{"id":731,"date":"2007-03-23T17:11:30","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T23:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=731"},"modified":"2007-03-23T17:11:30","modified_gmt":"2007-03-23T23:11:30","slug":"born_again_agai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=731","title":{"rendered":"Born again again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LifeChurch.tv, the high-tech evangelical church, has opened a 16-acre campus in Second Life, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/blog\/technology\/2007\/03\/second-life-missionaries.html\">reports<\/a> New Scientist. Bobby Gruenewald, LifeChurch.tv&#8217;s Pastor-Innovation Leader, <a href=\"http:\/\/swerve.lifechurch.tv\/2007\/03\/12\/lifechurchtv-has-a-second-life-church-campus\/\">writes<\/a> on his blog that the virtual church will feature on-demand video, free virtual t-shirts, a special &#8220;LifeKids&#8221; area for little avatars, and something called a &#8220;Mysecret.tv glass house.&#8221; Beyond providing a gathering place for the virtual faithful, LifeChurch.tv hopes to use its presence to help redeem Second Life. Writes Gruenewald: &#8220;I need to warn you that there is a huge problem on Second Life with porn and &#8216;virtual sex.&#8217; It is one of several reasons we are there, but it is also something that you need to be on guard about.&#8221; To combat the licentiousness, LifeChurch.tv has invited the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Nightline\/Beliefs\/story?id=2841065&#038;page=1&#038;CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312\">Porn Pastors<\/a>&#8221; from xxxchurch.com to set up a mission within the campus.<\/p>\n<p>The establishment of virtual churches and congregations of avatars would seem to raise some knotty theological questions, which I&#8217;m not sure the LifeChurch.tv pastors have fully thought through. In creating virtual worlds, aren&#8217;t we usurping God&#8217;s role &#8211; and hence committing a heresy? Are avatars created in God&#8217;s image or our own? Can they be saved? Can they be damned? Does sin even exist in a virtual world? Is there a Second Afterlife?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LifeChurch.tv, the high-tech evangelical church, has opened a 16-acre campus in Second Life, reports New Scientist. Bobby Gruenewald, LifeChurch.tv&#8217;s Pastor-Innovation Leader, writes on his blog that the virtual church will feature on-demand video, free virtual t-shirts, a special &#8220;LifeKids&#8221; area for little avatars, and something called a &#8220;Mysecret.tv glass house.&#8221; Beyond providing a gathering place [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}