From Radical Communalism to Virtual Community The Digital Transformation of the Family International

ABSTRACT

The emergence of digital and internet technologies has created new spaces for religious engagement and introduced alternative venues for community-building, identity construction, and religious practice for marginalized new religions. Ethnographic research on the Family International's reconfiguration as an online community, subsequent to a sweeping reorganization introduced in 2010 referred to as "the Reboot," explores the role its integration of digital media and virtual spaces played in the renegotiation of the movement's religious identity and community. The movement's journey to networked community affords insights into transformative ways that religious culture may be reconstituted through digital engagement, and the challenges new religious movements face in retaining community boundaries and distinctive identity within the interconnected and increasingly globalized context of today's digitized world.

Novel communication and internet technologies have created a dynamic new media landscape that has introduced alternate venues for community, identity construction, public engagement, and practice in the realm of religion over the past two decades. Digital technologies have provided new platforms for alternative and marginalized religious movements to propagate their belief systems, erase geographical boundaries to network congregants, and to compete in the contemporary religious marketplace of ideas. The technological resources that digital media afford for marginalized new religious movements are considerable, including a democratized sphere for disseminating alternative worldviews and proselytization, as well as an expanded public space for establishing legitimacy and reshaping the narratives that define the movements.¹ By the same token, the current embeddedness of the internet in everyday life has, in essence, compelled religious organizations to navigate digital media to engage their publics.² As new religious movements have taken up residence in cyberspace and incorporated new media into religious practice, this engagement has given rise to complex internal processes to counterbalance the enhancements that digital technologies offer for religious practice with the wider exposure to secular culture.³ The inherent tension in balancing opportunities afforded by new communication technologies while sheltering the community from potentially corrosive exposure to secularizing ideologies and the plethora of religious ideologies online have rendered the internet a significant (and often contested) platform for religious negotiation and identity construction.⁴

The transformations taking place at the interface of online/offline religious contexts highlight new challenges to the type of identity work needed to retain subcultural boundaries, as well as a unique identity and sense of belonging for members. New streams of scholarship seek to shed light on the ways religious movements negotiate new media and virtual spaces, and the extent to which they in turn are reshaped by digital engagement.⁵ Initial research, imbued with optimism about the new opportunities the Web afforded for religion, speculated about potentially drastic change in religious practice and ideology.⁶ Subsequent research findings, however, have indicated that digital engagement has tended to produce a reconfiguration and transformation of existing beliefs and practices, as opposed to radical revolution.⁷ Recent scholarship has provided further insights into the negotiation process that occurs as religious movements incorporate digital media into religious practice and the challenges this gives rise to in maintaining community values, social boundaries, and a shared identity.⁸

Notwithstanding the ubiquitous presence of religion on the internet, empirical research has been limited in exploring the ways new religious subcultures are being transformed in progressively digitized and networked environments, as well as how religious expression and performance are evolving through the integration of digital media.⁹ There are gaps in the literature regarding the impact of oppositional information, counter-narratives, secularizing ideologies, and competing worldviews that flourish in cyberspace, challenging the legitimacy claims of alternative religious movements. The permanence of potentially delegitimizing information published on the internet, coupled with the ease of its dissemination and the permeability of identity-sustaining boundaries in cyber-environments, have created new dynamics for marginalized new religions that merit further exploration.¹⁰ The expansion of religious worlds beyond physical places to potentially broader audiences and virtual spaces on the internet also challenges traditional templates for religion, offering new definitions of what it means to be religious in a digitally augmented world.¹¹ Timothy Hutching's research of five online churches, for example, highlighted the self-directed nature of "networked religion," indicating that participants often cycled through different networks, appropriating resources and connecting at will while maintaining a separate religious world offline.¹² The authenticity of disembodied relationships forged in cyberplaces also continues to be a subject of debate in regard to religious community and practice.¹³ Robert Glenn Howard's study of a fundamentalist "virtual ekklesia" indicated that the online network comprised weakly linked individuals who seldom engaged in collective activities beyond sharing an ideology.¹⁴ The integration of digital technologies undoubtedly has raised new questions about how collective identities are constructed, negotiated, performed, and sustained in multi-site mediated environments.¹⁵

The Family International (formerly the Children of God), a new religious movement with approximately 1,900 members in 80 countries, presents a contemporary case for study of the potentially transformative effects of engagement with internet and digital communication technologies. Founded in the countercultural era of the 1960s by David Berg (1919–1994) and his four children, the Family International (TFI) operated on the margins of society for over 40 years, sustained by a common belief system, communal lifestyle, and shared cultural rituals. In 2010, the movement's communal society model was abruptly dismantled by TFI directors Karen Zerby (b. 1946) and Steve Kelly (b. 1951), better known as Maria Fontaine and Peter Amsterdam, in a sweeping reorganization referred to as "the Reboot," which eventuated in its reinvention as an online community. The movement's journey to networked community affords insights into alternative ways religious culture may be reconfigured through digital engagement and the challenges religious subcultures face in retaining community boundaries and distinctive identity within the interconnected context of today's digitized world.

Previous literature addressing the organizational and doctrinal change introduced at the Reboot (notably Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd's comprehensive analysis published in Nova Religio) has not examined the pivotal role that integration of digital technologies played in the orchestration of the Reboot and its unanticipated outcomes.¹⁶ In this article, I explore salient aspects of TFI's migration from radical communalism to virtual community, the role its engagement with digital media played, and the impact the consequent renegotiation of TFI's collective identity, religious practice, and lifestyle has had on its community and culture.

METHOD

In light of TFI's migration to virtual community, the current study blended standard ethnography approaches with online ethnography premised on the theoretical assumption that the online spaces people occupy have become integral for framing lived experiences, personal identity, and group relationships.¹⁷ This approach enriched my study through the integration of data from websites and virtual spaces where affiliates of TFI connect, express their faith, and renegotiate their identity.

My data collection was derived over a period of two years from multiple sources, including 19 in-depth, one-on-one interviews with ten male and nine female TFI members and former members, as well as observation and analysis of websites and blogs, social media, and YouTube videos. In order to enter into the social media milieu, I joined two sizeable Facebook groups created by grassroots TFI members: an English-language group with 643 members ("Disciples of Jesus"), and a Spanish-language group with 838 members ("Orden de los Guerreros de Oración" [Order of the Prayer Warriors]). In the ensuing days, I received over one hundred "friend" requests and rapidly became cognizant of an interactive grassroots community presence within the confines of these closed Facebook groups. I was able to integrate my firsthand knowledge of the movement and extensive personal networks to facilitate exploration of the views TFI members and former members hold of the changes they have experienced since the Reboot and the subjective meanings they have constructed from their experiences. I first encountered TFI as a teenager in Brazil en route to a small town where I had previously resided with Brazilian families as a high-school exchange student from Canada. This proved to be the beginning of a life-journey that would take me to several Latin American countries for twenty years, and ten years in the Washington D.C. area. In Latin America, I found myself at the center of the public controversy¹⁸ that surrounded the movement and assumed a role in TFI public relations from 1989 to the Reboot. In this capacity, I participated in government forums on religious liberty, sociology of religion conferences, and international media events in the wake of opposition and government intervention. I was a member of the TFI policy council that designed the Reboot and participated in the drafting of several documents outlining its architecture. Subsequent to the Reboot, I (and my extended family) migrated from Latin America and reintegrated into Canada.

For the current study, I recruited interview participants utilizing maximum variation sampling to include individuals representing a variety of perspectives, backgrounds, and generational and cultural diversity. I conducted thirteen interviews with first-generation participants (aged 50–65) and six with second-generation participants (aged 30–40) from Africa, Canada, Hungary, India, Mexico, Norway, Taiwan and the United States.¹⁹ Interviews featured open-ended questions regarding participants' experiences of transitioning from communalism; perception of contemporary religious experience and community cohesiveness; connectedness to TFI's online community; and identification with TFI. Over time, I adapted the topic guide to include other subjects that arose, in particular participants' perspectives on TFI's apocalyptic worldview.

The interview sample modeled the generational composition of TFI's post-Reboot membership of roughly two-thirds first-generation and one-third second-generation. Although my research indicated some cultural similarities along generational lines, as would be expected, a more salient feature of my findings was the diversity among respondents, which crisscrossed generational divides. Participants also were selected with a view to representing differing levels of commitment to the movement, from no or low levels of commitment to a deep sense of affiliation. This assumption concerning participants' commitment level, based largely on their current membership standing, proved to be problematic, however. In TFI's current cultural milieu, previously strongly etched boundaries distinguishing members from non-members and the committed from the less committed, have become significantly blurred, largely rendering "member/former member" distinctions outmoded. This realization provided critical insights into the new landscape of cultural and religious connections that people held in relation to the movement. Consequently, for the purpose of this research I have adopted the term "affiliate" in reference to members/former members where membership distinctions have proved irrelevant.

I also conducted online research through observation of 15 official TFI websites and blogs and 7 unofficial member blogs to explore how affiliates utilize digital media for networking and community-building. Lastly, I accessed a digital database of TFI publications to document the movement's adoption of digital technologies, its reconfiguration as a virtual community, and the subsequent adaptation process. To this end, I analyzed 22 publications detailing the architecture and rationale for the Reboot and 68 publications addressing TFI's pre-Reboot appropriation of the internet over a 15-year period, including perceived advantages and disadvantages, regulations for its usage, and its role in promoting the movement and its message. In order to identify themes descriptive of TFI's renegotiation of its religious identity and community, I thematically coded interview transcripts, analytic memos generated throughout the data collection process, and TFI digital documents according to topics relevant to my research. I then organized these codes into meaningful categories and identified patterns across the data. From the analysis of the data, several recurrent themes emerged inductively across the data set relating to identity and boundary negotiation, affiliation and stigma, and the reinterpretation of community in networked environments.

In the sections that follow, I will offer a brief synopsis of TFI's history and its integration of digital technologies, and the conceptualization, implementation, and aftermath of the Reboot. I will then summarize the thematic findings of my ethnographic research of TFI's evolution to online networked community, and the implications for the future viability of the movement in the absence of a coherent offline presence.

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD OF THE FAMILY INTERNATIONAL

More than a mere counterculture, the Family is an alternative society.

William Sims Bainbridge²⁰

William E. Paden's characterization of new religious movements as socially constructed worlds—unique, self-contained adaptations or compensatory movements that reconstruct social existence around alternate forms of community—provides an apt depiction of TFI's formation as an alternative society in the late 1960s.²¹ Initially an integral part of the Jesus People movement with its hybridized fusion of evangelical Christianity and hippie counterculture, the Children of God's radical doctrines and rejection of institutional Christianity led to its rupture with the Jesus People by 1971.²² While the latter became absorbed within mainstream evangelicalism or virtually disappeared altogether by the mid-1970s, the Children of God launched an outreach mission to counterculture youth worldwide, culminating in the emergence of a new religious movement with an international presence.²³ Despite never exceeding 10,000 adherents in its 50-year history, members distributed their signature literature and musical productions in over 20 languages, and established communes and recruited disciples in over 90 nations.

TFI's history and evolution have been characterized by controversy from its early days, hallmarked by its antiestablishment message of denunciation of the socioeconomic, cultural and religious mainstream and its institutions, collectively referred to in TFI writings as "the System." The movement's unconventional doctrines, communal lifestyle, and heterodox sexual practices placed it at a high degree of tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment, eventuating in several internationally publicized government interventions and subsequent vindications.²⁴ Berg's antinomian "Law of Love" doctrine, proposing that Christians have been freed from the Mosaic Law's prohibitions of sexual relations outside of marriage, served as the theological justification for liberal sexual practices that led to a period of extensive experimentation from 1978–1985. In 1986, Berg and Zerby published an early child protection policy in response to complaints of sexual misconduct by several Family teenagers, followed in 1989 by an excommunication policy for those found guilty of child abuse. In 1992, a policy statement was published with strong denunciations of child abuse, disavowing former writings by Berg at variance with this position. Subsequent acknowledgements and apologies to second-generation members who had experienced sexual misconduct or abuse due to Berg's controversial writings were periodically published, the most recent of which was in 2009.²⁵

The movement has proved resourceful in responding to contemporary trends and shifting circumstances within TFI, as well as those originating from external sources or changing sociocultural environments.²⁶ Recurrent trends of experimentation, adaptation, and radical reorganization, internally referred to as "revolutions," have occurred throughout TFI's history. To this end, periodically the group has restructured organizationally, revising, adjusting, or annulling aspects of its belief system and practice in the process, thereby creating a culture of continuous change and adaptation.

Corporate prophecy published throughout 2006–2008 postulated that TFI's membership and circle of influence were poised to expand exponentially, giving rise to a protracted process of identifying aspects of TFI's lifestyle and practice incongruent with congregation-building and evangelistic expansion.²⁷ This examination of the movement's context and communal culture was prompted in part by the realization that membership had not expanded beyond 10,000 members throughout its history or sustained large congregations.²⁸ Leadership meetings were convened with approximately 70 representatives from around the world, and member surveys were conducted, resulting in feedback from hundreds of members. After an intensive two-year review process, TFI's directors concluded that the movement's communal society model was no longer conducive to its goals for evangelism and church growth or relevant to contemporary society, due to its insular and exclusivist nature. Consequently, in May 2010, TFI's organizational framework, including its national leadership and grassroots board structures, were dissolved in a comprehensive restructuring prophetically christened the "Reboot."²⁹

The Reboot represented a profound redirection of TFI's religious practice and worldview, and the virtual dismantling of the communal households that had been central to TFI's religious identity construction and the perpetuation of its culture and belief system. Theologically, the Reboot repositioned TFI's beliefs and religious practice in closer alliance to Christian orthodoxy with affirmations of the primacy of the Bible as the Word of God, while marginalizing the majority of TFI's unconventional doctrines and relinquishing exclusivist claims.³⁰ Simultaneously, the Reboot systematically deconstructed historic pillars of the movement's culture, notably its networked communal society model and locally organized leadership and community structure. Insular lifestyle practices that had served to maintain boundaries of separation between the movement and the surrounding sociocultural environment were disavowed, such as proscription of public and higher education, discouragement of property ownership and secular employment, and disassociation with denominational Christianity.

The Reboot's revisionism of TFI doctrine, worldview, and countercultural practice was meticulously mapped out in 22 documents, which included a descriptive outline of the movement's future reorganization and projected implementation in early 2011.³¹ This reorganization envisioned the introduction of national facilitators, who would be commissioned with building TFI's community and coordinating evangelistic outreach. The failure to implement this new organizational framework post-Reboot eventuated in the movement's metamorphosis from a communitarian movement in tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment to an amorphous networked community with no formal structure beyond its online presence. The disassembling of the communal household model, rationalized by a shift from TFI's collectivist ideology to self-determination and personal autonomy, resulted in unprecedented cultural upheaval, notably the global migration of thousands of members to their native countries and a protracted process of identity renegotiation and reintegration into conventional society. Membership in the rebooted version of the movement has been steadily declining; recent statistics indicate that TFI's membership currently comprises some 1,900 adult members in comparison to nearly 7,000 prior to the Reboot.³² In spite of TFI's dwindling membership, members continue to disseminate its evangelistic message in 80 countries, while maintaining numerous multilingual religious websites and charitable and humanitarian programs.

TFI AND NEW MEDIA: NAVIGATING THE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE

Despite logistical obstacles to fostering movement cohesion throughout TFI's history, with its hundreds of autonomous communities dispersed across scores of nations with dozens of languages, the movement sustained a unified subculture for decades due to its well-developed communication networks.³³ From its earliest days, TFI established effective communication systems for disseminating the movement's sacred writings, referred to as "the Word," to its communities. Through these publications, TFI's subcultural identity was constructed, negotiated and reinforced, boundaries were drawn and redrawn to maintain social resistance and separateness from society, and its worldview was communicated and socialized within the communes.

The dual exigencies of TFI's evangelistic purposes and its alternative society model collectively fostered a culture of rapid integration of new communication technologies for purposes of unification of its widely dispersed membership and furtherance of its evangelistic agenda.³⁴ TFI was one of the early new religious movements to homestead on the Web with the November 1995 launch of its flagship website, www.thefamilyinternational.org, followed by its counterparts in Spanish (www.lafamilia.org) in June 1997, and Japanese (www.family.gr.jp) in early 1998. In December 1997, a password-protected "members-only" interface was integrated for TFI websites furnishing chat forums, prayer boards, and community spaces where members could interact and share original artwork, music, and evangelistic and homeschooling resources. Thousands of the movement's religious writings were digitized and archived in a regularly updated digital library by 1997, and by 2001 its publications, previously disseminated exclusively as paper copies by mail, became downloadable. Communications between international, regional, and local leadership and communities were established through internal e-mail systems, utilizing adaptations of conventional encryption systems to prevent these from filtering outside the movement. Protection of internal communications designated for membership from external scrutiny was of paramount importance to the movement, due to the often-controversial nature of the writings, as well as the ongoing stigma the movement endured in the aftermath of government interventions and intense negative media campaigns in the early 1990s.

In the late 1990s, TFI became cognizant of the critical importance of recreating itself in the modern mass-mediated public square of the internet to overcome counter-narratives that proliferated on the Web, hearkening back to legacy issues from its past. Efforts to modernize and reinvent its public image were met with heightened public opposition in the early 2000s due to the development of three adversarial former-member websites (exfamily.org, xfamily.org, and movingon.org), which rapidly gained prominence in search engine rankings of information featured about TFI. A murder/suicide in 2005 perpetrated by Karen Zerby's estranged son, Ricky Rodriguez (1975–2005), further increased tensions and placed the movement once again at the center of controversy and stigmatizing media.³⁵ The consequent media attention served to revive old controversies and create a platform for new former-member narratives, intensifying the struggle to dominate the defining narrative about the movement. In its quest to achieve representation and a voice in cyberspace, TFI has struggled to navigate these often-contested spaces of the Web, a forum that has proved more amenable to countermovement propagation of information.³⁶ The permanence and visibility of counter-narratives on the internet introduced a game-changing platform of negotiation for TFI, hindering its efforts to distance the movement from past controversies and reinvent itself as a legitimate contemporary movement.

TFI literature from 1996–2005 indicates a heightened degree of tension within the movement in negotiating new media engagement and attempting to appropriate advantageous features, while curtailing those deemed potentially corrosive to the belief system and culture. Writings that sought to regulate internet usage, such as "The Perils of the Internet" and "Don't Get Caught in the Web,"³⁷ reflect the uneasy truce brokered by TFI's leadership in appropriating advantageous features of the internet while confronting risks to TFI's boundaries of separation from "the System." Despite TFI's ambivalent relationship with the Web, its gradual integration of computer-mediated forms of communication from 1996 onward proved central to the conceptualization of the Reboot, facilitating the exclusive adoption of digital platforms to maintain community and continuity during the interim period prior to its anticipated reorganization in 2011. In conjunction with the Reboot, TFI created numerous websites to integrate its writings, administration, and services online, while providing limited interim community services, including spaces where members could share prayer requests and news of their mission works, or post want ads.

In 2013, the movement developed a new community website, TFI Online (http://tfionline.com/), in an effort to compensate for the loss of its offline community structure and to consolidate its virtual world for members. TFI Online retains the group's signature approach to maintaining a distinct separation between its public presence and its internal religious world through the maintenance of separate public and member interfaces. However, in keeping with the intent of the Reboot of developing a contemporary approach to evangelization and a culture of greater openness and transparency, most of its publications, previously restricted to internal membership, have been made publicly available on its community website. The members-only interface was further developed through the featuring of members' profiles and community-building resources in a bid to preserve the sense of unique identity and community previously central to TFI membership. Notwithstanding endeavors to enhance its online community, TFI's decline in membership provides evidence of the challenges the movement has faced in compensating for its previously cohesive offline community life through online forums.

THEMATIC DATA ANALYSIS

From analysis of the data, several recurrent themes emerged inductively across the data set, including identity renegotiation, the loss of boundaries that previously defined the movement and its belief system, redefinitions of affiliation, coping with stigma attached to the movement and membership, and the reinterpretation of community in networked environments. I will explore these themes from the various perspectives that emerged in interviews with research participants, webcasts and documents published by TFI, and grassroots Facebook groups, in conjunction with the theoretical literature that informed my analysis.

Renegotiating Identity

Identity affirmation and boundary definitions have been identified as vital components for the maintenance of cohesion in subcultural groups, and new religious movements in particular, where collective identities are constructed and negotiated in the face of competing worldviews and controversy.³⁸ Christian Smith proposed that religious movements historically have engaged effectively in dynamic renegotiation of religious identity to adapt as needed to the changing sociocultural environments they confront, as has typically been the case with TFI.³⁹ Despite TFI's characteristic adeptness at adjusting to historical exigencies, however, the movement's migration to purely virtual environments gave rise to unprecedented challenges in the retention of its distinctive identity and members' sense of belonging. Its current online community model places few demands on its membership, and many of the boundaries that were constitutive of its original identity have been deconstructed. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the communal households, which in tandem with the group's religious writings were central to the construction of its collective identity, the definition of what TFI is, and what it means to be a member, has become somewhat ambiguous and fragmented.⁴⁰ This transformative outcome may be observed in the commentary of my interview subjects, all of whom I have assigned pseudonyms for the purpose of this study.

The Reboot's shift in philosophy from communalism, referred to nostalgically by Louise as "the utopia of the Family and the ideology,"⁴¹ in favor of individualized faith practice and personal autonomy fostered the development of a "privatized and self-styled" form of spirituality.⁴² Jennifer explained that "it gave everybody the freedom … the opportunity to just basically individualize what they felt their calling was or how they were going to enact it."⁴³ TFI's contemporary emphasis on personal autonomy and individuated faith models, while empowering to individuals, has contributed to a sense of loss of distinctive shared identity. As Amanda indicated, "Right now, as a movement I see it's very weak. It's a bit puzzling because it's not defined."⁴⁴ Membership, previously a highly prized commodity in TFI culture, appeared to hold less currency in the views of many of the research participants. Some expressed uncertainty as to whether their spouses considered themselves members, and none of the 89 children born to the 13 first-generation research participants interviewed were members. Ashley suggested that the previous ingroup/outgroup distinction between members and former members was no longer relevant. "It's become totally a non-issue; you don't know. And in a way, I kind of like that because I feel like it had become almost too important."⁴⁵

In a 2013 webcast entitled "What is TFI Today?" TFI co-director Steve Kelly acknowledged the fragmentation of collective identity the movement has experienced post-Reboot:

A lot of people have written us asking, what is TFI today? It's difficult, though, right now to define the Family. … I've come to the conclusion that there's probably 3,568 different ways that the Family can be defined, because that's how many members we are, and each of you are looking at it through your eyes, through your experience.⁴⁶

Throughout TFI's history, collective identity was fostered unambiguously around commitment to its radical doctrines, communalism as the biblical paradigm for discipleship, and opposition to "the System" and institutional Christianity.⁴⁷ How have members made sense of the shift away from a strongly bonded, socially maintained community with a sacredly defined worldview and culture? Analysis of the interview data yielded contesting narratives of self-realization and empowerment, and cultural displacement and fragmentation. Thus, for example, Owen observed, "Everybody's kind of redefining their reality, I guess would be the right term. I think that you even look at different TFI members in totally different ways than you did before. The metric is different."⁴⁸

Several research participants offered immigrant analogies to frame the cultural displacement they experienced. Julia explained:

I always tell people we're like immigrants. We came from a culture where everything we did had a reason, and within our culture we actually had a status. Just like doctors who immigrate from Pakistan; they might have been doctors with their own practice in Pakistan. But they come here and they have to relicense and relearn and start at the bottom. It's a lot like that for us. Things that had value within the Family culture, how do you translate?⁴⁹

In the midst of these expressions of cultural displacement, a common thread unexpectedly emerged of identification with TFI's belief in the imminence of the biblical "Endtime," which previously underpinned the movement's religious identity. Berg preached extensively of a soon-to-come end of the world, whereby world systems would cease at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, ushering in a new and godly social order. Despite an official distancing from the previous centrality of apocalyptic beliefs within TFI's worldview,⁵⁰ the majority of research participants made spontaneous references to the Endtime as an identity marker they retained in the aftermath of the Reboot. Several participants speculated on the imminence of the Endtime as a rationale for the dismantling of TFI's previous organizational structure. Anthony, for example, stated: "I feel like going to TFI on the site is not necessarily strong, or it's not my church, or where does it stand exactly, I'm not sure. Maybe approaching the Endtime, maybe we don't even want to have that; maybe it's God's plan we don't have any structure."⁵¹ Ashley further conjectured: "I think [the Endtime] could change everything. To me, that's where I feel like world events or Endtime events could maybe bring about that relevancy that's lacking."⁵²

The process of identity renegotiation has been an ongoing one for TFI affiliates, as evidenced by personal assessments such as Matthew's "I am still rebooting" and Ryan's "I am still in the process of reinventing myself."⁵³ In the midst of integrating into a world they had abandoned decades earlier, many affiliates experienced an identity crisis.⁵⁴ In Larry's experience: "I guess I had like an identity crisis in some ways. When I came to Canada, I thought, what am I? Who am I? … I knew that we had a place in, what do you say, the body of Christ, inside of it, but finding my personal place without the group identity. …"⁵⁵ Michael identified the complexities of this renegotiation as he extolled the opportunity afforded by the Reboot for people to "place themselves in the driver's seat of their life," while equally lamenting the loss of collective identity: "I think what was lost was the collective will. I think what was lost was we couldn't convert what the structure was of the past into an ongoing structure that was going to work. I think that meant that we really didn't convert the positive of the Reboot into something that made us a stronger group."⁵⁶

When asked how the Reboot changed TFI as a movement, several research participants responded that they no longer considered TFI a movement. Thus, according to Ashley: "As a movement, in the form and format as it was, [the Reboot] ended it. The whole idea is that it would resurrect, that it would reboot in another fashion. I think it has, but just not what we expected. We expected it to still be a cohesive movement, and I feel like it's not."⁵⁷ Notwithstanding such considerations, virtually all research participants expressed a sense of gratification with TFI's contemporary emphasis on individualized practice and lifestyle. Taylor, for example, conceptualized TFI's transition online as an evolutionary step for the movement: "Online is really where things are at in today's world, everything's online. So I think we've become what the Lord wants us to be in order to reach people."⁵⁸

Deconstructing the Boundaries

A salient feature of the Reboot was its intentional deconstruction of the boundaries that served to define and maintain TFI's religious world. The group's culture was complex, ritualistic, and regimented through the mystical and administrative writings of its prophetic leadership, socialized within its communal households, and networked through its national organizational structure and online platforms. The systemic change introduced at the Reboot touched at the heart of cultural norms that had been "etched in stone" and assiduously detailed in its membership charter.⁵⁹ TFI's charter was redacted during the Reboot from a document exceeding 300 pages to one of less than 30 pages; membership requirements were reduced to acceptance of TFI's core beliefs, the submission of a monthly electronic report, and financial contributions. TFI's previous institutionalization of norms of social resistance in the form of disavowal of materialistic values and pursuits, avoidance of secular or religious influences incompatible with its belief system, and discouragement of secular employment, higher education, and property ownership were rescinded.

In the absence of a new organizational structure in the aftermath of the Reboot, TFI evolved into a networked community lacking clearly defined boundaries for membership commitment, ritual, or collective purpose. The ambiguity in membership definition, worldview parameters, and religious practice in its virtual reinvention proved disruptive of subcultural boundaries that previously served as identity markers. Michael commented:

I think probably in a sense of what TFI meant, TFI misses a vision. I think the online vision is not strong enough, and without the Endtime and without communal living, I think those are big things that had to be replaced with something and somehow with a strong view of community within TFI, and I think it didn't happen.⁶⁰

Five years after the Reboot, numerous affiliates expressed a sense of disconnection from TFI's religious writings, previously central to membership cohesion, while several, like Anne, relegated these to one of many resources they use for their spiritual development: "That's how I feel about Family stuff. It's just another church, and some of it's feeding and some of it's not."⁶¹ Lauren likewise commented, "I don't always read the posts by [the directors]. I don't know why I don't. I guess sometimes I feel like I don't connect to them as well. Confession there."⁶²

At the time of the Reboot, Kelly officially rescinded TFI's historic stance of separation from institutional Christianity, a fundamental identity marker and spiritual claim upon which TFI was founded.⁶³ Whereas previously members had read almost exclusively TFI-created publications that resonated with its singular interpretations of Christianity and reinforced boundaries of separation from the world and other Christians, in a sort of spiritual glasnost a new openness emerged that provided exposure to other ideologies, worldviews and non-TFI Christian teachings. Anne reflected: "I just feel like in the Family we were encased in this house or something, and once it was gone, once the roof was off, we can really grow."⁶⁴ Anthony similarly commented, "It's like the structure fell, the walls fell, so now we can relate to people. Before we couldn't relate to people, because we were in a little bubble that we had to protect."⁶⁵ Such reflections seemed paradigmatic of the dialectical tension TFI had faced in enforcing its boundaries of fundamentalist separation from the world within the walls of its communal households while striving to fulfill its world-engaging evangelistic purpose at the core of the movement.

Michael pointed to the ambiguities introduced to TFI's previously dualistic worldview as a factor that blurred the boundaries. "Spiritually, we had a very black-and-white vision for a long time. What the Reboot added in was a lot of gray, a lot of nuances, a lot of areas for ambiguities."⁶⁶ A former member's webcast lamented this blurring of symbolic boundaries between TFI's radical interpretation of Christianity and institutional Christianity:

You're talking about tens of thousands of people around the world who have given their lives not for some kind of a church, not for some sort of typical Christian group, but for a revolution … something worth giving up your life for. I'm sorry, but church is not worth giving up your life for. For the Family to become like a church is just sad.⁶⁷

The majority of research participants nonetheless expressed positive sentiments regarding the lessening of tension with conventional Christianity and the integration of mainstream Christian publications and resources into TFI's culture.

Several affiliates disclosed that in their current context they are rarely able to engage in Christian outreach, the main rationale proffered for the Reboot, due to the demands of life responsibilities and time constraints. "I don't do any missionary work, I don't do any counseling. I don't do any Bible studies with people. … Right now, I feel like my missionary work or involvement is zero," Anthony lamented.⁶⁸ Such comments seemed indicative of the ambiguities prevalent in the rebooted TFI regarding how to foster coalescence in its loosely bonded format and recapture the sense of collective purpose and belonging that previously characterized the movement.

Virtual Community-Building

The authenticity of disembodied community in technologically constructed spaces has engendered debate as to whether the internet spawns impoverished forms of community or generates innovative and vibrant forms of engagement.⁶⁹ The current research sought to explore how TFI affiliates engage in community within the group's contemporary amorphous structure, and their perceptions of the cohesiveness of the virtual community. In 2013, Kelly produced a series of 16 webcasts to respond to concerns raised by members about the perceived loss of community cohesion and collective identity. With titles such as "Why be a TFI member today?" and "Is TFI a dying movement?" these web-casts sought to address members' concerns and respond to requests that new agencies for community be developed in accordance with Reboot documents outlining the movement's anticipated reorganization.⁷⁰ Kelly's response therein indicated that a new organizational structure would not be implemented in the foreseeable future, and suggested that members develop grassroots mechanisms for community, such as local fellowships and social media groups, or in the absence of other options join a local church.

In response to interview questions regarding their level of engagement with TFI's post-Reboot community, several respondents expressed a deep sense of nostalgia for the previous bonded community and shared purpose. "I miss the camaraderie, the feeling of being involved in something with a large group of people," Justin said, "and … having life goals that were pretty clear, and feeling enthusiastic about it and not being alone in those life goals."⁷¹ Several research participants expressed the opinion that TFI Online serves primarily as a distribution mechanism for its publications rather than a replacement for its previous community or a place for community-building. Justin explained:

I'm not really a big proponent or fan of the idea that an online community can replace a real community in any sense. I'm not a big user of social media or any of that. I much prefer the in-person type of experience. For me personally, it's useful in the sense of being able to receive the publications and the Word, that the Family is able to continue to distribute the Word to the members. But in that aspect of community, which was a big part of Family life, I don't really think it works as a replacement.⁷²

While most research participants echoed this perception that TFI Online cannot replace its previous, tight-knit community, the majority expressed satisfaction with TFI's virtual platforms as effective mechanisms for accessing its publications and latest news, and for providing a nexus for connection.

The tension the movement has faced in reconciling past conceptualizations of the cohesive TFI community and its current incarnation as a loosely bonded network was evident in people's expressions of both a sense of disconnection from TFI as a movement and profound cultural bonds and friendships. "There's always going to be that connection with people who you served the Lord with, who are still your friends and all," Ryan said. "But as far as feeling any affiliation with TFI at this point, I don't really feel that, simply because I don't feel that there is anything to feel that for."⁷³ Elizabeth, on the other hand, perceived a loss of previous friendship bonds. "I think the camaraderie and the support, and all that stuff that you felt in a home isn't really there anymore, and that's sort of hard to keep up online. … It's hard to really connect with others, or there's not really that bond anymore."⁷⁴

Many contemporary religious movements have availed themselves of social media platforms to create chat forums and discussion groups to replicate a sense of belonging and community online. Within the previously regimented TFI environment, however, this had proved problematic, as it gave rise to critiques and debates considered deleterious to the community and faith life of the movement. "We don't have a forum or a Facebook interface on the TFI site," Owen explained, "and it's good we don't, as we tried to do that once before and it was … a total pain in the ass to monitor, excuse my French. It was very, very time-consuming and doctrinally challenging."⁷⁵

The majority of respondents indicated that they primarily communicate with other affiliates through e-mail, Skype, social media, and occasional in-person visits. Several affiliates attended periodic fellowships dedicated to worship, while most indicated that the occasional get-togethers they frequented were generally friendship-based with little or no component of faith-sharing rituals. The members' interface of TFI Online provides links to monitored sites for posting prayer requests, want ads, and evangelistic testimonies. However, chat forums and democratized community spaces were not integrated into TFI Online; ultimately, affiliates created their own community places through Facebook, blogs, Skype groups and chat forums. In particular, two closed Facebook groups, one for English users and one for Spanish, were referenced as sources of virtual connection. In both Facebook groups, interactive engagement and ongoing participation were observed among posters, all of whom revealed their identity and referenced their postings around pre-existing relationships and cultural cues. A sense of community was built through sharing prayer requests, encouragement to those in need, testimonials of answers to prayer, and links to TFI and other Christian faith-based resources. Although a dynamic inner circle of posters was in evidence, with the majority posting infrequently, nonetheless many participated through "likes" and words of affirmation.

Noticeable in both Facebook groups was the absence of theological debate or interrogation of TFI doctrine or worldview, past or present. These Facebook groups seemingly retained TFI's previous cultural boundaries for social interaction, which served to reinforce the belief system and community cohesion, and frowned on critiques of TFI's religious world that risked undermining the faith of others. Anne expressed her frustration with what she perceived as a lack of frank dialogue on these forums. "I feel that on that forum, there are still some people who are very, very dogmatic about the Family. One time, I said something to a Family member, 'I just don't really get fed much from the Family site.' Boy I mean, I got such a response … I thought 'wow."'⁷⁶

The individualized nature of contemporary religious affiliation evident in the interviews and observation of Facebook postings indicated that research participants assembled religious meaning from multiple sources and contexts, including mainstream Christian resources and churches, TFI websites and publications, and their personal faith experiences and networks. It remains to be seen, however, whether this new construct for religious affiliation, characterized by fluid and highly personalized social networks, will be conducive to recreating an authentic sense of community and belonging. Shepherd and Shepherd questioned whether TFI in its current amorphous and individualized configuration will be sustainable into the future, a concern also voiced by several affiliates in my sample.⁷⁷ Overall, affiliates' forecasts of TFI's future were mixed, with some feeling that it would continue to exist in its current format through the lives of individual members while not regrouping organizationally, and others predicting that it would eventually dwindle away.

A few research participants, like Ashley, expressed hope that some future catalyst will reignite a sense of belonging and purpose. "I still keep my ear to the ground. I still have a sense or a feeling that it's not over yet."⁷⁸

Navigating the Contested Spaces of Cyberspace

The emergence of new religious movements from the 1960s onward has been characterized by the clash between movements and counter-movements, and intense stereotyping and stigmatization of new religions.⁷⁹ By the early 2000s, the religious debate surrounding unpopular new religious movements had been repositioned largely in the realm of cyberspace, which proved to be a contentious and unregulated frontier. The Web afforded new religions an accessible means of world engagement, religious identity construction, communication with dispersed membership, and evangelization; however, it equally provided space for counter-narratives that could be damaging due to the ease of replication, permanence of information, and lack of editorial censorship on the Web. TFI has faced cyber-obstacles from numerous sources, including hostile former-member websites and narratives in media articles, blogs, self-published e-books, a stigmatizing profile on Wikipedia created by a countercult administrator with editorship authority, and a battle for dominance of search engine rankings that has proved intractable.

In light of the contentious nature of cyber-engagement, TFI typically has integrated security mechanisms, internal e-mail systems, and password protection for its websites and use of internet technology to protect its communications from external scrutiny and censure. The information flow facilitated by the Web, however, compelled the movement to rationalize its worldview to the public and disclose previously private realms of its religious beliefs and practice for public scrutiny. These new social dynamics challenged TFI's boundaries, formulated around the organization of its writings and internal workings into what Douglas Cowan referred to as esoterica, writings reserved for devotees, and exoterica, publicly available writings for evangelization and representation.⁸⁰ Over time, this division became increasingly contested, as the second generation—chafing at the insular restrictions imposed on TFI communities while engaging in boundary-permeating interactions with former-member peers and secular worldviews online—raised the debate in various forums about developing a more open culture. As summarized by Owen:

There was kind of this big battle between, do we open this material up? I think there was a school or faction that felt that it's taking so much time to try to manage this stuff, let's just open it all up. Then there's this school, "Well, we can't." … As far as our development as a movement and leading up probably to the Reboot, I think that was kind of an important moment, because it started to help us to think out of the box. In other words, if we want to appeal to people, what do we have to do as far as changing what we're writing or what we're making available to people?⁸¹

Julia pointed to TFI's internal writings and resultant practices as counterproductive: "It was like this whole subculture thing that just warped the Family. You could never be a bona fide member of society."⁸² Owen likewise suggested that TFI's complex system of security policies to protect its internal writings limited the movement's ability to evolve. "I think maybe if we'd adopted a more open model earlier on, we could have built a bigger user base and possibly a bigger community."⁸³

As the movement struggled for legitimacy and validation in the embattled terrain of cyberspace, it vacillated for a decade between accommodation to the new demands for openness and modernization and preservation of its insular religious worldview and lifestyle. The Reboot represented the closing argument in the debate, as the leadership determined to recreate TFI culture altogether, eliminating most of its countercultural elements and deconstructing the boundaries between the movement and the outside world, ultimately blurring us-them distinctions previously central to its identity. In Emma's view, TFI's reinvention as an online community has enabled TFI members to better integrate into mainstream society and Christianity. "We draw maybe less attention. … We kind of blend in more with other Christians. I think it's a good thing we're not so cultish, so sectarian."⁸⁴

In spite of the revisions introduced at the Reboot to eradicate contentious elements of the movement and lessen TFI's previously high degree of tension with the dominant society and mainstream Christianity, the hue of controversy historically surrounding the movement has not abated. In light of the lingering stigma associated with TFI membership, the majority of research participants indicated they have generally opted to not disclose their current or previous membership background, due to what several referred to as the "baggage of the past." "We don't talk about it because people couldn't relate," Amanda explained. "I guess also because you say you were with that group, it can bring up all those things, the controversial history of the Family. So, we're the people without a past."⁸⁵ Research participants offered numerous reasons for not disclosing their current or past affiliation: fear of job discrimination, potential losses due to disclosure, having to explain past controversies long-since addressed, being labeled a former cult member, and lack of relevance to outsiders. Anne explained that TFI's controversial history inhibited her from joining a conventional church. "If you go to a Protestant church, they're going to start asking all about your past. Then you bring all that up and they're no longer looking at you as a person, they're looking at you as a former cult member."⁸⁶

As long as TFI's religious world was sustained as a coherent community, the external tension and adversity the movement faced, while producing hardship and difficulty, nonetheless reinforced the group's subcultural identity and shared purpose; the movement proved adept at rationalizing and integrating conflict within its religious worldview. However, the Reboot's deconstruction of the "magical coherence" of a counterculture movement in a state of resistance to the surrounding culture ultimately challenged the core integrity of its sacred universe.⁸⁷ As Ryan explained:

It was different before, when you were a part of the communal structure, and TFI was an actual what I would term "organization" or "movement." You were a member of that church, you went out witnessing, you told people exactly who you were and you dealt with the issues. But at this point in time just to stand alone and take all that on. …⁸⁸

Considering the challenges TFI has faced in fostering a sense of belonging centered in identification with the movement, the cyber-dynamics of information dissemination that underpin people's hesitancy to publicly identify with TFI place in question its ability to evolve as a relevant movement into the future.

CONCLUSION

The Family International's emergence in the late 1960s led to the creation of a distinct alternative society that flourished for four decades. Bainbridge's comprehensive 2002 survey of 1,025 TFI members concluded that TFI's communal society model represented a "coherent and apparently satisfying way of life for its members."⁸⁹ Notwithstanding numerous hardships with its itinerant lifestyle, communal households with scores of people under one roof, and controversy and opposition, most research participants echoed the sentiment expressed by Ashley: "The Family was just such an incredible experience, and what it accomplished was amazing, especially in evangelism. Maybe things could have been done different here or there, but [it was a] pretty incredible experience and movement and phenomenon."⁹⁰

Numerous cultural factors doubtless conspired in the dismantling of TFI's communal society model; in particular, the departure of growing numbers of second-generation members, the aging of the first generation, and the increasing obsolescence of the communal lifestyle have been submitted as root causes.⁹¹ The current study proposes that TFI's negotiation of digital technologies also introduced pivotal new dynamics that played a significant role in the antithetical direction the movement took.

From the mid-1990s onward, TFI effectively navigated the new spaces created by the Web and refashioned digital technologies to suit its purposes of public representation and community-building. As TFI progressively integrated digital technologies into its organizational framework, these technologies became central to movement administration, community-building, and public representation. In the process, however, TFI's identity-sustaining boundaries proved increasingly permeable in cyber-environments, facilitating unprecedented exposure of the membership (in particular the second generation) to counter-narratives and alternate worldviews, eventuating in calls for modernization, institutional transparency, personal empowerment, and change. Competing focuses subsequently developed of modernizing the movement for purposes of enhancing evangelistic world engagement and retaining second-generation members, and the preservation of TFI's radical roots and unique religious world. This tension, evident in the movement's writings over a 14-year period, found its resolution in the Reboot's abandonment of TFI's collectivist ideology and exclusivist truth claims in favor of individualized religious practice and personal autonomy. The group's appropriation of internet technologies thus played a significant role both in fostering the tension that led to the Reboot and in the implementation of the Reboot itself, which was constructed entirely upon the foundation of digital platforms and organizational frameworks already in place.

TFI's digital evolution highlights the challenges of effectively translating offline meaning-making processes and a sense of belonging to purely virtual environments. In the absence of an offline community structure or framework for evangelistic outreach, core objectives of the Reboot remain unfulfilled, notably the development of a contemporary religious community to foster growth and enhance evangelistic endeavors. Likewise, the virtually insuperable stigmatization of the movement, perpetuated (if not magnified) in the digital public square, has inhibited TFI's ability to reinvent itself as a legitimate Christian movement. The failure to introduce new organizational strategies or agencies to reverse trends of declining membership and loss of community cohesion in the aftermath of the Reboot have rendered the sustainability of the movement and its future viability uncertain. In effect, TFI's leadership has periodically affirmed the lack of institutional will or resources to attempt to reconstitute what remains of the movement into a formal organizational model.⁹²

Having deconstructed the boundaries that defined the movement's subcultural identity and community, can TFI thrive and evolve as a digital religion with few distinguishable subcultural boundaries? The sense of disconnection from the organization and disengagement with TFI's evangelizing purpose expressed by many affiliates in my research sample places in question the extent to which collective identity and ritual engagement may be authentically sustained in purely virtual environments. Many participants expressed considerable ambivalence toward TFI or proclaimed the post-Reboot TFI to be irrelevant to their contemporary lives and responsibilities. While respondents for the most part indicated they have embraced the personally empowering aspects of the Reboot, there was a prevailing sense that virtual networking is not conducive to movement development and authentic community. The virtualized version of TFI seemingly has come to represent a sort of imagined community at best, fashioned around common cultural bonds, beliefs, and experiences from the past, which members and former members alike have subjectively reshaped around personalized networks.⁹³ This "patchwork" approach toward religious participation of incorporating and discarding elements from various Christian and TFI resources bears little resemblance to TFI's previous identity as a movement with a sense of destiny centered in its unique writings and radical interpretations of Christianity.⁹⁴ Nonetheless, the majority of research participants indicated that this individualized bricolage approach of spiritual resources, networks, and social interaction was sufficient for their contemporary religious lives and practice.

As a self-contained alternative society, the Family International affords a microcosmic example of the ways in which religious practice, identity, and community may be profoundly altered or reconfigured as online and offline worlds become increasingly intertwined. The new agencies that are developing organically to foster alternate patterns of belonging and shared identity offer insights into how religious worlds may be socially constructed in novel ways that challenge prior conceptions of religious community, identity, and practice. As personal connectedness to the institutional TFI has waned, new patterns of belonging have evolved through the development of grassroots social media groups and networks centered in common interests, seeking to recapture a sense of belonging through loose identification and interaction with likeminded affiliates. The Family International's journey to virtual community paints a striking picture of how the open exchange between online and offline interfaces may fundamentally alter the contours of identity, belief, and practice, while affording the creation of new spaces of religious belonging, thereby inviting alternate forms of religious expression.