I wondered how the Avatars of Change had voted on the question of whether Islam was tolerant enough to allow Muslim Residents to join their inter-faith metaverse group. The Confucian founder of AoC had departed before the final tally, however, so I visited one of the group's new leaders, a BDSM aficionado who built the synagogue in a Jewish neighborhood that is festooned with Israeli flags. I had to wait a few minutes, because she'd turned off the town's anti-gravity setting to deal with the griefer she just caught trying to build a swastika in the sky above the temple.
"Someone was being a dork earlier," Beth Odets shrugs, by way of explanation. "You know, the silly things people do at synagogues in virtual worlds. It was no big deal."
Beth Odets was brought into Avatars of Change to represent its Jewish members, and after Taras Balderdash had exited the group in protest over the controversy his vote had provoked, reluctantly became one of its leaders. When the ballots were tallied on the proposal, "Vote Yes if you consider Islam tolerant", 32 members of AoC had voted Yes; 23 voted No, with 4 abstaining. Without a two-thirds majority, the proposal did not pass.
"Now that the Vote has failed," she posted to the group, "does that mean the AOC has its official stance? If we are to reclaim anything from what we were, we must stop arguing and accept the outcome of the vote... despite some of our personal opinions. The group has spoken one way or another. Fair?"
Now she's waiting to see how the vote and her statement will come across. "[I] am not doing anything till the dust settles," Beth tells me, smiling. She believes it's already riven AoC. "[S]o far as I know, lots of the group members left... it will probably slowly dissolve." At the same time, she adds, "[I]t's not like the Avatars of Change had a million events. They had parks and stuff and oracles... but it was really about a very serene way of life, and I think that was Taras vision, and he isn’t there now, and I don’t see it happening, 'cause it's not my vision, it was his."
Despite what some might assume, with the conflicts in the world outside, Beth says she is close to many Muslims-- including Drown Pharoah, the steampunk Sufi intellectual who often leads prayer in the Chebi mosque, but who departed AoC in protest against Taras' handling of the vote.
"[W]e have a good relationship," Odets tells me. "I wasn’t going to let the Avatarian thing get in the way with that... we are very accepting and understanding of each other." And though Pharoah is based in Europe, and she the American South, "[W]e have more in common culturally than most of the people I know from America... anyhow, Jews and Muslims have a lot in common, and when we are not trying to kill each other, we get along well."
Most of TMA is Beth Odet's creation, and besides the Temple Beit Israel, there's a Sabbath reenactment (above), The Kotel, and a Mikveh; it's also home to the editorial headquarters of 2Life Magazine, SL's publication for Jewish Second Life Residents, and a live performance space called The Ark, a kind of bohemian coffee house space for live music, built right into the hull of Noah's Biblical vessel. (Beth often plays violin there.)
The textures of TMA are largely taken from Beth's real world art, abstract and ornate frescoes, bringing a colorful and cheery modernism to her metaverse recreation of a religion and a culture four thousand years old. The neighborhood counts some 300 citizens, by her estimate, and on Fridays, many of them gather together at various times, depending on where they are in the physical world (Israel, Europe, and America's three zones), to light ceremonial shabbat candles.
The candle lighting is the community's sole explicitly religious ceremony. After all, she points out, "I am no rabbi, I am actually just an artist. And yes, I am into BDSM," Odets adds, when I notice her affiliation with a group of the same name. (It's rather hard to miss among the numerous SL Jewish groups she also belongs to.)
"But I don’t mix it with the synagogue." Beth Odets laughs. "I am aware that it's important to represent well. But I am a perv just like everyone else."
It's tragic that Second Life's first indigenous religious movement should collapse over such a petty squabble. Incidentally, I get a feeling that the majority of regular Second Life users are atheist and agnostic, and those users probably made their belief choices after witnessing this very kind of pedantic, dogmatic infighting among religions. Here I am thinking the virtual world could've been a ripe realm for nurturing interfaith dialog sorely needed in First Life.
Oh well, such is Second Life, on one hand so utopian and experimental, on the other hand... so faithful to the real world, right down to the stupid quarreling.
I now turn my eyes to Sophianne Rhode's Koinonia project. Well coordinated, well funded. Perhaps they'll take up the mantle that the AOC fumbled. We'll see!
Posted by: Vincent | Friday, May 25, 2007 at 07:30 PM
I dont't consider it a petty squabble. The avatarian *group* was based on the vision of a person, and the group took it upon themself to decide that person's view is wrong.
In my opinion, people should leave groups they dont agree with, rather then question the decision of the groups leader. It was really Taras's choice to make, and if the group had faith in the founder and fundimental creator, they wouldnt have found themself in this position.
Now the group has finished voting, it did not *pass*, weather or not anyone agrees, the AOC group has spoken by vote that *islam is not a tolerant faith*.... The outcome is that nothing has changed group policy, but the group itself is now in pieces and almost gone. There are SO many groups in sl... I think it sad that this group lost a good sound structure under it.... while in the process of finding out by vote that the founding leader had actually made the decision to begin with.
When do we start trusting the people we chose as leaders? Do we only trust them when it's convenient? What is real trust? If the group had trusted it's leaders decision, it would be in tact today. was it worth it?
Posted by: Batia | Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 03:36 AM
I'm thinking about starting a religion among casino zombies in Second Life. God knows we have plenty of them.
Every lemon is "good." Cherries too. We sit and stand. Already, we gather in one place very early in the morning. Why not worship the Almighty linden?
For a meeting spot, some of the casinos that are in the shape of a pyramid would be ideal.
Posted by: Patrick | Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 05:20 AM
@Patrick - Funny! But aren't zombies already part of the voodoo and Santeria pantheon? I think what they really need is liberation. The -=LAG=- (Lag Annihilation Group) and CLAM (Campers Liberation Army Movement) groups are already focused on this difficult but important struggle. IM me inworld, brother.
Posted by: Alex Burgess | Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 10:20 AM
I'm a big fan of Second Life and have been following your posts for a while.
Posted by: Artorios | Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 06:32 PM
Actually, Wagner, I don't often lead prayers at Chebi. They were generally led by the late Zander Uralia, but by no one of late. As for the AoC, I've already been approached by two ex-members to form new Interfaith groups. However, I declined to be much more than a sleeping partner in such groups because I already live on an interfaith sim and participate in its interfaith group koinonia. Indeed, Muslims on SL are now looking to open their own interfaith island, al-Andalus, based on the real-life multifaith communities that blossomed during the 6 centuries Spain was under Muslim rule.
Posted by: Drown Pharoah | Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 12:09 AM
Interfaith groups are nearly impossible. In order to respect someone else's religion, you must be able to look at your own religion from a distance and recognize that the prayer laws, food laws and other such directives are just customs.
If you believe that eating pork is a sin, you cannot look at pork eaters as your equals. If you believe that the Pope is the representative of Jesus on Earth, you will look at Lutherans as poor souls which have strayed from the Path - not to mention those who don't believe in Jesus as the Son of God in the first place.
Ultimately, for interfaith groups to work, you must relinquish a good deal of your holy book(s). If it really doesn't matter much whether you eat pork or not, then why is it emphasized in the Qur'an or the Torah? If believing in Jesus is not a requirement for salvation, then why does it say so in the Bible? Does all this mean that our holy books are faulted? Or that we can shop around in them to pick up what we like and dismiss what we don't like? What does that tell us about the God who wrote or inspired them?
Posted by: Laetizia Coronet | Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 01:47 AM
LOL, Laetizia, you'll lead people down the dangerous path to atheism with questions like that, hahahahaha!
Posted by: Brenda Archer | Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 02:41 PM
Well, Laerizia, I imagine they think a lot like the Hindu teacher Shri Ramnakrishna:
"The Avatara or Savior is the messenger of God. He is like the viceroy of a mighty monarch. As when there is some disturbance in a far-off province, the king sends his viceroy to quell it, so whenever there is a decline of religion in any part of the world, God sends his Avatara there. It is one and the same Avatara that, having plunged into the ocean of life, rises up in one place and is known as Krishna, and diving down again rises in another place and is known as Christ."
...
"Every man should follow his own religion. A Christian should follow Christianity, a Mohammedan should follow Mohammedanism, and so on. For the Hindus the ancient path, the path of the Aryan Rishis, is the best. People partition off their lands by means of boundaries, but no one can partition off the all-embracing sky over head. The indivisible sky surrounds all and it includes all. So common man in ignorance says, "My religion is the only one, my religion is the best." But when his heart is illumined by true knowledge, he know~ that above all these wars of sects and sectarians presides the one indivisible, eternal, all-knowing bliss.
As a mother, in nursing her sick children, gives rice and curry to one, and sago arrowroot to another and bread and butter to a third, so the Lord has laid out different paths for different men suitable to their natures.
Dispute not. As you rest firmly on your own faith and opinion, allow others. ..to stand by their own faiths and opinions. By mere disputation you will never succeed in convincing another of his error. When the grace of God descends on him, each one will understand his own mistakes. So long as the bee is outside the petals of the lily, and has not tasted the sweetness of its honey, it hovers round the flower emitting its buzzing sound; but when it is inside the flower. it noiselessly drinks its nectar . So long as a man quarrels and disputes about doctrines and dogmas, he has not tasted the nectar of true faith; when he has tasted it, he becomes quiet and full of peace."
Posted by: Aliasi Stonebender | Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 12:51 AM
Please note that I am no longer a member of Second Life.
Posted by: Drown Pharoah | Saturday, June 02, 2007 at 02:18 AM
Unless a religion is based within institutionalism, collapse of a group is not necessarily the end of the faith. There are those who do focus in on the group itself, and what its political influence represents, more than its message.
Religious tolerance comes at a cost. That cost, though, should never become forced eccumenicalism. Accepted divisions of beliefs among Avatarians only goes to prove again that freedom of religion is alive and well in Second Life. The expression of Avatarianism will most likely only change but not end.
With the release of The Second Life Bible (SLbible) it is evident that freedom of the press regarding religion is alive and well also. The message of the Holy Scriptures goes above and beyond any institution of man and remains unchained.
Posted by: California Condor | Monday, June 11, 2007 at 11:22 AM
I wanted to respond to what someone said....
"If you believe that eating pork is a sin, you cannot look at pork eaters as your equals."
this is NOT true. The jewish religion teaches us that non jews are not required to follow the kosher laws, and therefore do not break any commandment or commit a sin if they eat pork on a bun with bacon extra ham and cheese :)
Guess we're equals after all :)
Posted by: Beth Odets | Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 01:06 PM