Paper short abstract:

For African Christians in Australia virtual worship is a complicated entanglement of benefits and barriers, mobility and immobility. Churches have had to be innovative in their responses to congregants’ needs. We thus call for the study of online/offline practices as a single co-constitutive field.

Paper long abstract:

In March 2020, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia slammed its international borders shut, internal state borders hardened and lockdown was implemented. Communities and families were separated both at home and abroad for almost two years. This situation was particularly difficult for African Christians living in so-called ‘fortress Australia.’ Although diverse across all socio-economic indicators, for this cohort of migrants church is the cornerstone of their community. Churches, as social institutions, provide material and spiritual support and facilitate local, translocal and transnational connections. In this paper, we argue that for these Christians the speed and scale of the expansion of virtual worship engagements was characterised by a) a complicated entanglement of benefits and barriers, mobility and immobility; and b) places of worship’ innovative responses to their congregants’ needs. Whilst some flourished in the religious cyberspace, others found this development greatly affected their experience of the Holy Spirit, and complicated their relationship with their (religious) communities both in Australia and their homelands. Here, we follow other digital anthropologists who argue for the study of online/offline practices as a single co-constitutive field. We show that these practices are complementary; they work in tandem, one reinforcing the other. Certainly, new and interactive media technologies do not necessarily erase but add to the previous use that religions had made of other technologies to spread the word and make religions tangible, such as images, pamphlets, recordings, books, radio, and TV. This work contributes to discussions concerning the online/offline religious lives of migrants.