Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality

Wagner, Rachel. Godwired: Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality. New York: Routledge, 2012. 266 pp. $39.95 (US). ISBN: 978-0-415-78145-9 The rapid development of media and digital technology in the last few decades has inspired a great deal of research into the intersections among religion, media, and culture. In Godwired: Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality, Rachel Wagner offers a creative and insightful text focusing on the interactions and parallels between virtual reality and religion. Wagner defines virtual reality as "any form of digital technology that involves user engagement with software via a screen interface" (1). The definition is understandably (if perhaps overly) broad, as her range of examples stretches from online worlds (Second Life) and transmedia franchises (Avatar, Star Wars)to flash mobs and digital prayer walls. Wagner argues that our engagements with virtual reality and religion are analogous, with both presenting many of the same possibilities and challenges. She describes religion in terms of both bricolage and family resemblance: religion rolls together rituals, myths, texts, morals, and communal boundaries, resulting in a recognizable combination. The theoretical groundwork for tying virtual reality and religion together is laid in the third chapter's analysis of the relationships among rituals, games, and stories. Wagner describes the "ritual-game-story thing" (54) as a complex hybrid, with each phenomenon displaying various degrees of interactivity, play, rules, narrative, and conflict. The differences among these three, especially between ritual and game, may be difficult to clearly demarcate, but Wagner argues that it primarily rests in the participants' attitudes: rituals make ultimate claims while games make limited ones. The remainder of the book is a collection of topics that build on this theoretical framework. Wagner explores the possibility of the "virtual sacred" in light of Mircea Eliade's sacred/profane distinction (chapter four), the construction of identity (chapter five) and community (chapter 6) in light of virtual reality, and the potential for evil (chapter seven) and revelation (chapter eight) in video games. In the final chapters, she attempts to synthesize the key insights of these earlier chapters, arguing that both religion and virtual reality engage in worldbuilding as a way of imagining sacred and virtual space. The synthesis rests on applying the concept of transmedia, in which an overarching narrative or world is developed across multiple forms of media, to religious traditions. Wagner is particularly effective at problematizing the sometimes rigid distinctions between virtual and other spaces. …