Bible in the Metaverse
We hear from Toby Beresford about an event he is hosting at the Bible Society called ‘Bible in the Metaverse’. He shares some background to the Metaverse and why it’s an important topic to reflect on and experience.
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This month at Bible Society we’ll be exploring what the future holds for the Bible in the metaverse. A small group of digital theologians, online Bible communicators and church leaders will meet to discuss how we communicate the word of God in this emerging online environment. And what better place to meet to discuss the metaverse than in the metaverse itself?
So, what is the metaverse?
The term, coined by Neil Stephenson in his book Snow Crash, originally referred to a single online world, much like the internet except that we inhabit it as avatars – just like in the movie Ready Player One. However, we now see that there are really ‘many metaverses’ where different platforms offer different types of ‘world-like’ experiences.
“ A small group of digital theologians, online Bible communicators and church leaders will meet to discuss how we communicate the word of God in this emerging online environment. And what better place to meet to discuss the metaverse than in the metaverse itself?”
Typically, in these experiences we are represented as an avatar navigating a 3D world. There might be objects we can interact with and there might also be a sense of persistence of those objects – you can pick up a pickaxe, use it to mine for virtual gold, and then use the gold to buy a fancy hat to decorate your avatar. It can all sound a bit pointless but there are real-world cases of interest – learning languages, practising surgery or even virtual church gatherings where physically disabled congregants can move around freely just like other churchgoers.
This might be how we continue to use it, but it is still so new that no one can say for sure. It’s still being ‘built out’. There are many competing visions of what the mainstream metaverse will eventually be. Meta, the company behind Facebook with its 3 billion users, is spending billions of dollars building its version of the metaverse (which requires a VR headset) called Horizon Worlds, yet this platform remains in its infancy. Other more mature platforms, like Fortnite or Roblox, are already providing interactive, social 3D experiences for hundreds of millions of users every day.
On the Metaverse, in the Metaverse
Our event allows us to discuss theology and discipleship questions in the very environment we’re discussing – are there different kinds of embodiment? Are we still ‘meeting together’ as church if we’re represented by an avatar rather than in person? If we experience a Bible story immersively (for instance with our avatars following the Israelites out across the Red Sea) does this imprint the Bible story more effectively than simply reading it, as VR church pastors have suggested? There are many questions to think about!
“Our event allows us to discuss theology and discipleship questions in the very environment we’re discussing”
Running an event in the metaverse itself comes with its own set of questions – as we’ve quickly discovered. First up is deciding which metaverse platform to use. We are currently working with one called Frame, which is the first of a new breed of platforms that run in the web browser (no need for a 3Gb download of metaverse software for your laptop). Then, once we’ve set up our platform, we have to get people onto it – of course it’s pretty new for everyone. We’ve all now learnt how to create avatars, which keys move you forward and, of course, how to mute and unmute our microphones. It has been fun trying it out and learning together!
Spatial Audio
“The main difference between a metaverse event and one held on Zoom is that there isn’t one conversation.”
The main difference between a metaverse event and one held on Zoom is that there isn’t one conversation. So, just like in the real world, everyone can be chatting at once. The metaverse stops this being a cacophony by using ‘spatial audio’ – the nearer your avatar is to someone the louder they are (much like a bar in real life, where you can only really hear the people next to you). And, if you want to go and speak to someone else, all you have to do is move.
For us at Bible Society the metaverse allows us to host an event that is more about relationship building than it is about giving talks (something YouTube, Teams and Zoom do well). Through it we can provide a space that gives the pioneers the chance to meet with one another, not just to hear from us. Our hope is that this multitude of conversations will spark new initiatives and allow the Church to figure out the opportunities for mission in this new environment together. We would be delighted if you joined us.
