April 7, 2025

The Daoist Lorong Koo Chye Sheng Hong Temple (新加坡韮菜 芭城隍庙) started their ‘Praying Online’ initiative on 7 April 2020, to adapt to the newly-implemented safe-distancing measures that were introduced to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in Singapore. The pandemic marked a paradigm shift for religious groups and places of worship in Singapore, having to quickly adopt new technologies to shift religious events online.

Assistant Professor Alvin Eng Hui Lim (NUS English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies) explores how religious groups have constructed their online multimedia efforts, through primarily visual channels like live-streaming and broadcasting in his chapter, ‘Gods Have Eyes: Praying Online in Singapore’, in CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age (University of Hawaii Press, 2023). He finds that while the religious events were subject to minimal production and postproduction, with little camera movement and cuts, they maintained their focus on spirituality through persuasive techniques and encouraging online prayer.

Asst. Prof. Lim discusses the Christian churches’ use of PowerPoint slides over the years and how they transitioned online through the use of such presentation tools. He also evaluates the different practices elicited by the different groups online, such as the live-streamed videos of the deity, via the effigy, broadcast by Daoist temples and the interpersonal pastor-led prayer sessions from the Christian churches. He concludes that the online media used by the religious groups have been effective in preserving the spirituality of religious events. Asst. Prof. Lim  also likens the worshippers’ webcams to the ‘eyes of God’, wherein worshippers can exhibit their devotion with the impression of being watched, successfully recreating the experience of public worship whilst online.

Read the article here.