspace itself – a particular electronic space associated with computer networks – has even been seen as ‘spiritual’ – lacking time, place and location in which interactions occur between computers and people and interpersonal interactions occur (O’Leary, 1996). There is now much online assistance with personal spirituality and steps are being taken to develop an automated spiritual companion (Wilks, in press). Thus, there is a deep connection between the world of cyberspace and the world of spirituality (Cobb, 1998).

In the past year, during the Covid-19 pandemic online worship has grown exponentially, as face-to-face social interactions in religious settings have been largely prohibited. These practices have raised many questions, particularly relating to what constitutes a religious community, whether online ritual is possible, and what is the role of embodiment in these processes. To what extent does a virtual ritual mirror an organised religious community? Can online religion supplement its live counterpart? These are questions which will be raised within every faith tradition, but the Christian tradition, which is more closely intertwined with Western technology, has so far gone further in engaging with them. The participation of the embodied community in worship is a central feature of many faith traditions, with physical presence providing structures of time and place. Lack of physical presence is held by many to render rituals ineffective.

Helland (2005) differentiates between online religion in which websites provide for the possibility of individuals to interact in some way, from religion online which functions purely as a source of information. Parish (2020) notes how, in recent times, these distinctions have become blurred. For Christians, particular issues are raised by the Mass. Is virtual Mass as acceptable as Mass in the real world? Does an online Mass have advantages, for instance, for those who cannot physically attend Mass due to illness or distance or for younger generations, well versed in virtual reality, to return them to faith?

Online worship involves consideration of several aspects. These include the virtual religious community, embodiment and the possibility of performing ritual online. In this instance, we specifically focus upon the Eucharist. These aspects, as we shall discuss below, have influenced our research questions.

Virtual religious community

The idea of virtual religious community is not new and has been discussed by many authors pre-Covid-19 (Campbell, 2012). Campbell argues for the possibility of a true online religious community. She defines online religious community as ‘the building and maintaining of relationships through a social network that facilitates the pursuit of a common purpose related to their shared faith’. This experience can be found on a variety of religious platforms. In her view individuals are attracted to them because of the ‘relational aspects’ and the ‘spiritual opportunities’ present there. The dynamic, flexible nature of the Internet allows for a networked religion which is very individualised. Campbell has found that online religion does not diminish live attendance at church, but rather supplements it, and has the potential to connect and affect its users.

Other scholars would disagree with the above. Parish (2020) notes how the Catholic Church has always argued for the importance of ‘real’ social and interpersonal relationships, for membership and belonging, for liturgical worship. According to the Pontifical Council:

. . . the virtual reality of cyberspace cannot substitute for real interpersonal community, the incarnational reality of the sacraments and the liturgy, or the immediate and direct proclamation of the gospel. (Foley, 2002; The Church and the Internet)

For Catholics virtual reality can only complement, but never replace, real-world liturgical services. She mentions how Gaudium et Spes (Vatican Council II, 1965), the pastoral constitution of the church in the modern world, underscores the fact that, while digital media may provide an opportunity for other types of social interaction, these are artificial and could possibly destroy the bonds of live social relationships. In agreement, Parish (2020) asserts that online worship does not forge the same social bonds as live religion in church.

Individual embodiment

There has recently been growing interest in the exploration of religious worship and practices from the perspective of embodiment (e.g. Strawn & Brown, 2020; Van Cappellen & Edwards, 2021). Watts (2021) looks at religious rituals from the perspective of 4E cognition (see Newen et al., 2018), that is, worship that is embodied, embedded, extended and enactive. The meanings of religious rituals are enacted as much as verbalised. For example, reverence and penitence are expressed by performing bowing and prostration. When these actions are performed in collective rituals a mode of cognition is engendered that is socially embedded, and an extended group mind develops. The research that we will report here focuses particularly on the Christian tradition, but collective rituals are important in all faith traditions (Savage, 2021).

Aruges for the role of embodiment, interactive coordination and synchronisation in religious rituals. He asserts that current cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion have placed too much emphasis on the brain and have largely neglected the body. But cognitive processes are shaped not only by evolution but also by cultural, social and bodily processes. It is through bodily performance that rituals become alive and emotionally accessible. Schuler (2011) stresses the role of embodied cognition on religious thought – emotions, movement, dynamic bodily interactions and social representations shape the way we perceive the world and act in it and this is especially so for religious rituals. Of particular importance is synchronisation, the ability to keep together in time, for the ritual roots of society (see Bellah, 2006). Synchronisation creates particular body-schemas through which we perceive and interact with the world, and which subsequently shape the embodied experience of those participating in ritual.

These ideas echo Emil Durkheim’s notion of collective effervescence which recognises synchronous behaviour as a core social mechanism. For Schuler (2011), ‘Others’ bodies are also sources of embodied experience that unconsciously influence the way we interact and synchronize with each other through shared somatic and emotional states of arousal’ (p. 93). Through observing others performing diverse actions with their bodies, identical body images and body movements tend to occur in the observer, thus causing similar mental representations and meanings. Goldman (2006) notes that observation of the emotional states of others triggers the same neural response as the actual experiencing of these states.

A helpful theoretical framework for understanding the impact of religious rituals is Robin Dunbar’s ‘Social Brain’ theory (Dunbar, 2020). The significance of a real world religious community lies partly in the opportunity it provides for the development of a network of supportive social relationships, but there is a more specific impact of a group of people performing rituals together. Dunbar emphasises the importance of synchronised rhythmic movements, which lead to collective release of endorphins, which in turn leads to powerful social bonding. Sarah Charles et al. have applied this model to religious rituals in large-scale field studies carried out in the United Kingdom and Brazil. They showed that religious rituals increased both pain threshold (often taken as a marker of endorphin release) and social bonding (Charles et al., 2020).

Watts (2017) has argued for a two-factor theory of religious experience, one factor more psychobiological and experiential, and the other more cognitive and interpretive. Dunbar’s social brain theory provides an approach to understanding the effects of shared rituals in terms of the first of these factors. Those who choose to gather together for a particular ritual often do so because they already have a shared interpretive framework, and the ritual actions themselves may tend to engender a particular interpretive framework. There are non-arbitrary linkages between postures and actions on the one hand and attitudes and meanings on the other (Van Cappellen et al., 2021; Watts, 2021). Obeisance, for example, spans both. There may also be some kind of social contagion process at work (Levy & Nail, 1993) whereby there is strengthening in each individual of the collective cognitive framework that forms in the extended mind of a ritual community.

A sense of the transcendent seems to be at the core of the interpretive frameworks associated with religious rituals and may further contribute to social bonding in a ritual community. Dein (2020) has argued that a sense of the transcendent makes a particular contribution to social bonding, because it is associated with a dissolution or weakening of ego boundaries. The self is thus transcended in two ways. There is both a sense of participation in a higher, all-encompassing reality, but also absorption into the community of people who, through their rituals, are sharing a common sense of the transcendent.

All such effects of ritual seem to depend on the ritual participants being physically present together, and the ritual being carried out in an embodied way by all participants. It is hard to see that virtual rituals could, in the same way, give rise to collective endorphin release, social bonding and a sense of the transcendent. A striking physiological indication of social cohesion, found in firewalking rituals, is that the heart rates of participants become synchronised (Konvalinka et al., 2011). It is hard to see that anything comparable would be demonstrable among participants in virtual rituals.

Is it possible to perform online ritual? What shifts occur in ritual when it is performed online? Rather than asking whether on line ritual is good or bad, it is more appropriate to ask how cultural factors dictate what a viable ritual is. How does belonging differ from participation? Helland (2012) argues for ‘symbolic substitution . . . where the virtual space simulates the representation of sacred space to the point where genuine ritual experience can occur’. To what extent is this assertion valid?

According to ‘Ritual Transfer Theory’, ritual becomes changed when transferred to another context (including real life to online), and this might involve changes in performance, interaction, structure, communication and meaning (Lüddeckens et al., 2006). Similarly, Heidbrink (2007) notes that a move to online ritual effects a shift in participants, location and ritual performance.

Geographical places are part of everyday life and more specifically here, are central to religious life. Research into religion, spirituality and place is limited in the psychology of religion (unlike in anthropology and sociology of religion). Counted and Watts (2019) provide an excellent overview of this area. For them thoughts, feelings and behaviour occur in particular environments and religious experiences occur in specific geographical contexts – in particular places. Place experiences in turn shape religious experiences. Place and the practice of religion are inseparable and the study of place broadens understanding of religion generally. These authors conceptualise both religion and place as ‘transitional objects’ with anthropomorphic attributes. They have psychologically significant characteristics. From a psychodynamic perspective, as transactional objects they are substitutes for human interactions.

Jacobs (2007) discusses the notion of a ’virtual church’ which he defines as an online platform where congregants can perform asynchronous religious rituals. This author argues that the Internet can be a sacred space, and uses the examples of online puja and Christian prayer. He deploys the work of Tambiah (1981) to argue that the Internet is more than a repository for information, it is also a space for communication and interpersonal interaction and can facilitate sense of co-presence.

Agreeing that the Internet is an appropriate medium for the performance of ritual, Casey (2006) remarks that online ritual raises several issues pertaining to space, time, communication, co-presence and performance, topics traditionally studied by ritual theorists. I would further add that it changes participant’s experience of ritual. Casey argues that ritual makes present the virtual, and that cyberspace is an appropriate medium for ritual enactment. She asks how a change in the ways that we practice our religion affects our ideas about that ritual practice and its functions? In her view we need to look at the characteristics of cyberspace (space, time, co-presence, authority, roles and performance) to understand online ritual. Casey asserts that religious rituals are acts of believing that refer to unseen realities. Online ritual points beyond itself to the divine or sacred and makes present the virtual. Ritual objects can provide access to something or render something present (Ricoeur, 1976).

Communion/Mass/Eucharist

Virtual worship raises different issues for Eucharistic and non-Eucharistic worship, as questions of validity do you not arise in the same way in the latter. Non-Eucharistic services in which teaching is the main element may translate best into online services. However, Pentecostal and charismatic worship is highly embodied and often includes synchronised movement rhythmic movement of a kind that Dunbar (2022) would expect to lead to collective endorphin release. However, our main focus here is on the religious ritual of the communion service in the Christian tradition, also known as the Mass or Eucharist. During the Covid pandemic there have been many virtual celebrations of Communion. However, a virtual celebration of Communion raises many difficult theological issues for churches. At the heart of the Eucharist are a series of actions as bread is offered, blessed, broken and shared. The synchronised movements by the congregation form the individual members of the congregation into a social body. The gradual drawing near to the altar, first by the priest in the entrance procession, and later by the whole congregation to receive the sacrament, represent being united with the presence of God. Much of this is degraded in a virtual Eucharist, leaving questions about whether a valid Eucharist has actually occurred, and whether online participants have really been part of it. The virtual Eucharist raises intriguing theological issues. To what extent do the effects of the Mass extend beyond the confines of church? Does the bread and wine of those watching from home become consecrated? Do the congregants receive a spiritual communion or is it physical?

Particular issues arise in relation to a virtual mass or Eucharist. While Lutheran and Anglican views on the ‘real presence of Christ’ differ from the Catholic Church’s understandings, both normally emphasise that it is necessary for the Eucharist to be received in the physical presence of the priest and the community (Power, 1992). As Labenek (2014, p. 4) states, ‘We come together in celebration of the Last Supper of Christ and take part in this meal with Christ and each other’. A virtual Eucharist, in contrast, involves the priest consecrating bread and wine in a separate location from the congregation; the latter make ‘spiritual communion’ without bread and wine, or consume bread and wine in their own location. To what extent do congregants derive the benefits of the sacrament if they are not present with the priest? Is the virtual Mass equivalent to the Mass performed in the real world? Can the consecration of the bread and wine extend to other locations? Is the priestly consecration operative in other locations?

There has been debate in several churches about the possibility of performing an online Mass. A range of theological views has been expressed about the legitimacy of performing the online Eucharist, and these theological views impact the performance of this ritual. The Church of England, the Catholic Church and the Methodist Church of GB generally forbid their clergy/ministers to offer communion online.

Anglicanism

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, argues that the issue of a virtual Mass revolves around Christian beliefs about the nature of a human being and our identity. Humans are embodied selves. Williams (2015) argues that there is ‘no sacrament that can bypass the body’. For him a virtual Eucharist is problematic, not only because there is no sharing of bread and wine, but also because of a lack of embodied persons standing near each other and receiving the bread and wine. He underscores the fact that we receive the words of God through our bodies.

In a similar vein, Anglican Priest and theologian Graham Ward (2000) bemoans the fact that virtual reality removes the element of embodiment from worship, potentially reducing it to a set of signs and to narratives becoming just information. For him, Christian narratives must be lived out in everyday life, practised and embodied within community contexts. Ward (2005) asserts how the Internet technology potentially removes important aspects that Christianity brings to culture generally, including the embodied community.

Finally, as Douglas (2020) notes, at the Last Supper, it was Jesus who broke the bread and shared it with the apostles in Jerusalem prior to the crucifixion. A virtual Eucharist cannot imitate Jesus’s actions for does not allow for the breaking and distribution of the bread by the priest in congregants’ homes. As Cranmer argued in the Reformation, it is the priest who ministers and distributes the Last Supper to others in imitation of Christ. The bread and wine consecrated by the priest and that in other people’s homes must be distinguished. The Eucharist should be seen as a unity. The ritual efficacy is dependent on the joint action of the priest and those gathered around him who are mutually involved in consecrating the elements. It is not just the words and actions of the priest alone which makes the ritual effective. A virtual Eucharist, in his view, goes against sacramental theology.

Catholicism

In the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and the wine of the Eucharist literally become Christ’s body and blood. Both change in their very nature (Davis, 1964; Selwood, 2010), so that change is not perceptible to the senses. Albert (2005) observed that the Eucharist has significant life consequences and is essential for belief in salvation through Christ. The Pontifical Council of Social Communication asserts that ‘A virtual Mass cannot provide the participant with the needed presence of Christ in the transubstantiated bread and wine nor the embodied community’ (Ess et al., 2012, p. 89). Pope Francis, noting that masses were being offered online with people making spiritual communion, commented that ‘this is not the church’. (Pope Francis, 2020).

The physical body is the site for transubstantiation and holiness. To this extent the virtual Mass can never be a substitute for a physically gathered Christian community. Finally, as Fr Thomas Weinandy (Vatican International Theological Commission) asserts, ‘the sacrament is the action of Christ performed by the minister, and for that action to take place, the priest and the penitent must be in communion with one another, in a physical manner’. Cyberspace and virtual reality have never been accepted as a valid substitute for the real interpersonal community. Social distancing subsequent to Covid-19 has reinvigorated this discussion. The Vatican has strong objections to the performance of online Mass. Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, underscores the fact that, while the liturgy can be easily transmitted online, it is not possible for the ‘incarnate encounter with Christ’ as an aspect of celebration of the Eucharist cannot occur online (see Albert, 2005; Cheong et al., 2012; Labenek, 2014).

Labenek (2014) notes that the Pontifical Council of Social Communications’ document, ‘The Church and the Internet’, asserts that Eucharistic Mass celebrated online is invalid. The Council’s two main objections to virtual Mass involve the absence of (1) Christ’s presence and (2) interpersonal community. Selwood (2010) underscores the central role of the community being present to celebrate the Mass. Delap (2020) remarks that church is more than a physical structure, it is being together as members of the Body of Christ. This author points out that it is not acceptable for the priest to celebrate the Eucharist alone, while the laity simultaneously receive a spiritual communion lacking any physicality. But online celebration can never allow the congregation to share in one cup and one bread. While Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans differ in their views on transubstantiation, all three concur that the real presence of Christ is a central concern and this is extremely problematic for the virtual Mass.

Some however are more favourable to celebrating the virtual Eucharist. Luke Stoddart (2020), who was working as a chaplain for the Episcopal Church among church members in the Harvard community, proposes a ‘Eucharist via Zoom’, in which members of the congregation consume bread and wine in their own homes. As he states, the Eucharistic consecration

will extend not only to the elements in her proximity, but to the bread and wine of all those who have gathered digitally to participate in the Eucharistic liturgy . . . We will be present to one another and to God, even though physically we will be apart.

Although church authorities have generally been very cautious about the kind of Eucharist proposed by Stoddart, it would be difficult to argue that consideration at a distance is beyond the grace and providence of God. Another consideration is that it has generally been maintained that where there is doubt about what has and has not been concentrated on the altar, the intentions of the celebrant are decisive, and that what he intended to concentrate is deemed to have been consecrated. If that fee was maintained, and it is the intention of the celebrant to consecrate bread and wine at a distance, they would be deemed to be consecrated.

An alternative to the suggestion that bread and wine can be concentrated at a distance is to encourage congregants to make ‘spiritual communion’, instead of receiving bread and wine. That is what is recommended in most denominations when the Eucharist is celebrated on Zoom. The Church of England website states’ ‘Spiritual Communion’ has been used historically to describe the means of grace by which a person, prevented for some serious reason from sharing in a celebration of the Eucharist, nonetheless shares in the communion of Jesus Christ.

In the Anglican Church the London College of Bishops argue that the Eucharist is beneficial for those who are ‘present’ at a celebration of Holy Communion, yet are unable to physically partake of the bread and wine. There is a physical reception even if they cannot drink and eat. Because the sacrament is ‘given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner’ (Article 28), even if a person cannot receive physically, is still possible to strengthen their faith and love by seeing, even if not tasting or feeling the gifts of bread and wine that signify the body and blood of Christ. Robinson-Neal (2008) points out how virtual Masses have the potential to enhance the church-goer’s sense of faith on account of the fact that he/ she is can attend Mass more regularly and be more attentive to the service’.

During the Covid pandemic there has been much theological discussion about online communion, and Richard Burrage (2022) has provided a thorough review of the theological debates. One issue concern synchronicity between the actions of the President of the Eucharist and those watching it. Frequently, as in the communion celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on Easter day 2020, what was screened has been a recording of a Eucharist that has taken place earlier. Often, communion has been received only by the priest, whereas Burrage argues that in a valid Eucharist communion should be received by the priest and at least one representative layperson. Sometimes, as in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Eucharist, no bread and wine has been visibly received by anyone.

There has been much debate about whether the bread and wine that online participants may have at home can be deemed to be consecrated. The Church of England has ruled against people doing that. However, Burrage (2022) argues that there can be consecration at a distance. The principle has long been adopted that where there is uncertainty about what is consecrated, the key determining factor is what the priest intends to consecrate is deemed to be consecrated. That intention to concentrate can be extended to bread and wine in people’s homes. Certainly, a virtual Eucharist will be experienced differently if online participants consume bread and wine at home.

Research has begun to appear that has examined the viability of online ritual in an online community. Joshua Edelman has led a research project on British Ritual Innovation under Covid-19 (Edelman et al, 2020). People differed in how much they valued human contact in worship, though many found virtual worship less meaningful, communal, spiritual and effective. Virtual worship was found to be more satisfactory in smaller communities the larger ones, presumably because it could be more interactive. Many gave higher priority to virtual worship being interactive than to good audio-visual quality. Francis and Village (2021) found that within the church of England people differed in their attitude to the validity of an online Communion. This mapped onto general differences in churchmanship, with those with a Catholic orientation being more sceptical than those with a Protestant orientation. The project to be reported here examined the experience of online worship among congregants in an Anglican Church and focuses upon belonging, participating and the performance of the Eucharist.

Rather little research on online worship has been conducted in non-Christian contexts In terms of different faith traditions Taragin-Zeller and Kessler (2021) examine the issues arising from online worship among Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs through interviews with faith leaders in the United Kingdom. Religious communities were very creative in how they modified customs rituals and practices to fit in with virtual reality and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors note that it is too early to know what will happen to these creative responses once the pandemic is finished, whether practices will be maintained, and whether there will be changed theologies. The authors found that online worship attracted increased numbers of people to their services than before the pandemic. The study demonstrated cross-religious cutting convergence.

Among all faith groups, those interviewed expressed concerns about the lack of physical presence, connection and contact in online services. Many interviewees underscored the fact that they missed the communal aspects of worship. One significant difference was that while all faith communities had to support and minister to their communities online, some were able to deliver services and perform worship online, but for others, for theological reasons, this was not possible. Interestingly these differences were seen within each religion rather than across boundaries and demonstrated intra-faith divergence at the same time as interfaith convergence.

Methodology

Following ethics approval through Goldsmiths College, University of London, 13 participants (9 females, 4 males) were recruited through a vicar in an Anglican Church which holds online services during the Covid lockdown. The sample size used in qualitative research methods is generally smaller than that used in quantitative research methods since qualitative methods attempt to obtain in-depth understanding of a phenomenon and focus on meaning. While there is still a lack of consensus pertaining to sample size, there are recommendations that qualitative studies require a minimum sample size of at least 12 to reach data saturation (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Fugard & Potts, 2015; Vasileiou et al., 2018).

The interviewees’ backgrounds ranged from housewives, to teachers, to theologians and to students. All had attended at least two virtual services and were aged 20–74 years and were practicing Christians. All were White British. Participants were contacted and participated in a semi-structured telephone interview lasting up to 1 h. Interviews were conducted by S.D., the first author who is an anthropologist and non-religious.

The main virtual service on a Sunday morning was initially broadcast from the priest’s home, but later from the church. It lasts an hour and this is followed by a virtual social meeting of congregants. The virtual service was initially attended by about 30 people on a weekly basis, though there was a decline in attendance over time. The initial numerical attendance was comparable to the numbers who attended in church, though some church attenders did not attend online, while others who had not been able to attend in church attended the online service. As part of the service congregants observed the priest performing the Eucharist. Those participating were not encouraged to receive bread and wine at home, though some did so. There is also a more informal Service attended by 12–15 members of the congregation in the evening. That was a non-Eucharistic service in which members of the congregation make prayer requests, leading into a sequence of reading and press on a particular theme. Some participants in the study had attended at services only in the morning or only in the evening, but several had attended by us and were able to compare them.

Semi-structured interview questions

The questions derived from the literature review cited above and focused upon sense of belonging, participation and experience of the (virtual) Eucharist. Specifically the questions assessed the importance of embodiment in virtual worship. The questions were agreed between the two authors.

Questions included the following:

Tell me about your experience of online worship.

How much have you taken part?

Was it a Communion service?

How many people were present?

How did you find it?

Has there been a change over time in your experience of online worship?

If you are no longer taking part in online worship do you miss it at all?

Do you have a sense of PARTICIPATING in a community?

Do you have a sense of BELONGING to a community?

Did it make a difference being able to see who was present?

How does online worship in your local church compare to watching a service on TV?

How is it similar in your experience?

How is it different?

How does your experience of online worship differ from worshiping in church?

Do you think that online worship is better, in any way, than live worship?

What drawbacks do you see, if any, with online worship?

If you took part in more than one kind of online worship

What did you like about the kind that worked best for you?

What didn’t you like about what did not work as well for you?

What is your experience of online Holy Communion?

Do you feel you received the sacrament at online Holy Communion?

Does your experience of attending the virtual Sunday morning church service differ from that of attending the non-Eucharistic Sunday evening service?

Braun and Clarke’s (2013) Thematic Analysis provided the framework for the analysis involving a search across the data set to identify, analyse and report repeated patterns. The process of analysis was driven by the data and was inductive, with a focus on the participants’ own individual experiences – their realities and meaning-making.

The coding was conducted by the first author S.D., who immersed himself in the data and familiarised himself with it. Coding was carried out as an iterative process in which transcripts, once coded, were reread after an initial round of coding and reworked in the light of codes created in subsequent transcripts. The codes were subsequently categorised into clusters after which a set of themes were developed. Thus, iterative analyses were deployed to identify emerging themes and develop insights about the meaning of the data. As a form of respondent validation these themes were subsequently discussed with those interviewed to establish reliability and validity (Lacey & Luff, 2001). There was consensus among interviewees that the themes were reliable and valid.

Themes

Lack of connection and presence in the Eucharistic Sunday morning service

Congregants expressed various degrees of belonging and participation in the virtual services. Seven participants stated that they did not feel connected during the Zoom service. For instance, Mary, a 50-year-old woman who had attended the church for many years, said

I feel a distance between myself and other people during the online service. I also feel distanced from the church and cannot see many of the objects in the church like the mural of Mary and child. I think the connection is diminished on zoom. The intimacy has gone.

Martin, a 25-year-old student had stopped attending virtual services and maintained that it was a poor substitute for the real thing but ‘better than nothing’. He bemoaned the fact that he did not feel a presence of other people and no sense of communion. He did not feel he was belonging nor participating in the service. Olive, a 70-year-old congregant pointed out that although she participated, at times she felt more like a spectator than a participant: ‘I really miss the live face to face interactions’.

One extreme negative view was voiced by Marion:

I’ve not got on well with the online service. It is very hard to engage with them spiritually. It is more like I’m observing and I don’t feel I’m participating or really belonging. I don’t feel connected. It’s like watching ‘Songs of praise’. Perhaps at the online coffee meeting there is a bit more social interaction. It’s probably different from watching a TV programme since I recognise faces and it’s nice to see them.

It was not only social interaction that differed from the live service. The fact that congregants were no longer physically present in the church significantly impacted their experiences. Kim who had been attending the church for over 12 years discussed how she missed the beauty of church building and how attending church was more of a meditative experience for her than the online service. Eve, a 30-year-old congregant with an interest in meditation, stated,

The virtual service lacks many of the cues of the live church. You do not get the same stimuli and it’s a very different sensory experience. The sense of space can create specific feelings in the church. I think the sense of familiarity in the building helps bring about religious experiences and this, of course is absent in the virtual service. But not everything goes -the voice of the priest is of course the same as is the liturgy and the order of prayers and this can help us feel something in the virtual service. But I think it lacks a sense of presence. This is also the case during the Eucharist. Added to this is the fact that the internet breaks down and the sound is sometimes bad and this makes the virtual service like looking through fog. It is flakey and intermittent.

She continued,

What the virtual service also lacks is the welcoming which occurs in church as we enter. There is nothing of this in the virtual service and I think that’s a big influence on how we feel during the service.

However, she recounted that recently her views had changed in relation to the virtual service:

Last week I was able to lie down during the broadcasting of the church service. For the first time in a year I felt very calm. I began to feel that the virtual service was actually a good thing and hope it continues in the future. It benefits people like me who have medical conditions and attending church might be difficult.

Finally, the purely technical aspects of using Zoom could stop congregants participating in the service. Robin stated,

I joined the zoom service at the beginning. It was frustrating. The sound quality was not good and I could not hear the priest very well at times. I really felt more like a spectator but still felt part of the community.

Communication is improved on Zoom in the morning service

Not everyone agreed with the fact that the virtual service lacked a sense of belonging and presence. Two congregants mentioned that they actually felt that social interaction was better than the live service. A 20-year-old student stated, ‘Social interaction is better in the virtual performance’ and ‘I will miss the intimacy of the social connection once lockdown has finished’. For him, the experience of virtual worship changed over time and people became used to it. A few discussed the fact that it was actually easier to communicate in the online service compared with its live counterpart. Eve, mentioned above, regularly explained that the Zoom service actually gave her a voice; this was not possible during the live service and felt that the online service gave her more opportunity to communicate.

One way of maintaining ongoing social interaction was through the ‘virtual coffee meeting’ held after the service. Ray, a 50-year-old engineer pointed out: ‘Yes the virtual coffee afterwards helps the sense of community – both participating and belonging’.

Finally, the majority of attendees noted that they found the virtual service satisfactory – albeit as a temporary measure. However, as noted by one participant, ‘The online worship is inferior to “physical worship” – apart from the sermons which are often better. However, for many people the fellowship is better, because everyone can be involved at once’.

Virtual worship is different from a TV performance

All those interviewed concurred that the virtual service differed from merely watching a service on the TV. Ray said, ‘It is quite different from watching services on TV, because of the sense of community’. Maria, an ex-congregant who had attended the church for over 20 years but had now moved out of the area stated, ‘It is quite different from a TV service since we all interactive, we all speak. Also, I know the people present’. George, a 70-year-old man emphasised that TV services were more like a performance ‘The virtual service is different, unlike the TV, it still feels it’s part of the church community’. Kim spoke about how TV services lacked any personal element which could be found online. For her even though she felt a sense of belonging in the virtual service, there was no sense of participation ‘it was more like observing than participating’.

The experience of attending the evening service is better than that of attending the morning service

One participant maintained that the evening service was more supportive. Another female stated, ‘I find the evening service to be much closer to the feeling of attending a service in a church I know with a community I know. Generally, I find the virtual service too distant and separate’. Another man noted,

I have limited experience of watching the service from this church, but I think the key is the word ‘watching’: the services are streamed services, broadcasts, if you like, and so not so participatory. The Sunday evening Zoom meetings are more personal and relational and for that reason I find them more meaningful and supportive.

Moira, a 60-year-old congregant who had attended the church for over 10 years compared the morning Eucharistic service with more informal non-Eucharistic service:

When it is broadcast over Zoom from the church, it is less intimate. You are slightly battling a feeling of having a second-class ticket to the service. Everything is rather small on the screen (i.e. readers, preachers, the preparation of bread and wine) and there are more likely to be technical issues – people’s voices become distorted or disappear. I should say that the priest has done all he could to minimise the problems for the Zoom participants and to make us feel included. It’s important to state that none of this impacts my sense of a connection with God – it’s more about my connection with the other worshippers. The evening group, however, is one I feel I fit into well. We are generally more open about our spirituality; many of us are open about problems we’ve had with Christianity and many of us have a Christianity which is informed by other faiths or by Jung or other schools of philosophy/psychology. This is rather a rare thing to find! So I feel a deeper communion with the other people in these services.

The evening service gives me much more sense of being in a community, of doing something communally. I think there are several reasons for this. All of the gathered people speak at some point – or at least the majority do. We say how we are and ask for prayers. Then we pray together and for each other. This part of the service developed organically. The prayers grew organically from us saying how we were. Many of us read out the poems and Bible stories. We are silent together. It is strange perhaps but the silence of the virtual meeting seems as charged with meaning as the silence of a group of people sitting in church. As well as the 5 o’clock service, many of us join together at 10.30 on Friday for a talk and discussion. This has been important in bonding us together as a community. I believe the vicar leading this has a talent for facilitating spiritual community which most priests have no idea about.

The Eucharist

One of the main themes to come up in this study is how the experience of being physically present at the Eucharist significantly differed from that of observing the priest performing it in the church while the congregants were online. There was some disagreement as to whether the Eucharist could be effective online, and opinions expressed about this were partly theoretical and partly experiential.

The issue of embodiment was frequently raised and the impossibility of the virtual congregant partaking of the bread and wine physically rendered the ritual ineffective. A 20-year-old student opined, ‘Embodiment is a prerequisite for celebrating the Mass’. For others the impossibility of sharing the bread and wine was very problematic in terms of the ritual having an effect.

Ray stated that there was a loss of the physical sacrament during the virtual service. He commented that people seemed much less concerned about not receiving the sacrament than might have been expected. He remarked, ‘It is not clear whether they feel they have received the sacrament, albeit only “spiritually, or whether they are not really concerned about not receiving it”’. Martin voiced the opinion that in the virtual service only the celebrant, in this instance the priest and his wife, were the only ones to celebrate Mass. He did not feel he was participating at all.

Of interest, a minority maintained that the Eucharist could work from a distance. As Martin stated, ‘the Holy Spirit is not located in one place’. In his view the Holy Spirit could consecrate the bread and wine from a distance. In another instance Marion, a 50-year-old lecturer stated, ‘I only see the priest consuming bread and wine. I don’t know what is meant to happen theologically but I do not feel the ritual is effective for me. Perhaps theologically the Mass is meant to affect everyone’. Kim, mentioned above, discussed how the Eucharist could ‘work’ from a distance. For her there was an ‘enveloping connection’ with the Mass and the energy from the Mass could extend to her home. She had experiences working with healing energies and considered that the Eucharist generated energy which could extend to other locations. Robin, who had only been attending the church for 6 months stated that it was certainly possible for the priest to consecrate bread and wine in another location, although he could not elaborate on how it would work.

One woman mentioned being afraid of other people’s reactions while consuming the bread and wine at home.

Since I spoke to you I have started taking my own bread and wine to the service and eating/drinking them. However, I do this with the camera turned off so no one can see. I’m not sure why I do this. I think I’m afraid of people thinking that I ought not to be doing this.

Discussion

This study reports on 13 congregants attending virtual worship services. The interviews reveal that virtual services, while better than nothing, have significant limitations in terms of participation, belonging and the kind of religious experience engendered. While only two participants expressed the view that the virtual service was better than the live service, the majority found that the virtual service lacked a sense of connectedness. However, everyone agreed that it was different from a television broadcast in several important ways.

The church in this study used Zoom for its services, which enabled those present to see who else was there. That is not true if services are streamed on YouTube, as some churches do. It also seems to have helped the sense of connectedness that quite a number of familiar people took an active role in the service. In the morning service, usually about five people had a formal role, in addition to the priest. The ‘virtual coffee’ after the morning service seems to have been valued by some almost as much as the service itself, and to have been important in maintaining a sense of community. In the evening service everyone normally participated, if only to say what they needed prayers for. Everyone’s voice was heard during the service, and that seems to have led to a greater sense of connectedness than in the morning Eucharist.

This lack of sense of connectedness concurs with the view of Parish (2020) and Edelman (2021) that online worship does not create the same social bonds as live participation in worship in church. Parish notes how the Catholic Church has always argued for the importance of ‘real’ social and interpersonal relationships, for membership and belonging in liturgical worship. Furthermore, it accords with the majority Anglican and Catholic view that the virtual reality of cyberspace cannot substitute for real interpersonal community, but only complement it. The data from this study are congruent with Taragin-Zeller and Kessler’s study of online worship which reveals the perceived importance of physical presence, contact and connection as being important for ritual effectiveness among Jews, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus.

As well as loss of connection with other members of the congregation, there was also a loss of connection with the church building. Depending on what Covid restrictions were in place at a particular time, services were sometimes broadcast from the priest’s home, and sometimes from the church building. It is striking that several members of the congregation missed the physical church building, which they perceived as beautiful, and which engendered a spiritual atmosphere. The absence of the physical cues of the church building, and the sense of space there, impacted negatively on people’s experiences during the virtual services. The sound quality was generally better when services were broadcast from the church building. However, for some, there was a more homely atmosphere, and a greater sense of connectedness, when they were streamed from the priest’s home, even if the sound quality was less good. The intimate relationship between place and ritual has been pointed out by a number of authors, particularly those interested in pilgrimage (e.g. Eade, 2020; Shinde, 2021). Not only does ritual performance create a sacred space but the performance of ritual is tied to specific places, in this instance celebration of the Eucharist is typically tied to the physical space of the church. These findings reflect Counted and Watts (2019) argument that religious experiences are tied to specific places.

It was a significant problem for several members of the congregation that they did not receive consecrated bread and wine at a Eucharist celebrated on Zoom. Their actual experience seemed to accord with the theological view that it is important, for a valid Eucharist, for people to be present together and to receive bread and wine.

There was a confusion and ambiguity in the minds of several people about whether or not a Eucharist was actually occurring and, if so, whether or not they were participating in it. The overall view was that celebrating the Eucharist was not possible online, because congregants could not actually partake of the bread and wine blessed by the priest which, for them, was an essential aspect of the ritual. The views of the congregants generally reflected Anglican and Catholic views that it was not possible to experience the Mass online. While Lutheran and Anglican understandings of the real presence of Christ differ from the Catholic Church’s understandings, both emphasise that the Eucharist must be received in the physical presence of the priest and the community (Power, 1992).

The official encouragement for people to make ‘spiritual communion’ seems either not to have been understood, or not to have been experienced in a way was found convincing. In this study only two of the people interviewed expressed the view that the power of the Holy Spirit could spread outside the church, and the bread and wine could be consecrated from a distance, as suggested by theologians like Luke Stoddart. For most people there was neither spiritual communion, nor a belief in consecration at a distance, leaving them feeling they were not really participating in the Eucharist The participants in the study who engaged with both the Eucharist in the morning and the non-Eucharistic service in the evening generally seem to have preferred the latter. Given the ambiguity about whether people can really be part of a virtual Eucharist, it might have been better for churches to concentrate more on non-Eucharistic worship in the pandemic, where that ambiguity does not arise.

The results of the study will be disappointing for church leaders responsible for Zoom services. It has been widely assumed by church leaders that the provision of Zoom worship has been a success, and most of the people interviewed were grateful for the efforts that have been made. However, the fact remains that most people attending Zoom services did not really feel the sense of connection with the congregation that they feel when attending services in person, and missed being present in a church building. There was also considerable confusion about whether a Eucharist on Zoom was a genuine Eucharist, and whether it conferred the benefits of sacramental worship. In contrast, experience of non-Eucharistic worship in which everyone present participated, was more positive.

The disruption of normal congregational worship during the pandemic may be more serious than has been realised. It remains to be seen what effect it will have on attendance in person when it becomes possible again. It may be those who have been deprived of church worship in person during the pandemic will be eager to return. However, the habit of regular church attendance may have been broken and, for many, will not be resumed. Two people in the present study found that they preferred virtual worship, and so might not return to worship in person. The Church of England is predicting in Money, People and Buildings that attendance at church services after the pandemic will be about 20% lower than it was before (Church Times, 2021), though that may prove an underestimate. Although it is encouraging for churches that a significant number of people have been making use of virtual services, including those who had either ceased to attend or were attending only infrequently, it seems likely that a prolonged period of virtual worship during the pandemic will result in lower in-person attendance afterwards.

It is widely hoped that the Covid pandemic will progress in the way that makes it unnecessary in the future to do Communion entirely online. However, hybrid services, partly in person and partly online, seem set to continue; and there may be a future pandemic which leads to a resumption of entirely virtual Communion. The opportunity arises now for further discussion, both practical and theological, about how to conduct worship in a pandemic. That discussion can now be informed by empirical research, such as the present study. So far, there has been more vigorous discussion about online worship in Christianity than in other faith traditions, though a pandemic presents all faith traditions with difficult issues about her best to continue with religious rituals.

In terms of reflexivity, the participants were known to the second author of the study who is a psychologist and priest and who organised the Sunday evening virtual services. He was acquainted with the participants before this study. While he was not involved in conducting the interviews and analysing the data, we speculate that this prior relationship may have encouraged people to agree to interviews and portray the Sunday evening services in a positive light.

This study has specific limitations. It is not possible to generalise these results given the relative small number of participants. The study has focused on only one religious group – Anglican Christians. This study compares Eucharistic with non-Eucharistic online worship which is a considerable strength. However, the limitation is that the Eucharistic and non-Eucharistic services differed in many other ways. The participants were largely different, though there was some overlap. There was a difference in how the services were led, both in the person doing it and in the formality/informality of the service. So the indications from our research that non-Eucharistic online worship works better needs to be followed up in a better designed study.

The first author has no Christian affiliation. That may have given him a helpful detachment; as he has no views himself about the validity of a virtual Eucharist he is unlikely to have biased the answers he was given in interviews. However, some participants may have felt that, from his detached viewpoint, he did not really understand the subtleties of the issues involved, and they may not have spoken as they would to someone who they perceived to be like-minded.

Conclusion: the global context

This study has focused on one Christian community in the United Kingdom and represents a small slice of the global transition to virtual ritual – those ritual settings performed in virtual space online. What are the implications of these findings for faith groups globally? During the Covid-19 pandemic religious worship in diverse faith groups globally has moved from its live performance to online platforms (Taragin-Zeller and Kessler, 2021). This is of significant interest to scholars of ritual who question how the online and offline versions of religious worship differ both in their internal dimensions like structure, communication and performance, and in their phenomenology, and more specifically whether the online version is as ‘effective’ as its live counterpart. Future research should target faith groups in a global context asking about the importance of connection and physical presence as determining features of ritual efficacy. Furthermore we need to look at how ritual has been transformed in secular contexts.

One important aspect of ritual performance is how it changes affect. While much of the literature on worship generally has focused on attitudes towards it, there is a need to assess responses to worship including affective responses. There is a paucity of work specifically addressing emotion, embodiment and ritual. These are of relevant for psychologists of religion. Attempts have been made to assess affect in worship either qualitatively (Edie, 2021) or deploying psychometric scales (Miller & Strongman, 2002). Village and Francis (2022) have developed a measurement scale – ‘Perceived Affect Response to Online Worship (SPAROW)’ to assess emotional responses during worship with excellent psychometric properties. This instrument could be used to assess the experiences engendered during both online and virtual services in diverse religious groups.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Simon Dein

Fraser Watts

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