The Future of Religion in the Metaverse

August 9, 2022

Tech companies are investing in the metaverse and increasingly recognizing that religious communities, some which have already been meeting in virtual reality, will play a key role in the digital future. Many questions remain, however, as to whether that relationship will be good for the religious communities themselves or merely prioritize profits through engagement at any cost.

The metaverse is an immersive virtual world where people can interact with one another. It spans across companies, applications, and games, and aims to change how we interact with technology itself. Proponents of the metaverse are keen to emphasize its ability to rearrange the world into something that truly blends the virtual and physical; they stress the metaverse’s potential to contain entire economies and to be “interoperable” by letting people move seamlessly, with the same avatar or items, into multiple spaces owned by different companies.

In October 2021, Facebook was renamed and rebranded as Meta, signifying another shift from one of the big five tech companies to focus on building the metaverse. Earlier that year, Zuckerberg spoke about why he sees the metaverse as the next major development of the internet: “You can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it.”

Source: The Future of Religion in the Metaverse