Constructing “network sacrality”: a philosophical analysis of digital religious experience

Abstract

The digital media environment is radically reshaping forms of religious life: Internet platforms are becoming an independent environment in which a specific configuration of the sacred is being constituted. The article offers a philosophical and religious-studies account of how “network sacrality” emerges from networked interactions and blurs classical oppositions between sacred and profane, bodily and virtual, individual and collective. The relevance of the topic is driven by the spread of online practices (livestreamed services, prayer chats, digital devotional artefacts, VR spaces) and by the growing role of algorithmic mediation in shaping what believers encounter as sacred. The novelty of the approach lies in conceptualizing “network sacrality” as an analytical category that captures the diffuse, dynamic, and collectively constructed modes of the sacred in digital culture. Using philosophical analysis and a comparative perspective on offline and online religiosity, the study identifies three mechanisms of network sacralization: (1) embedding religious meanings into everyday communicative flows; (2) virtualization of presence and “digital embodiment” via accounts and avatars; (3) reconfiguration of community and authority toward horizontal networks and personalized, “patchwork” spiritual strategies. The article concludes that the ontology of the sacred is expanded in the digital era and that core categories of the philosophy of religion (hierophany, ritual efficacy, authenticity, communal belonging) require reconsideration under conditions of mediatized religious experience.