“God is Technology”: Mediating the Sacred in the Congolese Diaspora

Abstract

Pastor Joshua’s experience of divine revelation refl ects the importance of mediation but also suggests the absence of contradiction between technology and the realm of religious identities and practices. The example he quotes demonstrates that “old-time” religion is very much at home in the world of computer-mediated communications, and is far removed from the idea that religion might increasingly recede from the public sphere and become privatized with secularization and the inexorable advance of scientifi c rationalization. In fact, there might be a close “elective affi nity” between modern forms of communication and a “glocal” Pentecostal performance of the sacred. When Pastor Joshua tells us that revelation is like a phone signal ringing in the believer’s heart, he not only illustrates the strongly localized and embodied dimensions of the charismata, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are vital to the Pentecostal personal encounter with the sacred; in addition, the poignant expression “God is technology” and the metaphor of the electronic signal to represent divine calling points to the way in which religious transcendence dovetails with the dialectic of deterritorialization and reterritorialization generated by ICT networks. The simultaneously globalizing and localizing quotidian operation, computermediated communications mirror the powerful, anti-structural but deeply personal and immediate experience of the Holy Spirit. This mirroringfacilitates the portability of the tight spirit-matter nexus in Pentecostalism: the idea that the Holy Spirit and the spirits serving the devil are engaged in a cosmic battle that is manifested in daily life across the globe. ICT networks, then, become a medium to transmit this worldview and a key tool to fi ght the cosmic battle on God’s side, more specifi cally to conquer territory for Jesus.