Religion Online: The Digital Secularization of the Greek Orthodox Church

This paper was prepared by Nicolas Demertzis, Katerina Diamandaki and Dionysis Panos for the 2002 International Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). It was presented by Nicolas Demertzis and Katerina Diamandaki in Maastricht, the Netherlands, October 2002. This version is the first draft paper of an ongoing research about the digital presence of Greek Orthodox Church.

CONTENTS

1. Introductory Remarks

2. Research Questions and Methodology

3.The Identity of Greek Orthodox Church - Secularization Tendencies

a. Political Secularization

b. Communicative Secularization

4. Discussion

5. Concluding Remarks

Introductory Remarks

Contrary to unidirectional, evolutionary and common wisdom-like versions of secularisation, since the mid 1970s there has been broadly observed a world-wide "return of the religion", or, to put it differently, a massive renaissance of religiosity. Against the so-called death of God in modernity, people in late modernity are somehow experiencing a re-enchantment of the world and a "revenge of God". In the North-Western part of the globe this is taking place within the cultural milieu of information-spectacle society; i.e. under conditions of intense individualization/individuation and an ever growing reflexivity. Consequently, it is not so much the traditional Christian religious dogmas and Churches that are undergoing such resurgence, as various new churches and sects that have emerged. The phenomenon of "new religiosity" is mostly expressed through the proliferation of "personal religions" and sects, the loosening of formal religious/denominational commitments and the emergence of a sort of "religiousless religiosity" that is more akin to alternative spirituality. At the same time, it is expressed through and within the antinomy between secularisation and re-sacralisation [1].

It is the case that religious issues have gradually attracted the interest of the Media, given that religious practice in western countries has acquired, despite its fragmentation, an increasingly public character. By invoking the right to be different and the so-called "politics of identity", various sects, churches, heretical doctrines, and the like, require their public recognition aiming at higher visibility and presence in the media [2]. The proliferation of religious radio stations and religious T.V. channels - cable ones included - observed in the U.S.A since the mid '80s is a noteworthy phenomenon. Within only a year, between 1985 and 1986, the number of religious radio stations increased by 10%, reaching the number of 1134. At the same time, religious television channels grew by an impressive 100%, amounting to 200 in the whole country [3]. According to estimates, in the mid '80s, 13,3 millions of Americans regularly watched these television channels for at least 15 minutes per week, while those who watched them for an hour or more were less than 2 million. The audience of these programmes mainly consists of aged women, lower education and lower income individuals [4].

The advent of the Internet clearly provided the agents of new religiosity with novel opportunities for disseminating their causes and publicising their positions. What can be argued is that the introduction of the Internet in an already media saturated societal environment heralds a change in the way religion is mediated, portrayed and experienced. The colonization of cyberspace by religions and religious groups, the formation of electronic churches, the appropriation of virtual space and virtual possibilities by traditional and non-traditional spiritual voices is still a nascent phenomenon, yet one of immense potential both for Christian and non Christian societies as well as for the negotiation of religious meanings on the part of individuals.

In a conference paper titled "Cyberspace and Religious Life: Conceptualizing the Concerns and Consequences" the author Lorne L. Dawson [5] of the Department of Sociology and Department of Religious Studies of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, writes: "Religion is abundantly present on the world wide web and a host of Internet chat and news groups. Every major world religion is represented, every major and minor Christian denomination, almost all new religious movements, thousands of specific churches, and countless web pages operated by individual believers, self-declared gurus, prophets, shamans, apostates, and other moral entrepreneurs. In addition the net has spawned its own religious creations, from megasites of cyber-spirituality to virtual "churches," and strictly online religions. To this mix we can add numerous commercial sites wishing to turn a profit on our spiritual appetites, providing us with religious news, selling us religious paraphernalia, and acting as network nodes for links to hundreds of other sites. There are also many sites launched to educate the public or to pursue a diverse array of religious causes (e.g., sites based on university courses or anti-cult crusades)". The spectrum of the religious Internet delineated by Dawson is, however, too wide and consists of a number of distinct, albeit interconnected, phenomena each of which demands different methodological and theoretical approaches.

It is our conviction that the use of the new media by the various churches indicates not so much a radical change in the cultural practices of the church or a quantum leap as many have suggested, as the addition of a level of mediatization in what has for long now been "mediatized religion". Although the mediatization of religion is not a novel phenomenon, the Internet, because of its distinctive structure and function - its unique "grammar" as a medium" - produces a new set of conditions for the mediation of culture, and probably a new set of consequences for religion(s) as such.

Research Questions and Methodology

The interactive, plastic and stretching, in terms of both space and time, qualities of the new medium make the new trope of Internet mediation somehow unique. Not only does the Internet make ancient and holy texts available to as many recipients as never before, as was the case of print, but also makes available all the lived religions and the whole spectrum of religious expression around us. More importantly, the communication system of the Internet is not being used only as a propagating medium by established religious authorities and orthodox churches. It is also being used by a vast array of religiously-driven individuals, small and un-established sects, groups, para-church organizations and in support of a plethora of religious and spiritual expressions. In doing so it reshapes the cultural meaning, content and practice of religion and religiosity.

It goes without saying that the crux of the entire matter is the concrete character of this change. In this paper we are trying to draw a line of possible explanations based two main research questions:

a) To the extend that the World Wide Web and the Internet constitute one of the latest technological advances of humankind, the question is, do they contribute to further secularisation or do they support the rise of a new religiosity? Taking notice that the new media are not only embedded on the mundane secularity of the mainstream consumerist culture but have also been historically been endowed with and out-of-this-world character [6], the question comes as to whether in the hands of religious groups or churches they are to fuel secularisation tendencies, otherworldly orientations, the bringing back of the sacred and the emergence of new sorts of spirituality.

b) The majority of approaches suggest that the Internet is the global medium par excellence. In addition, its interactive and hypertextual nature may potentially contribute to the creation of a global dialogic, reflexive, and polyphonic culture. The crucial question, however, is whether such a culture is likely to emerge in view of the current cultural, ethnic and religious fragmentation consummated by late modern individualization.

It would be claiming too much to suggest that these two research questions, as momentous as they may be, could be dealt with exhaustively and completely. Nevertheless, to give them the treatment they deserve our research focuses on how a particular religion, the Greek Orthodox Church (G.O.C) - both in the sense of a social institution and in the sense of a more symbolic corpus and belief system, that is Orthodox Christianity - uses the new electronic medium to establish an online presence. The presence of the GCO in cyberspace is a recent phenomenon, and our attempt amounts to interpreting these initial phases in the evolution in order to anticipate possible future developments in the light of new technological interfaces becoming available and in light of new religious practices adopted by individuals. Our observations focus mainly on the official website of the GCO http://www.ecclesia.gr as well as its two affiliate sites, the digital library of Myriobiblos (http://www.myriobiblos.gr) and the site of the Apostoliki Diakonia (http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr). Before continuing we should note that the paper at hand is part of an ongoing research project, and the findings presented here are only of a preliminary nature.

The observation of the core and the two "satellite" websites of the G.O.C took place within a period of 9 months (November 2001-July 2002), during which we applied observational techniques in order to locate patterns of updating, and possible changes of either the content or the format of the websites. For our purposes, the sites were analyzed using a critical textual analysis perspective and were complemented by a face-to-face semi-structured interview with the supervisor of the working team of the website and its current administrator.

Ananda Mitra and Elisia Cohen [7] propose critical-cultural textual analysis as the most adequate method for analyzing web texts . According to their approach, critical textual analysis examines web texts in three different aspects: a) the formal aspects of the text and its signifying strategies, b) the intertextuality in which any single text acquires its effectivity, c) the active interpretation of the texts by the readers who give texts their meaning.

These three concerns guided our study. The formal aspects of the text were made obvious by an analysis of the structure, the content and the distribution of the content throughout the sites. The intertextuality was a consideration that directed us to approach the web texts of the G.O.C site as depending on the larger discourse that they are part of. Thus, we examined the relation of the content created for the sites as such with other texts produced by the same authors in other settings and transferred to the sites (such as the Archbishop's public talks, ecclesiastical texts, sermons, etc). We also examined the hypertextual structure of the site in terms of the links provided in it and the gateways they offer to other sources of web material. In examining these aspects, we had in mind to look not only at what was offered in the sites but also on what was not offered. The third aspect of examining the active interpretative work entailed by readers obviously requires a more audience-targeted methodology, which will consist the next phase of our research.

In this framework, we organized our observation technique by asking a variety of questions about:

1. Purpose. Why did the authors write this text? That is, what goals might the authors have sought to accomplish through the design, writing and distribution of the particular texts? In answering this question, we tried to generate a list of possible goals and tried to find evidence that specifically supported or specifically undermined each of the goals.

2. Agent/Author. Who produced and created these texts? How are we to represent the social-cultural standpoint of the authors? In answering these questions it was necessary to co-examine the historical identity of the G.O.C and its positioning in Greek society.

3. Audience. Although we have not yet proceeded in examining the G.O.C's online presence from the view of the individual readers we asked various questions that guided us in a helpful manner. For whom are these texts written and produced? That is, who, on the basis of the foci of the text, seems to be the intended audience (or audiences) of these sites?

4. Agency/Means. Do the authors try to inform or persuade, or both? How do the authors attempt to persuade and move the readers? In particular, what kinds of evidence (linguistic and addressing style, symbolic and figurative strategies, use of imagery, interactive elements, etc) are employed by the authors?

5. Context. When and where were the texts produced? What was the social, political, and cultural context within which these texts were produced? What specific evidence can we find in the texts, that suggests the impact of one or more of these social trends on the composition of the text?

While studying the online presence of the G.O.C. we approached the sites as media texts. The classical use of texts by sociologists assumes that texts are resources for accessing phenomena existing "beyond" the text [8]. This is only partially true. The texts have indeed a lot to say about what the authors are trying to achieve and how they achieve it and provide us with rich material for understanding wider aspects concerning the conditions of the production of the texts and their meaning. However, texts should not be viewed as transparent and as mere conduits to a separately conceived reality. Going beyond this view of texts as "windows" to an extra-textual reality, more contemporary approaches view the texts as having a structural effect in the sense that they are "active texts"Χ They actively organize social action and they predispose readers to given interpretations of texts [9].

This approach is particularly pertinent for any critical textual analysis. The critical element of the analysis lies in that the "focus is not solely on the content of the WWW texts but also on the way the content is presented and on its significance. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the image is the result of specific conditions of production that can determine the way the text becomes meaningful in the public sphere" [10]. In order to understand the significance and active character of the texts that make up the Internet presence of the G.O.C and in order to understand how these sites are the result of the specific conditions of their production, one need necessarily take into consideration the historical evolution and cultural identity of the specific church. However, this is a vast issue and all we can provide within the confines of this paper is a rough framework.

The question of whether any medium will change or affect religious meaning and religious practice is a multidimensional issue and should always be viewed through the lens of cultural and its hermeneutical dimensions (Hoover & Lundby 1997). Moreover, in handling such issues one must never forget that the impact of communication technologies is very much context-dependent. The same technology can impact on different groups or cultures with very different ways, it can unite or segment, it can secularize or bring the sacred back in. Generally speaking, we would argue that studying the relationship between religion and the media (the Internet included) one has to take into consideration three main factors: a) religious tradition(s), b) the political cultural context, and c) the media culture and the dynamics of communication field. More than so, this relationship cannot be effectively studied unless one combines sociological, historical, and communicational approaches.

The Identity of Greek Orthodox Church - Secularization Tendencies

a. Political Secularization

Orthodoxy has played an important role in the Greek nation-building that still holds true in today's cultural politics. To start with, the Greek nation-building arose from the 1821-1827 revolution against the Ottoman rule; that revolution was typical of the separatist Eastern nationalist movements [11]. It was a historical case where an ethnicity, under the traditional domination of a multiethnic empire, is self-transformed into a nationality through the modern ideology of nationalism, undertaking subsequently the project of political independence founded on the ideal of the nation-state. As in any other case in Western history, it is nationalism, which defines and socially constructs the nation rather than the other way around [12].

Greek nationalism was (and still is) far from unequivocal. On the one hand there existed those who defined the nation in terms of the classical heritage and the Enlightenment ideals. On the other hand one may find the proponents of the resurrection of the Byzantine Empire who understood nation in terms of Orthodox Christianity. This bifurcation caused numerous intense debates, social upheavals, policy disorientation, and feelings of insecurity, angst, and ambiguity. For instance, the great dispute concerning the name of the modern Greeks: should they call themselves "Hellenes" or "Romii"? The Hellenic designation referred to an outward-directed image of the nation as the immediate heir of the Classical Culture, whereas the Romeic designation connoted the Orthodox religious origins of the Greeks [13]. By the same token, in spite of their radical-liberal character, when compared with their West European counterparts, the concept of citizenship and Greekness in the first Revolutionary constitutions was coterminous with the idea of the Christian believer [14].

On the whole, Greek nationalism has been more "cultural" than "political"[15], something typical for most nationalisms located in the South-Eastern and Central European countries. As mentioned above, one fundamental component of the Greek cultural nationalism is religion; language is another. It is well documented that under the Ottoman administration of millet some ethnicities, defined in religious terms such as the Orthodox and the Jews, were given certain privileges that let them develop a distinctive sense of cultural identity [16]. Gradually this cultural awareness provided part of the historical "raw material" [17] for various nationalistic ideologies to transform into national identities in the strict sense. Concomitantly, it is not religion that creates national identity; it is the articulatory [18] nature of (every) nationalism that incorporates religion into its own ideological discourse which, as it were, interpelates the subjects as bearers of a supposedly eternal and ever present national identity. According to Smith [19], "Orthodoxy may well have "preserved" intact the sense of community as fertile ground for nationalism, when and if it arose. But its role ends there". He also adds: "religion often provides the sociological material for nationalism to work on, but it does not and cannot explain the latter's character or appearance" [20]. Ultimately, it could be said that what Οrthodoxy did during the Οttoman rule was to preserve a collective sense of a religious type of community, which subsequently and through the nationalist discourse was bestowed with an aura of "Hellenism" qua nationality. Where it not for the intervention of the political ideology of nationalism Hellenism would most likely have continued to exist as an ethnic-cultural version of Orthodox identity [21].

With this inclusion and assimilation of religious identity into the national identity ever since the 19th century, gradually came the political secularization of Christian orthodoxy [22], which was later transformed into a national-state religion. This sort of secularization has been carried out by two major factors: a) the "instrumentalization" of Orthodoxy [23], and b) its de-universalization (de-ecumenicalization) [24]. First, to explain in brief, as a national-state religion, Christian orthodoxy endows the state (and the governing political parties) with an "otherworldly" legitimacy and validity. Concomitantly, and in the same instrumental manner, the Church grants legal, financial and political security and guarantees the unfettered execution of its activities. In other words, there is a double binding here: the political instrumentalization of Orthodoxy is contingent upon a particular sacretalization of the Polity, no less instrumental for that matter. A critical point should be made here: Christian orthodoxy has never been bibliocratic or particularly rigid as a dogma. Instead, it has always been a highly flexible denomination, particularly adaptive to the exigencies of the world. Second, the "nationalization" of Christian orthodoxy has meant the theoretical and practical disavowal of its ecumenical character by subscribing to the axiomatic assumption of nationalism that humankind is by definition divided into different nations, it could not but have relinquished its ecumenical perspective [25].

We do not have the space here to completely account for the consequences of Orthodoxy's political secularization. However, it should be stressed that if in other countries secularization meant, amongst other things, the institutional separation of the church and the state, in Greece it emerged in the reversed form of the church being assimilated by the state. Thus Greek state and society have become secular without being laique, something not uncommon in European countries with impotent civil societies. Understandably, in many cases this has led to an institutional confusion and at times collision between the State and the Church, a problem that has resurfaced more intensely lately. As a consequence, the Orthodox Christian way of life is in no way the dominant norm in contemporary Greek society, and many of its religious customs have waned or even disappeared. Undergoing the risk of oversimplification, we could argue that the current situation could be characterized as distinctively postmodern: the sacred coexists with the secular, reverence is offset by irreverence, and religion is neither dismissed nor wholeheartedly embraced. Nevertheless, the Greek Orthodox Church has not been minimized to a negligible player in the social life of the country. It still is a cultural force to be reckoned with and still holds influence over public opinion.

At this point we wish to remind that secularization is not a single and standardized process (nor is there a fully-inclusive theory of secularization). As a matter of fact, there are many diverse "secularizations" which refer not solely to the relation between the state and religion, but also to the relation between magic and religion, the internal evolution of religious doctrines, the power of Christian democratic political parties, the individuation of faith, religious tolerance, the rationalization of social action, etc [26].

b. Communicative Secularization

Because of the role it plays in public affairs, with other religions and denominations being until recently an insignificant minority, the official Greek Orthodox Church has always had access to media agendas. In general, Greek journalists never questioned the role of the church in public life. Instead, they have been approaching it as both a public and a sacredotal institution.

Lately, however, some critical changes have taken place. First, the identification of the Greek Church with the Greek Nation has been eroded someway. During the last years in Greece we have witnessed the institutional role of the G.O.C coming under "attack" mainly by segments of civil society, public authorities and governmental attitudes and decisions on various controversial issues. This "attack" countervails G.O.C's wishful tendency to function as a substitute for social integration and as the representative of the nation. This tendency stemmed from the identity and political representation crisis caused by the upheavals that were triggered by globalization in the economic, demographic, political and cultural realms.

Second, the trends of large-scale mobility and the immigration to Greece of populations with different religious convictions and practices has led to a situation where an increasing number of Greek citizens are not Greek Orthodox. However, in Greece we have not observed such phenomena as the proliferation of new religions or the "multiphrenic spirituality" of which Robert Wuthnow spoke in reference to the USA [27].

Third, during the last decade the application of the model of commercial news journalism (as a result of the deregulation of the field of communications), has meant that the church and its representatives are no longer in a position to efficiently control their exposition in the media (mostly in the private ones), print and electronic. The current relationship of the G.O.C with mostly the electronic media is one of antagonistic symbiosis, a phenomenon that can also be observed in other countries [28].

All in all, therefore, in virtue of its political secularization the G.O.C is faced with a communicative secularization. Greek Orthodox Christianity has become a salient element of the symbolic repertoire of the Greek media. It has become part of the news, part of the universe of televised celebrities and part of the popularity surveys that regularly make the news. It has become one of the icons in the flow of symbolic products that is the media sphere. The situation could be described using the words of William Fore who talked of what happens to religious figures when they gain T.V. visibility: "Television first glamorises them by giving them celebrity status, and then robs them of their religious rootage by making them indistinguishable from secular media events and personalities" [29]. By entering the mainstream media culture as a distinctively folk ingredient, the G.O.C. has to a certain extent, been commodified in a way that was inconceivable years ago. It should also be noted that the Greek Church is highly visible not only in the television news programmes, but also in various secular activities, which are rather unrelated to conventionally ecclesiastic activities (e.g. conferences and gatherings) which nevertheless constitute media events and are broadcast by the various television channels of the country.

The new visibility and the mediatization of this time-honored and traditional Church have also had contrasting effects. For some parts of the audience, this has meant removal of much of the sacred and holy aura that has historically surrounded the Church and has led to feelings of disillusionment from the Church and increased criticism of its new secular image. However, at the same time the Church has also attracted new sections of the population, especially young people, who flock to the churches to attend to masses while also granting the current Archbishop, Christodoulos, the status of one of the most popular public personalities in the country.

Discussion

The three sites, which jointly constitute the online presence of the G.O.C, have been operating since 1998, in the context of political and communicative secularisation described above. According to estimates given to us by the sites' appointed administrator (and theologist), Sergios Voilas, the number of visitors amounts to 500.000 per week with over 50% coming from countries other than Greece (the extensive population of the Orthodox Diaspora).

The official GCO site is searchable site using an easy-to-navigate interface. It contains sufficient user assistance and it is being regularly updated, with some parts of it, such as the news section, being updated on a daily basis. Similarly to most church sites [30], it is not particularly sophisticated neither extravagant, yet avails of most Internet and multimedia services available. In brief, the site contains ample information on the history of the church, its structure and administrative activities and on its various religious and social activities. It contains ecclesiastical news, multimedia with sound and video files from homilies and sermons, pictures of churches, sacred books, ecclesiastical calendars, a number of "official" opinions about issues of Hellenic culture and its distinctiveness, cross-Christian relations, and a variety of social issues on which the Church has established an attitude and ground rules for action (family, social solidarity, +human rights, environment, bioethics, Europe, drugs). It should be noted that neither in the sections containing opinion texts nor in the sections containing links did we find references or links to other non-Christian Orthodox sources or voices. The sites also have a digital library, various online church magazines, live radio streaming of the Church's radio station and an Internet Cafe ("a site for the Church of Greece"), a largely educational site, in terms of both ecclesiastical matters and Internet services. It has also established a special "Section for Electronic Technology" and another "Section for Television". The first one is "active in the issues of Internet and telematic communication. And it is the service responsible for the webpages www.ecclesia.gr and www.myriobiblos.gr". The thematic content of the site is such that aims at informing audiences, like the clergy, students and researchers of theology, and the general audience of either the Greek Orthodox diaspora or the Greek country.

Media, it is known, have always been immensely useful for religions, for they function as powerful systems for the diffusion and the transmission of their ideas, their ideological elements and their tactics of persuasion. The site's administrator testified to the Church's enchantment to find a medium so ideal for the spreading of the word, for retaining links with its Diaspora and exploiting new possibilities of mediated spiritual communication. In his words "The Church has always been about Word and the Internet is the ideal medium we can use to make that Word known to everybody". Indeed, although there can be no doubt of the inherent appeal and powerfulness of religious prophecies and meanings themselves, history has demonstrated that it is only if religions can rely on an effective social organization (the Church) and a powerful system for the diffusion and the transmission of their ideas (media and channels of communication) that they can possibly play a social role and intervene as a force in history. Ideas by themselves have no considerable force unless they are well-structured, persuasively diffused and projected. The role of media in this has been pivotal. This may be the sole reason why religions, traditionally hostile to technology and science, have not opposed to media and have used them accordingly. Especially under the pressure of modernity's forces of secularization and the so-called "privatization of faith", Churches have responded by abandoning their more metaphysical emphases in favor of more ideologically-oriented functions that are perfectly served by media. Thus, religious and metaphysical discourse has become press discourse, radio discourse, television discourse, and now Internet discourse.

In contemporary western societies of mediatized public spheres, for a social institution to be absent from media would mean its marginilization in the public sphere and the subsequent diminution of its cultural power. On the part of the Church, media use has always been the pragmatic decision to exist in the public sphere. Effectively, the basic function of the G.O.C 's web sites seems to be as a new medium for the dissemination of Orthodox Christianity, in both its canonical and social aspects. This use is pragmatic and self-evident.

Based on our observations and understandings, we see the use of the Internet by the G.C.O as a pragmatic decision and as an anticipated continuation of its communicative secularisation, which was set in motion with television some years ago. In this spirit, that the Internet seems to be functioning as complementary to the offline presence of the Church and as an additive to its visibility in the public, mediatized realm. For the present, the G.O.C 's use of the new media space lies on the level that Hoover identified as "rallies" [31], that is the propagating level, which denotes an instrumental relationship of religious practice to the media, wherever that religious practice is lodged in structured or institutional religious history or doctrine".

Apart from the apparent utility of yet another medium, it can also be assumed that the GOC has realized, as most churches have, that a growing number of individuals are using the Internet to fulfill their spiritual needs. So there might also be a conversional objective, which is served by a website that focuses on the "attractive" and qualitative aspects of the Orthodox Christianity. The G.O.C uses cyberspace not only to inform audiences and enhance its visibility, but also to offer "purely" Christian representations of reality and, on a deeper level, hail and thus constitute readers as faithful subjects. This is evident from the existence within the sites of large sections containing texts that attempt to interpret current phenomena (use of drugs, alternative spiritual practice, divorces, racism, scientific advances, etc) and which provide detailed guidelines for acting according to the prescriptions of the Christian ethos. In the following extract from the site, the author - anonymous and thus taken to be the official voice of the Church - focuses on the Internet and how it should be properly used by individuals:

"One could think of the Internet as something open, or rather something that is constantly expanding and changing. This is not its more critical aspect, yet is one of its main features. Content-wise, the Internet is so unpredictable as we are, as the world is - and in this specifically lies its beauty. However, the magic of the Internet, which fascinates even those who have never used it is the perpetual augmentation of its power [..] The Internet can create powerful conditions for the cultivation of true communication, however, we must feel obliged to recognize the absolutely necessary boundaries of its power, in order to manage to escape the spell and only hold on to its beauty. The more important a work is, the more it is put in peril by what we could call the "easiness of the Internet". It is in peril because this is what is important, not us. If I am not able to understand the New Testament I am not in peril, the New Testament is! [...] The Internet exacerbates a common mistake we make - that we feel well just because we have decorated our books in a nice library. From this point of view, the word is nothing but letters and paper. But the word is only alive in the hearts of those who try to understand it. If this word disappears, then it is transformed into dead letters. The incompetent don't suffer from this loss, since what can be worse than their incompetence? However, the word remains homeless and is disappearing. Therefore, while we are traveling from one page to another in our online journeys, lets remember what we are asking for, lets take what we need and lets try to understand it as profoundly as possible. All the great works are mirrors, but mirrors that can magnify what is mirrored on them. Show them you best image, and they will make it even better. This is the only way to make works come to life - they become ourselves by transforming us, and they are what we are".

In this segment the prescription for the "correct", Christian way of using the Internet amounts to the paramount responsibility Christian believers have to save the Word from disappearing: a moral responsibility that is made even more imperative by an equally sublime and antitechnologian mental depiction of the Internet. What is interesting to note is the language chosen for the conceptual construction of the Internet, which using words like magic, spell, ever expanding, fascinating, beautiful, powerful and perilous, is very reminiscent of the ideas and discourse of contemporary futurology, in both its utopian and dystopian aspects. Expressions like "augmentation of its power", how to "escape its spell", the power of the Internet to put great works "in peril" and transform them into "dead letters" are very similar to the neo-ludite sense of "powerlessness" that James Carey referred to in his book "Communication as Culture" (p. 139). On the other hand, conceiving of the Internet as something "magic", as having the potential to "cultivate true communication" and as something "beautiful" that can transform us, is more akin to the strand of electronic utopia that presents electronic technologies as a form of "secular religiosity" (p. 114) and "a novel metamorphic phase in human history" (Zbigniew Brzezinski in Carey, p. 115) [32].

What has also been observed is that this cyber-orthodox environment that we looked at, clearly reflects the dual nature of the Church's identity in both its content-related and aesthetic aspects. As already explained, the identity of the G.O.C is dual, in that it consists of two parts, a religious one and a national one. The graphics and texts, the choice of opinions presented, the appearance of the multimedia, the traditions invoked and the discourse patterns of the web site, all reflect clearly both ingredients of the Church's identity.

In reflecting its identity, the authors and creators of these sites make a very clear strategic, rhetorical, and ideological use of the past. It really is of no surprise that particular emphasis is given on the historical role played by the G.O.C in the course of Greek history, by dedicating much space to the Greek Revolution and the pivotal role of the Greek Church in rescuing and stabilizing the Greek Nation. The tradition of any Church is vital in any kind of self-representation. Churches can be described, among others, as "communities of memory"[33].

Ritamary Bradley [34], who also found the past to be a constant component of the discourse of religious-content message on the net, writes that "...they appear to use the past as a way to validate their mission, and to make their forward steps into talking about religion to appear holy and credible". The accumulated heritage that G.O.C carries with it, its unique culture and tradition is evident throughout the site content, functioning to "prove" and remind us of the vital and irreplaceable role of the particular Church in Greek society. It is a way for the Church to tell its story and use the narratives of the past to reclaim its relevance and position in the present. Clearly, this is accomplished through a process of selection out of which the Orthodox Church's identity is socially constructed and invented [35].
Similar observations are made on the linguistic level. In most of the site's pages we come across the well-established linguistic patterns of Orthodox Christianity, typical of its rituals, practices and established ethos. The so familiar symbols and the sacred objects of Orthodox Christianity are not absent, although the site is rather minimal in its use of imagery and seems to place more emphasis on word.

All these strands work together, to depict and reaffirm the Church's sense and representation of itself. In this sense, the G.O.C's presence on the Internet amounts to a new kind of media performance, consisting of both residual elements inherited from the past, and emergent elements specific to the new communication conditions, and indicative of the flexibility and adaptability of the Church to the new medium. There is indeed a transcription of real-world identity elements into the virtual space in a highly formalistic and unsurprising manner. However, technology acting as a powerful mediating factor cannot but effect some change. So, we observe elements of Greek Orthodox religiosity being inevitably transformed by the mediation of the unique "grammar" of the Internet. For example, various issues are tackled through quite short and more 'immediate" texts in order to fit with the screen interface and the short-attention span attributed to Internet readers. More importantly, some parts of the site are impressively more youth-oriented, using informal language and handling a variety of current, traditionally non-religious, topics that might interest a wider and potentially younger audience (it is well-known that the majority of Internet users are young). Special room is given to youth issues, especially on the "Internet Cafe" and the newsletters and youthful language, distinctively different from "proper" clergy idiom, is aptly used.

However, the unique characteristic of the Internet that more dynamically distinguishes it from other more "conventional" media, its interactivity, is not appropriated accordingly. One of the findings of the Pew Internet Research project about how churches use the Internet in U.S.A was that online Churches or Churches online "are more eager to use one-way communication features such as posting sermons, mission statements or basic information, than they are to have two-way communications features or interactive features such as spiritual discussions, online prayer, or fundraising" [36]. The G.O.C websites similarly make minimal use of interactive services and remain mostly one-directional and authoritative. Although its creators have, obviously, made great effort to produce rich one-way transmittable material, such as the digital library Myriobiblos with ecclesiastical and historical material, they have incorporated neither a message board, nor a forum of discussion, nor a chat room. The only interactive functions to be found in the whole site are an e-mail address and a cyber-poll on Europe, both rather "painless" and easy to deal with.

The reason why churches are so unwilling to make use of the dynamic interactive services available on the Internet is indicative of either their low computer literacy levels or even of their perceived self-image as transmitters of the truth rather than receivers of the audience's feedback. The symbolic and representational possibilities of the postmodern Internet are used to codify, represent, and disseminate the essence and guidelines of Greek Orthodox religiosity. However, it seems that the creators of the specific sites produced it on the model of one-directional communication, more like a book, a speech, or a sermon, and significantly less as an interactive space of immediate feedback and dialogue.

In the relevant literature, interactivity has been defined as "the extent to which the communicator and the audience respond to, or are willing to facilitate, each other's communication needs" [37]. Others focus on the notion of user control and defined interactivity as "the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time" [38]. In a discussion of the concept of interactivity, Aoki distinguished between interaction with the website and interaction through the website [39]. As we mentioned above, interaction through the website, meaning interaction between the users of the sites, is totally non-existent. (Actually, there used to be a message board for a short span of time, which, was however removed after it was deemed "uncontrollable" in terms of the discussions taking place within).

Interaction with the website of G.O.C is supported by applications such as the use of multimedia (sound and video files of sermons and masses), the use of hyperlinks (to other Christian-Orthodox related sites), the use of push media (online journals and newsletters), downloading applications (polytonic software, downloading of sermons and religious texts) and the regular updating of the sites which is positively correlated with levels of interactivity. However, other elements that could add to the interactivity with the website, such as Frequently-Asked-Questions, keyword searches, visitor registration, online surveys concerning user satisfaction with the websites, forms of feedback, and possibility for more personalization/customization interfaces are absent. Also, in examining the hypertextual structure of the sites, we observe that it is more of the exploratory (or expository) style as a "deliver or presentational technology" that provides ready access to information and less of the "constructive" hypertextual style that "allows writers to invent and/or map relationships between bits of information to suite their own needs" [40].
All in all, as far as our research questions are concerned, our findings suggest that:

a) In spite of G.O.G's alleged intention for gaining a sort of modern spirituality and re-secratalization, the Internet accelerates the pace of communicative secularization of Orthodoxy. So when at its strongest, by adjusting itself to the new environment of late modernity, is also at its weakest both because of medium illiteracy and the built-in secularity of the Internet itself.

b) Being online, GOC insists in its particularism, avoids to expose itself to the Other (be it another denomination, religion and so on) and parts company from the accomplishment of a possible dialogic global ethics.
Andrew Tatusko suggests that religious mediation through the Internet will tacitly bring about a "radical change in our rationality" in favour of anti-foundationalism. "What is so odd is that when we propagate foundationalist rhetoric in cyberspace, it takes on the inherently non-foundational and plural web-like characteristics of cyberspace itself. The shift in one's rationality by virtue of accessing this information in cyberspace is occurring at a tacit and invisible level. Even if we are trying to communicate the most rigid foundationalist doctrines we can conceive, by virtue of communicating them with such conventions as hypertext and electronic text through web browsers and word processors, we are transforming the ways in which such foundationalist doctrines can be conceived. Thus rigid dogma is subsumed by an invisible technological environment and is shaped by that environment" [41]. To further this idea, and drawing on more firmly from medium theory in the sense that "the medium is the message", by lifting people and churches out of their institutional enclosure it may even lead to the creation of religious hybrids, idiosyncratic spiritualities, and webs of cooperation and association between divergent cultural actors. Yet it seems that this is not the case with G.O.C's use of the Internet as it doesn't look ready to take advantage from the "boundary-breaking potential of the Internet", benefiting religious openness and inter-religion or cross-denominational dialogue, and cooperation.

Concluding Remarks

It is known that the mediatization of religion is not without consequences for religion itself. Religion is vitally connected to communication and with communication underscoring the correlation between religion and interactive technology, we can only start to wonder in what way will these interactions alter religious practices. When religion uses media we have only to anticipate to see how media, and their cultural logics, will affect on the way religion is understood, sought and experienced.

As witnesses of history we know that each phase of mediation and "technologizing of the word" (Walter Ong) altered religious experience in significant ways, and gave birth to new forms of expressing spiritual and belief concerns. Αll of the previous Technologies of the Word - speech, writing, printing -were fittingly used by religious systems (and other spiritual voices), and religions made their presence salient in all of these phases. Jeff Ζaleski, in his book "The Soul of Cyberspace" notes that the capture of fire was the first encounter of man with the sacred - where man and sacred stepped on the same plane. Thousands of years later, the invention of the book, although still manuscript, helped considerably the promotion of Christianity throughout the world. The greatest boost was given, of course, by the printing press of Gutenberg, with the Bible being the first book to have been printed. As already mentioned, in the 20th century there has been extensive use of media for religious interests, as is testified by the USA tele-evangelists' use of both radio and television to spread their word.

The Internet is part of a broader media sphere and a site and an arena for the production, negotiation and consumption of various meanings. It is an archive and simultaneously a laboratory for cultural meanings. It will be very interesting to see how culture symbols produced and negotiated through and within the Internet will intermingle with religious meanings and what new questions will be posed. For instance, an interesting subject to examine would be the connection between current technological fetishism, triggered considerably by the Internet, and contemporary forms of religiosity, both collective and individualized.
A multiplicity of questions arises. How will the advancements in human communication and the coexisting mediations correlate with shifts in religious knowledge, understanding, meaning? What will happen to "orthodoxy" in an age of diversity encouraged by the Internet? Will the Internet function as a new channel for the manifestation of religious spirit? Will new religious sects grow out of the dynamics of the new Internet information flows? How well can various Church ceremonies and sacraments be translated to an online framework? What will be form and appeal of online "sacred places"? Can the feeling of sacredness, set-apartness, and holiness be communicated via the web?

It may still be too soon to offer concluding remarks on these issues; however, the question of how religious meaning and practices will change will depend equally on the future attitudes by the churches, the evolution of the media and the wider structural changes in society. In order to come to any conclusions more audience-oriented research, focusing on individual understandings of religious issues will be needed. For the time being only speculations may be offered.

Increased Internet access is undoubtedly a challenge for established religions, especially those that keep a defensive stance and are too slow to adapt to shifting and fluid circumstances. The main challenge will most likely come in the form of divergent concepts and interpretative approaches from outside of established cultural-religious frameworks. Theoretically an individual's page can carry the same weight for the neutral surfer as that of an official Church. This is particularly apparent when approaching issues relating to the interpretation of religious texts, the 'qualifications' of those providing online advice and the determination of the credentials of an online orthodox 'authority'. In the multivocal, pluralist and hypertextual environment of cyberspace, traditional routes of authority can be transcended, whilst surfers are also exposed to forms of knowledge and religious understanding beyond conventional boundaries. Some are optimist enough to predict that this trend will lead to the relativization of religious differences and the transcendence of religious particularisms in favour of a more global convergence. Nevertheless, a crucial point is whether this online exposure will enhance individualization and the privatization of religion, on the one hand, and whether it will foster vicarious and ersatz religious experience [42] at the expense of unmediatized forms of the religious life, on the other. Another crucial point is whether the digitalisation of religion will possibly give us a persuasive answer to the question that pertains contemporary multicultural societies: how can we live together despite our differences?

Notes