Approaches to Community

There is an internet website called www.wiccantogether.com —“The Online Community for Wiccans and Pagans.” This particular group is a community in the sense that they are like friendly neighbors. They share experiences with one another to vent, to uplift, to inspire, and to learn from each other in blogs. In forums and discussion lists they ask questions and advice on certain situations, provide resources for each other (mostly in terms of religious tools), discuss their own practices and beliefs, and even have a birthday shout-out column in which they have the option to send the person a gift. The description as the community as “neighbors” deems true because they’re willing to lend a helping hand but never get in anyone’s business. They are not as literally involved as family members are, therefore the community acts as your friendly next door neighbor that will help you in times of need, but mostly keeps to themselves and takes care of their individual problems—keeping it a balanced relationship/community.

Solely skimming through each page in the website, it seems that not many, if any, community members have met each other face-to-face, appearing to be strictly an online community. The way the community is organized seems to be more appealing to those who are already familiar with the faith; there’s not a section explaining the mission of the website, or really any of the “what, where, why, when, how” questions to those who are not believers or followers of the Wicca/Neo-Pagan faith. The structure is very loose, the content seems to be all over the place and is limited to a text-based format, although there are some music videos posted on the side of the home page. The home page is divided into categories but are all intertwined and somewhat confusing to the new comer with pictures, texts, and videos all scrambled together in one space. 

I screen captured both images above

However, there are a decent amount of members who are happy to be a part of this community and keep coming back to post and share their thoughts. They live out their form of online community freely--however they desire and at their own discretion. 

Just as Postdoctoral Researcher Tim Hutchings stated in his case study, Considering Religious Community Through Online Churches,  "Leaders, participants, supporters and critics are all involved in an ongoing exchange of ideas and actions, seeking to shape the emergence of the forms of 'community' they deem theologically and socially desirable." 

Community members choose what content they want to be exposed to and participate in whether it be for social reasons or for religious reasons. In addition, the only set rules are that members must be 17 years of age and type appropriate text—(minimal swearing, no sex chat, etc.), so there's not much of a limit to how they can form, practice, and live out their community.

There doesn’t seem to be a negative offline impact to this online community’s religious tradition. The religion itself is very personal and individualized—so there’s no set religious tradition and therefore there is no tradition that can really be harmed or severely affected due to the online community. The online community is there to help the individual’s offline life be better and successful, just as a friendly neighbor would want for any of their neighbors. Consequently, the offline impact would result in positive thinking and energy from receiving effective, valuable, or even just plain nice advice and insight from their helpful online community.