The yet-to-be-announced
St Hilda's Foundation for the Future of the Church of England (StuFFE, or HiFFE, we haven't yet decided) has been considering its future programme.
One central focus will be the impact of new technology on the delivery of Christian Ministry.
A preliminary scoping study identified drones as holding exciting possibilities. This is the executive summary of the initial report:
The potential for enhanced ministerial practice,
efficient delivery of pastoral care
and deepening spiritual life
by the deployment of
uncrewed aerial vehicles (drones)
Summary: it is highly probable that, as drone technology develops alongside a permissive regulatory regime, almost every area of church life can be enhanced by the use of drones. There may be downsides almost all of which can be dismissed as the misguided worries of antediluvians.
The care of individuals
Pastorally programmed drones (co-ordinate with phone and bracelet technology) might track every church member.
A drone can monitor, for example, the time members spend on their knees, or reading Scripture, or fasting or undertaking charitable or evangelistic tasks.
They can protect vulnerable members. They could, for instance, be programmed to ensure that members do not risk their faith by visiting locations of morally dubious activity.
Linked software can give ministers real-time searchable data on a range of customisable scales of devoutness. This might provide useful objective data by which to assess members being considered for such posts as door steward or coffee maker.
Drones could remove the need for home visits. Cameras and microphones could enable conversation at a distance (like a phone, but with greater spiritual punch). An extensible arm could deliver the sacraments.
Any possible urgent action could be avoided by immediate, perhaps automatic, referral to the appropriate agency. Preliminary death-bed visits could be replaced by a static drone programmed to summon the just-in-time Priest when the last few minutes approach.
Downside: The possibility that bishops of other clergy overseers might also use the technology to monitor ministers.
The quality of worship
Overhead drones during worship could be used to ensure that everyone was on the same page. They could assess degrees of distraction/concentration (by movement sensors or subtle changes in skin temperature) which can be fed back in real time to the minister. This would give the minister an unprecedented capacity to respond by, as occasion demands, announcing an unexpected hymn or doubling the length of a gripping sermon.
No downside identified.
Future prospects
As drones develop we can anticipate greater carrying capacity and precision in flight programming. On this basis we anticipate significant widening of the scope for drones.
For example, holy drones could be given widely recognised visual insignia (a white bar on a black background, maybe). With this badge the authorities might allow the drone into difficult circumstances - a disaster, perhaps, or a riot, or other public trauma - and in this way the church might bring comfort and succour, safely and remotely.
Baptism
Baptisms could be conducted remotely, either in church or in people's homes and swimming pools.
Specially adapted drones could, for example, lower an infant into a font. (One member of the group suggested that, if fonts were re-designed into a long oval shape, swinging the baby through would be a much more dramatic symbol of spiritual rebirth.)
Other symbolic aspects, making the sign of the cross in oil, for example could be undertaken by a carefully programmed extensible arm.
Downsides: none.
Weddings
Weddings are already recorded by drone. It would be a small extension to have them conducted remotely. With a little planning several weddings, commencing at the same time in different venues, could be conducted simultaneously.
The essence of marriage is the public commitment of each party to the other. Accordingly the drone, in recording the ceremony, could be sufficient for legal recognition of a valid wedding.
Downside: a minister may be less likely to be invited to the reception, with its free food and drink, if they are only remotely present.
Funerals
There is significant potential for the use of drones at a funeral. Drones could, for example, carry the coffin to the burial and lower it into the grave with decorum and precision.
Mourners may watch remotely (as already happens in crematoria). The minister could float above the grave sonorously intoning the service for the Burial of the Dead.
Notes:
- This proposal has an additional benefit: where land is expensive or scarce, of removing the need for paths or foot access and thus intensifying land use.
- However the negative association of military drones with multiple and unaccountable deaths may make it difficult to engender sufficient public support.
Conclusion
As technology advances it is essential that churches embrace available developments. With such blessing, the results of God-given human ingenuity may be sacralized. Technology may, in return, open undreamed-of possibilities for ministry, evangelism and devotion.
Some caution is always wise. This has at times been characterised as the church being behind the times (a logical impossibility). But this would be a mistaken interpretation. Instead faith and technology have long been in dialogue: writing and printing technology, for example, and architectural developments have shaped faith and been shaped by it.
StuFFE (or HiFFE) intends to be up to the job in the twenty-first century.
Cheques to support this vision may be sent to [text deleted for reasons of decorum].
