The virtual body of Christ and embrace of the seriously ill

ABSTRACT

Since the time of the Apostle Paul, the body of Christ has always been a virtual body, made up of members who were not always physically present to one another but were nevertheless part of the same catholic community. Virtual presence in today’s society comes most often via digital technology, a reality that prompts many Christian leaders and theologians to warn of the dangers of disembodied existence. This paper challenges the claim that virtual presence via digital technology is necessarily an inferior form of presence. Using autoethnographic research of living with advanced-stage cancer, the author explores how virtual connection via technology can sometimes be a superior form of presence for those undone by illness and other traumas. The article concludes with a call to churches to draw on biblical, theological, and liturgical resources to help imagine how digital devices can be used to practice healing forms of attentiveness to those who need it most.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual body of Christ
• embodiment
• incarnational
• ecclesial practices
• illness
• digital technology
• attentiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Deanna A. Thompson is a Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community and Martin E. Marty Regents Chair of Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Thompson's research focuses on topics ranging from Martin Luther and feminism to the intersections of cancer, trauma, and faith, and what it means to be the church in the digital age. She is author of five books, including The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World and most recently, Glimpsing Resurrection: Cancer, Trauma, and Ministry.

Notes

1. Jason Byassee, “For Virtual Theological Education,” Faith and Leadership, last modified March 2, 2011, https://www.faithandleadership.com/jason-byassee-virtual-theological-education, accessed January 2, 2019.

2. A note here about terminology: there is an ongoing discussion about how to talk about our lives online. Some scholars and journalists who once talked about “virtual” as opposed to “actual” or “real” reality have recently graduated to using the term “augmented reality” instead, suggesting there’s no longer a clear divide between offline and online realities, and that the term “augmented” better represents that reality. When the publisher of my book on the virtual body of Christ proposed we go with “The Augmented Body of Christ” instead of “virtual body,” I resisted, not just because I find “augmented” to be a less elegant term, but because I see the term “virtual” offering greater anthropological and theological capacity. As digital scholar T.V. Reed points out, while the “virtuality” of the digital world has some novel dimensions, “it is also not wholly new (whenever we read a novel we enter a virtual world, just not a digitally delivered one). Part of studying virtual worlds should be to remind users that they are never just in a virtual world, but also always in a real one, too.” T.V. Reed, Digitized Lives: Culture, Power, and Social Change in the Internet Era, (London: Routledge, 2014), 21. Virtual presence can happen through letters sent by Paul to fledgling church communities, it can happen through reading a good book, and it can happen through digital connectivity via a website, text, or app.

3. See Malcolm Gladwell, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted,” New Yorker, October 4, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell.

4. Cathy Caruth, “Preface,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), as quoted in Rambo, 3, footnote 2.

5. James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010).

6. Hunter, 238.

7. Michael Frost, Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 9.

8. Frost, 56.

9. Frost, 28.

10. Kathryn Reklis, “X-Reality and the Incarnation,” New Media Project, May 10, 2012, http://www.cpx.cts.edu/newmedia/findings/essays/x-reality-and-the-incarnation.

11. For stories on people who have died due to obsessions with video games that led them to ignore their bodies’ needs, see Gillian Mohney, “Video Games Leads to Life-Threatening Condition for Gamer,” ABC News, December 12, 2013, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/video-game-leads-life-threatening-condition-gamer/story?id=21182106, accessed January 2, 2019.

12. Reklis, “X-Reality and the Incarnation.”

13. Reklis, “X-Reality and the Incarnation.”

14. Arthur Frank, “The Body’s Problem with Illness,” The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings, ed. Lisa Jean Moore and Mary Kosut (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 32.

15. Reklis, “X-Reality and the Incarnation.”

16. Hunter, 209.

17. Marshall Jenkins, A Wakeful Faith: Spiritual Practice in the Read World (Nashville: Upper Room Publications, 2000), 1.

18. Leighton Ford, The Attentive Life: Discerning God’s Presence in All Things (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 67.

19. Frederick Gaiser, Healing in the Bible: Theological Insight for Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 157.

20. Henri J. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (New York: Image Books, 1986), 36.

21. Caruth, vii.

22. Gaiser, 237.

23. Gaiser, 223.

24. Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 83.

25. Frost, 208.

26. Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1951), 227.

27. Meredith Gould, The Social Gospel Media: Shaping the Good News in New Ways (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 8.

28. Serene Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 172.

29. Guillermo Hansen, “The Networking Of Differences that Makes a Difference: Theology and Unity of the Church,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 51, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 41.

30. Elizabeth Drescher, Tweet if You Heart Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2011), 85.

31. “Granger Community Church Launches the Table,” accessed January 29, 2016. http://vimeo.com/31208=7862.

32. Frost, 120, 122.

33. Herbert Ruffin, “Black Lives Matter: The Growth of a New Social Justice Movement,” BlackPast.org: An Online Reference Guide to African American History, accessed January 10, 2019, https://blackpast.org/perspectives/black-lives-matter-growth-new-social-justice-movement.

34. Drescher, 110.

35. Drescher, 109.

36. Drescher, 111.

37. Drescher, 115.