BOSTON (RNS) — On Sunday, Alex Merritt was signed in to the Zoom video conferencing app, discussing a biblical passage with members of his Sunday school young adults group at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas.
Then the trolls attacked.
Some began sharing their screens and drawing obscene images over the text the group had been discussing. “You are being hacked! You are being hacked!” one shouted. Another turned on his video and began revealing his genitals.
“It was generally chaotic and impossible to stop,” recalled Merritt. “It was a huge wake-up call for me because I’m an elementary public school teacher, and I don’t want the children in my class exposed to any of the pornographic images that trolls sent us.”
The mass transition of houses of worship to Zoom and other online video conferencing platforms has meant that religious services are more accessible than ever before.
Unfortunately for digital congregants, that means they are also more accessible to online trolls who have plenty of free time to disrupt their services with obscene or hateful interruptions.
Merritt’s church group, which had to shut down its meeting and set up a new one, originally put a public Zoom link on its website. Now, the group will only send the link to members of its private Facebook groups, all of whom have been approved.
“I think places of worship need to be really careful when they put public Zoom links on…
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