IS THERE A NEED FOR THE CHURCH TO OFFICIALLY ASSUME MOBILE APPLICATIONS? CASE STUDY: ROMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND ANGLICAN CHURCH

Abstract

Over the past years, there has been a significant increase in mobile applications with religious content. Whether we are talking about Holy Scriptures or the Quran, about liturgical or theological content, digital resources are made available by many interesting applications. The question is, are these applications accurate? How many of them are affiliated with Church institutions? How important would such an affiliation be? What is the situation in Romania, in the Romanian Orthodox Church? In the Romanian-Orthodox digital space there is an abundance of mobile applications, over 20, of which only one is institutionally affiliated. The presence in Romania of many mobile applications developed by private individuals that do not display the source of the liturgical and biblical text is a major concern for the accuracy and authenticity of the information presented. In the first study of this kind in the Romanian literature, we will analyze different examples in order to better understand the functionalities of these applications, but especially to confirm or reject our hypothesis that in the religious environment, an institutionally assumed application is more valuable for keeping the Church teaching unaltered, compared to an application which is the result of a private initiative or even a commercial project. Therefore, we compare the Romanian Orthodox applications with similar applications belonging to a Church that currently has the most complete panel of mobile applications. These are not only fully functional and officially assumed by the Anglican Church, but are constantly updated and maintained.