site for theological reflection.3 Investigating what it means to “live well” necessarily entails investigating the choices we make and how those choices affect others and ourselves. The anonymity on which so much of virtual life relies—both intentionally and unintentionally—is directly related to the Christian view of the human person. Christian anthropology is incarnational in that it understands the dignity of the human body in the context of the redemption of the body found in Jesus Christ. Theologians seek to maintain the unity and dignity of the human person in the face of virtual activities that would undermine it precisely by means of anonymity.4
The claim of Christian anthropology against an individual choice to watch pornography, for example, concerns not only the threat to a person’s individual relationship to God but also to his or her relationship to other people. When a person watches pornography, she not only undermines her own dignity but also the dignity of all involved in its production, as well as those around her who may be adversely affected by her formation in watching pornography. Personal exchanges and engagements with mediated content affect our relationships to each other. As the Body of Christ, the community is both particular and universal. In addition, a lack of integrity in its members affects the Body. This makes the question of anonymity pertinent from an ecclesiological perspective as well.
In her work on doing theology online in Aquinas on the Web?, Jana Bennett draws on several Christian bloggers to investigate the relationship between the internet and theological discourse. One of the most quoted bloggers in Bennett’s work is Susan Bauer, who at one point writes the following: “There are aspects of digital culture that we should fight against, not because they are ‘not print’ but because they are not godly.”5 Bauer goes on to list these “not godly” aspects, including “the anonymity which allows us to lie and deceive each other.”6 This is the persistent worry about anonymity online, from both Christians and non-Christians alike. The lack of trust that already obtains between strangers in our culture—even between people who live in the same neighborhood—is exacerbated by the ability to conceal or falsify one’s identity, appearance, and personality through the medium of the internet. Some Christian theologians, then, have looked at the internet’s characteristic anonymity as a symptom of much more serious diseases that plague modern life.
Following Stanley Hauerwas’ postliberal project, George Randels uses “narrative, character, and community . . . to analyze cyberspace.”7 He argues that cyberspace is one of the clearest products of the modern condition, as it “involves a conception of the person primarily as an isolated, autonomous, and often anonymous individual rather than as part of a larger community.”8 Anonymity, for Randels, is the high point of the excesses of liberal individualism. Using multiuser domains or MUDs as an illustrative example, Randels contends that “anonymity permits players to be known only by what they explicitly project, and that it encourages some of individualism’s excesses.”9 By virtue of its anonymity, then, sociality online is insufficient in light of the fullness of social life one finds in the church. Randels’ aim is to set the church over and against the internet by virtue of anonymity reflecting the problems of liberalism: “Atomistic and excessive individualism contrasts sharply with the church, most other forms of community, and most visions of ethics.”10
Along these lines, Gene Veith and Christopher Stamper write, “The screen name—unlike an actual name—has no social context, presenting no family, with no community ties or obligations.”11 Once again, anonymity precludes traditional social consequences and enables, it would seem, undesirable choices. A “social context” is important for the maintenance of these social consequences, consequences that Veith and Stamper refer to vaguely as “ties or obligations.” The “social context” par excellence for Veith and Stamper, as well as Randels, is the local church. The local community is inherently “faceful”: an individual physically sees other members, and that seeing alters the choices he makes. This seeing of faces not only provides him with the social consequences to preclude certain behaviors. It also provides a person with examples for living well in light of the gospel. Here, then, the local church becomes the antidote to a digital life veiled in anonymity.
The local church is also “nameful.” The Christian church grew and continues to grow by means of witnesses. Named individuals were willing who give their lives, through martyrdom or other means of sainthood, for Christ. They are accountable to their communities, both friendly and oppressive, in a way that challenges the growing preference for anonymity in the social life we find online. Such accountability, the argument goes, relies on an honesty that is undermined by the inherent deception (pseudonymity) of a screenname or avatar.
Having a name is also theologically important because of the Incarnation. Although theologians have tended to focus on the Incarnation while addressing the concern of disembodiment online (treated below), part of Jesus’ being fully human is that he had a name that located him as a human being from a particular place: Jesus of Nazareth is God Incarnate. Perhaps online anonymity is giving Christian theologians pause because anonymity seems to run against the grain of not only the local church community but also against its picture of both humanity and divinity. Perhaps it is more than just a problem with deception and all of the ways by which we may be enabled to do and say immoral things; it is a problem of the very way we think about who we are and who God is.12
Vitriol
The question of anonymity ushers in a myriad of issues regarding the phenomenon of online nastiness. As a catch-all for the many ways we have found to mistreat each other in virtual space, I refer to this second aspect as vitriol. Theologians often focus on how people treat each other online because they are inherently interested in how human beings relate to one another. There is a common implication that online interaction is even worse than the sinfulness we face in ourselves and others offline: people are meaner to one another, practice less patience, and operate with less shame toward their fellow human beings than they do in offline contexts. Although vitriol is often tied to anonymity, people continue to do and say terrible things to each other under their own names and faces. Thus while anonymity and vitriol are related, it is important to treat them separately. More importantly, the theological concern over anonymity is much bigger than the way in which it enables vitriol.
In a short piece in Word & World, Adam Copeland considers “each [of the Ten Commandments] as it relates to information communication technologies and digital life.”13 For the second commandment, Copeland argues, “It reminds us that comments should be left with kindness, humility and love. As one Christian blogging site states in its comments policy, ‘Blessed are those who refuse to insult or slander others, even if they have been disrespected themselves. They show us all the better way.’”14 America, the Jesuit weekly magazine, once suspended its comment feature on articles for this very concern, though they have since returned them to the website.15
Bennett provides perhaps the most sustained account of vitriol by focusing on one particular online discussion. Because of her focus on theological discourse online, she focuses on a discussion over Rob Bell’s controversial Love Wins, a book that questions common notions of heaven and hell within Christianity. Directly after its publication, Love Wins became a hot topic of discussion in online Christian circles, often functioning as a kind of litmus test for various ideological positions. Throughout her treatment of the discussion, Bennett does note the place of anonymity in the conversation, but focuses more extensively on the vitriolic nature of the conversation. She makes the claim that there is something in the very form of the internet that encourages vitriol. She writes, “The internet’s architecture makes skimming very easy because of the way web pages tend to be designed. So it would seem that the very nature of the internet forms us to think about others in ways that are dehumanizing.”16 Elsewhere she argues that “our technology does not allow us to view ourselves as created by God, with God as our source, nor does it allow us to understand ourselves as sinners, particularly when it comes to perpetuating evils like racism.”17 Her assertion is that the very form of mediated communication online contributes to or even encourages discourse
