Channels of Connection: Digital Mediation and Transnational Religious Practice at a Tenrikyo Anniversary Commemoration

Among the many relational threads linking the transnationally dispersed social world of Tenrikyo Europe Center (TEC), located in a Parisian suburb, digital forms of communication and interaction play a constitutive role in extending, sustaining, and occasionally transforming connections. This paper focuses on a single concentrated moment: the 130th anniversary of the Foundress' withdrawal from physical life, an event carrying deep significance for Tenrikyo followers worldwide. Connection to what was occurring in Tenri City (Japan) moved through two interwoven channels, one through the ritual practice of uniting hearts with the Jiba, the sacred point around which the primary ritual occurred, the other through the digital circulation of images and messages, mirroring one another in how they enabled affective and relational ties to traverse geographic distance. The anniversary commemoration is thus one expression of a broader capacity to collapse time and space in ways that keep religious worlds alive across distance.