Houses as Churches: Digital Worship among Orthodox in Lebanon

Abstract Amid the shifting landscape of COVID -19 restrictions and safety protocols, digital worship came to test Eastern Orthodox liturgical practices and embodied experiences of sensory-rich religious spaces. The rise of online infrastructures as alternatives to in-person devotion triggered a series of negotiations on “right” religious practice, interspersed with the uncertainties of precarious living. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2019 and 2022 with Rum Orthodox practitioners in Beirut, this article looks at online worship to examine how Orthodox practices were reimagined outside churches as public spaces, yet in line with an aspirational coherent tradition. It argues that the spatial and sensory dimensions of online devotion were closely linked to the physicality of domestic environments and to normative understandings of liturgical worship. As Rum practitioners sensed and made sense of digitally-mediated liturgies, the formation of digital religious publics intersected with broader Orthodox modes of relationality and ecclesial authority.