THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

I stopped by Rafin Grimm's floating castle last week, to ask him why he'd disassembled his Roman Catholic cathedral. When I got there, however, he already had company. So while Raffin and I talked about the status of spirituality in Second Life, a curvy brunette in a sculpted fetish bikini went on waving her riding crop at a muscular man with nothing on but a pair of crotchless black leather chaps.

"I am Catholic, and very in touch with my relationship with God," says Rafin. He's a tall young man with dark hair, in stylish gray slacks and a black, longsleeve shirt. And while he adds that he's neither a perfect Christian, "I try to be good and do good things. That's what the church was going to be."

Things didn't turn out the way he planned, however. I discovered this through fellow Second Life blogger Jonathan Akebono, who'd heard about Rafin's church, and recently asked him where it had gone.

"Actually, I took my church down awhile ago," Grimm replied. Akebono told him he was looking for a place in Second Life to pray, but Grimm couldn't help him there. "It was just causing a lot more problems than good. And nobody seemed to use it. I think it is funny... people like having sex clubs and all that here, but you build a church and it is like you are the biggest jerk in the world."

So now I'm in the lobby Rafin Grimm's spacious home, trying to learn more while the bikini-clad wench Phaeton continues her vixenish ministrations on the man in the leather chaps. "When I built the church," he tells me, "there were a few [residents] who were very supportive of the idea of a church, but not of the church itself."

Behind us, the man in chaps has left the building, but he's followed hard upon by Angel Coral, a relatively demure redhead in a vinyl miniskirt and a steel-studded dog collar, who joins Ms. Phaeton for still more innuendo-drenched activity.

"I found myself in a position where I felt I had to constantly defend the Catholic church and the Christian religion in general to people," Raffin tells me. "And I didn't quite know how to do that... I don't think I'm qualified to correctly answer everyone's questions." What's more, he adds, "I found that most people I came across in Second Life were atheist... Like I said, some people were interested. But, I felt mostly that people thought I was trying to make a statement with the church."

"People told you that?"

"No, but I got a lot of arguments about it-- debates, I should say. Mostly, people would say things like 'I think it's cool that you built a church, but I don't believe in God.' Stuff like that. Which of course turned into a conversation/debate."

While we go on with the interview, wench and Angel gambol around Raffin's fountain, and when they hear that our conversation has turned to churches, they start talking about various M-rated activities possible in a confessional booth, on an altar, and so on. ("Though I never did any of that in Raffin's church," wench adds hastily, "I respect his beliefs.")

I walk with Raffin to another room, where he takes out some of the church items that he's since archived in his inventory, to give me a sense of what the interior looked like-- a marble altar, a burnished tabernacle, and so on.

While he does that, I peek back at wench and Angel, still being sassy in the next room. I ask Raffin what he thinks of them, sashaying around his place, "talking all sexy and such".

"Well," says Raffin, adjusting the altar, "wench is my friend. A lot of my friends here are like that." He laughs. "It's not like I am judgemental and only talk to people who talk about God."

I see other churches in Second Life, from time to time, so I ask Raffin if he's talked with their owners about his concerns.

"At the time, there were only maybe one or two other people interested in building a church that I knew of," he says. "The whole idea kind [of] went way past what I had expected. Like I said, I felt kinda isolated there." And so after a time, he disassembled the stained glass windows and the spire and the rest of it, and went on with other projects.

Around then, it suddenly hits me why Rafin and his church items look so familar.

"Oh wait," I say, "this [was] the church I wrote about a few months ago!"

Rafin nods, laughs.

"You were the angel!" He says "Yeah" and laughs again.

Now I'm confused. "[L]ike twenty people came to that mass [I profiled]." Seems like he had more than enough interested residents, to keep the place running.

"Well," Rafin admits, with another chuckle. "most of them were friends. And atheist."

I ask him if he thinks Second Life tends to attract atheists, and he says no. "I just think it is becoming more and more the belief of society."

"Maybe people are more religious than you think," I speculate, "but they don't feel comfortable bringing it in-world, for one reason or another."

"Oh I agree," Rafin says, "But I don't think they agree with organized religion... I know a lot of younger people, especially, seem to stray from it." (Though Rafin adds that offline, he's 24, himself.)

"I think probably," he goes on, "most people do things here that they wouldn't do in real life. And let's face it, that's what is fun about games like this. Being able to live the world in a different way..."

"Or," I suggest, "[to] get the 'sin" and temptation out of their system in Second Life, perhaps." Because I couldn't begin to count the number of residents who roleplay the promiscuously sexy minx or the swinging, hardbodied stud-- then later describe themselves to me as conservative and happily married, in real life.

Rafin agrees with that. However, I know enough about Christian theology, to see a possible moral flaw, in that disjunction. "Of course," I observe, "Christ said [that] fantasizing about adultery is as bad as adultery itself."

"Well..." Rafin demurs. "I just had a real life discussion about that. Things get taken too literally sometimes... sooo many people seem to be dead set against the Catholic church, and have NO IDEA what they preach." And we end up talking a little bit about his view of sexual morals, in relation to his faith.

The very kind of conversation, I imagine, that finally convinced Rafin to keep his cathedral out of Second Life.

"I thought it was amazing," wench tells me later, speaking of her friend's house of worship. "I was sad that the other residents made him feel uncomfortable enough to take it down. It wasn't there long at all."

As for wench Phaeton, she says she was baptised Brethern ("back woods [sect]"). "I've been intrigued with religion since a child and have had studied bits of most of it," she adds.

Now, however, "I don't know what I believe."

Earlier on, I ask Rafin if he still hopes to do anything that involves his religious faith.

"I'd like to," Rafin Grimm answers. "But if it is just going to be for me, I don't see a point."