These are thoughts in response to the chapter entitled “Digital Democracy” from Bogost’s book Persuasive Games.
The ways in which the internet, gaming software, and politics interrelate can also be applied to religion, because of the similarities in social structure between needs based societies and faith based societies. Decisions made by religious leaders matriculate through the social and political structure of religious organizations, and affect different aspects of the community and faith in ways that are determined by the kind of decisions being made. Bogost created a simulation entitled “Take back Illinois”, which, “offers a procedural representation of legislative candidates’ opinions of public policy issues”. In this simulation, the player is forced to work from the perspective of the Illinois House Republicans, because the system with which the player operates from implies certain relationships between medical malpractice, health care, education, and general wellbeing. By having certain causal relationships programmed between these variables, the player is forced to acknowledge certain connections between them; such as a posited connection between education levels and medical competence. Though these connections may or may not be truly present in reality, the simulation provides a working system that can be used to learn about the issues at hand (namely medical malpractice). Now, when applied to religious structure, a game could be developed which outlines the ways in which religious decisions (changes in scriptural interpretation, ritual, alms giving, etc) affect the community. By changing the variables, people could see the relationships between the different kinds of decisions, as well as how a religious community may differ from all other types of community. Of course, a system of causality must be assumed in order to make the program, but as in Take Back Illinois, even if the system does not perfectly reflect reality, it can raise questions and concerns; or at the very least give someone a frame of reference from which to try and understand the structure of religious institutions. How important is Church authority opinion to the masses? How do money and religion truly interact? How might religious structure differ between religions? In short, procedural rhetoric can be used from the context of structural causality in order to analyze as well as understand religious authority and community.
