Transversal modes of being a missional church in the digital context of COVID-19

Abstract

The disruptions of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the year 2020 reshaped all aspects of life, including religious practices and rituals. As more religious activities shifted to digital space during the lockdown periods, there was a growing need to examine the link between religion and digital media. Using the model of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA), this article draws on the notion of transversal rationality and concepts of rationality, cognitive, evaluative and pragmatic to posit that COVID-19 has configured traditional missional and liturgical spaces in ways that locate the agency of the marginalised at the centre. The article highlights how COVID-19 configured Christian mission as it disrupted power dynamics through religious digital spaces, which emerged as a new way of reimaging a missional church. These new digital spaces mediate between interaction and ‘telepresence’, embodied in the representations of the sacred available through online religious systems in practices where users are no longer ordinary believers – but religious participants who have power and freedom to choose. Although this is not a new phenomenon, the article concludes that such spaces created by COVID-19 shifts in power dynamics present opportunities for ordinary members to reinvent new meanings on what it means to be present or absent, to name, narrate and reinterpret the divine and forge new meanings towards participating in the mission of God.Contribution: Although this is not a new phenomenon, this article represents a systematic and practical reflection within a paradigm in which the intersection of philosophy, religious studies, social sciences, humanities and natural sciences generate an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary contested discourse.

Sanitation, vaccination, and sanctification: A South‐African theological engagement with COVID‐19

“…In his "Transversal modes of being a missional church in the digital context of COVID-19," the missiologist Buhle Mpofu examines the link between religion and digital media from the vantage point that COVID-19 configured traditional missional and liturgical spaces in ways that locate the agency of the marginalized at the center. 27 30 He rightly and insightfully argues that COVID-19 has brought about very complex challenges to such extent that it can only be carried on through interdisciplinary approaches. As interdisciplinary conversation partners he engages and negotiates as theologian with the fields of virology and philosophy of biology.…”

Rethinking the Eucharist in the aftermath of COVID-19 disruptions: A comparative study of Reformed and Pentecostal theology of sacraments

“…The COVID-19 disruptions presented an opportunity to interrogate traditional practices related to dispensing of the Holy Communion within the Reformed tradition and explore other missional alternatives. Mpofu (2021) also observed that the creative use digital connections and spaces demonstrate how transnational faith communities create digital liturgical spaces across borders that redefined 'presence' and the 'none present' in ways that could enhance mission in the era of social distancing necessitated by responses to COVID-19:…”