VIRTUALIZATION OF THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: SOME INTERPELLATIONS OF THE CYBERCULTURE TO THE EVANGELIZING ACTION OF THE CHURCH

Abstract

The new technologies that have transformed the daily lives of men and women, have also brought opportunities and questions to the different institutions of society, including religious ones. How will the good news of the gospel be communicated in a dynamic cyberculture What are the new scenarios in which evangelization is done, what are the transformations that will have to be implemented to carry out the mission, and how will the transition from an evangelization centered on personal presence in a specific place to a digital and virtual world be made. This work aims to raise questions that arise from the encounter of the evangelizing mission with the emerging culture, and in turn outline some guidelines to consider in pastoral work. A brief tour through these new scenarios to account for the transition from face-to-face to virtual (2) to outline what the new cyberculture is (3) and later expose the virtualization of religious experience (4) and some tensions between the traditional and virtual (5) to conclude with some implications in pastoral work (6) and a brief conclusion. It is a new and rapidly changing social environment, which needs to be thought from the perspective of faith in open dialogue.