Satan loses his sulphur
15 May 2004
Above: the Church of Fools pulpit has proved very popular among wannabe preachers of all descriptions.
Simon Jenkins, project leader of Church of Fools, reflects on Week 1 of the pilot project.
It's not every day you encounter Satan in the pulpit of a church. But this wasn't any old place of worship. My face-off with the Prince of Darkness took place in the world's first web-based 3D church.
The church is the latest unlikely religious project of Ship of Fools, an online magazine and community which specialises in debate, critique, satire and humour about the Christian faith. There is method in our foolishness: we want to offer people frustrated by the failings of traditional Christianity the chance to vent and discuss the issues, and discover a community of sceptical saints at the same time.
We launched Church of Fools because we want to find out if it is possible to go one step further in the online community and "do church" on the net. The digital media agency Specialmoves has worked with us to create a 3D church with a crypt downstairs, where you can log in as a cartoon character, sit in a pew, talk to other people from around the world, kneel, cross yourself and take part in regular, short services. We're running it as a three-month experiment, and already the chemistry is looking ... well... interesting.
Church of Fools is a cross between a computer game and an 11th-century Romanesque sanctuary. One visitor looked around with her five-year-old son on her lap. "Wow!" he said. "Who's on your team and which ones do you kill?" – a sentiment many traditional churchgoers will recognise.
Anyway, back to Satan. Disguised as a normal worshipper, I came across him ranting in our pixellated pulpit. I was logged in as a church warden, who has a smite button capable of visiting an Old Testament-style logout on the unrighteous. "What are you doing?" I asked him. "Who is this who dares approach the Evil One?" he demanded. "Well ... I'm the church warden," I replied. "Ah ..." he said, before becoming disappointingly contrite.
One week into our experiment, and we are encountering bigger issues than a pantomime Devil. On the plus side, 8,000 people are entering Church of Fools each day (that's a cathedral-sized congregation), and there are some lively theological discussions in the crypt and heartfelt prayers being exchanged. On the minus side are sorties by small groups who want to post racist slogans, religious abuse and experience the joy of shouting "fuck!" in a church.
We think the Methodist Church (who are sponsoring the project) has a good role model: John Wesley, who did the unthinkable in the 18th century and took preaching out of the churches and into the fields and streets, where the people were. He was pelted with eggs and abuse for his trouble. We're interested in the same sort of thing: taking church to where people are – on the Net – even if it means virtual eggs are going to fly.
