Spiritual influencers and digital religion

Abstract

Digital religion brings to the fore the figure of the spiritual influencer. This figure is accompanied by other significant actors, such as the religious influencer and Christian influencers, as well as by a wide variety of communities of followers, adherents, or believers. Digital religion is an outcome of the development of communication tech­nologies and digital platforms, which open not only toward religious or spiritual content, but also toward religious practices and spiritual techniques mediated by technology and Artificial Intelligence. The present text focuses on revealing the specificity of the profile of spiritual influencers. Presenting themselves as an alternative to traditional ways of doing religion, spiritual influencers nevertheless stand in continuity with them by offering a holistic perspective on the human being’s search for existential meaning and for the living of a good and authentic life. They operate within a hybrid register that brings together the real and the virtual world, within a construction of digital religious experience in which the individual finds himself or herself as part of a digital identity delivered according to the principles of spiritual marketing. The sphere of action of spiritual influencers, as agents in the construction of existential meaning, is very broad: it concerns a spiritual culture of personal fulfilment, the attainment of well-being, and a good life understood as a happy, that is, authentic, life.