The decision, I'll admit, had something to do with the way that life has changed here in New York, indoors, where life consists almost entirely of writing and Zooming with family and friends — my mother, halfway across the world, in the morning; college friends in the U.K. in the afternoon; friends who live a block or two away in the evening.

Things move at once quickly and profoundly slowly.

But it was less impulsive or lockdown-driven than it may sound.

We had already planned for a quiet elopement at some point later this year, and, had we been married in our church, we would have been restricted to just two witnesses and our priest present anyway.

The lockdown only made us so much more aware of our dependence upon, and our fellowship with, people we might once have thought of as strangers.

Marrying in the park in the middle of quarantine, we inadvertently found ourselves something of an attraction for all of New York City, as spectacle-starved people, taking a moment outdoors to walk their dogs or jog or stroll stopped — at a safe social distance — to watch the ceremony.

• Old women cried out "mazel tov."
• Someone clapped while jogging without once breaking her stride.
• Golden retrievers off leashes bounded onto the lawn where we held our impromptu.
• Someone played Mendelssohn's Wedding March for us on their phone.
• When the priest asked our witnesses, as is custom, whether they would help and support us in our marriage vows, what seemed like half the city responded with "we will."

It is possible, of course, to read such an event as merely an aesthetic phenomenon — a bunch of bored, lonely New Yorkers looking for a good story to put on their Instagrams in the middle of a global pandemic.

But, dazed and delirious, trying not to stammer through my vows, I found in these strangers' presence something else: a sense that community — a localism born of our sense of bonds to one another — was at the heart of our collective sense of survival.

It is a strange thing to be married in the midst of a pandemic — stranger, too, to be married unexpectedly.

The ontological change that I believe takes place in marriage is an uncanny mirror of how, as I wrote a few weeks ago, we are more broadly dependent upon one another.

The sacrament of marriage, at least in the Christian tradition, is about the blurring of the boundaries of the self.

In becoming one flesh, as we are called to do, we abandon any pretence that we are fully autonomous individuals, at least in the sense that modern liberalism understands it.

Among the most affecting prayers that our priest read over us — part of the Book of Common Prayer's marriage rite — is that God "grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will."

The idea that we not only accept, but long for, pray for, wills that are not our own, is at the heart of my understanding of both Christianity and marriage.

We joyfully enter into an encounter with another human being — someone other, someone who is emphatically not simply an extension of our own selves, but rather an irreducible subject in their own right — and allow that encounter to transform us, to help us learn to love better. To do so demands, by definition, that we knit our will to the will of another human being, and of God.

Central Park was, for us that day, a fantastically liminal space.

The physical space in which I married my husband was, too, the space in which we entered into a moral community — those few passersby, at social distance, making a commitment to us; us, in our consciousness of this new world order, making a commitment to them and to their safety.

It was a kind of presence that was both akin to and separate from the digital space we reentered after the ceremony was over and we had gone back to our apartment when we got back on Zoom to tell our friends and family of our marriage.

We were, in both spaces, contingent upon both one another and the world around us: no less socially bonded to the people we loved for announcing the news over a webcam.

But the awareness, in Central Park, of what presence meant — the care with which we opened a cab door, with which we avoided strangers, with which we waved from a distance, with which we provided our witnesses with their own pens to sign the marriage license or with which my now-husband caught the bouquet thrown by one of our witnesses, who had brought it as a surprise gift for me and who could not hand it to us directly — was distinct to physical space.

Just being there, together, made us vulnerable: to one another and to the world around us.

It is true, I think, in every marriage rite. But ours made that particularly clear.

• Tara Isabella Burton received a doctorate in theology from Oxford University and is at work on a book about the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America. First published in RNS and reproduced with permission.

Over the past few days, as states have asked houses of worship to suspend services, synagogues have held muted Purim celebrations and other religious meetings and services have been cancelled, people have already begun mourning the loss of community.

It's a good time for people of faith to reflect on how well digital technologies serve faith communities and consider the future of religion, which by definition is that which binds people to one another.

Community has always been one of the internet's significant features.

Last year, I hosted a virtual reality talk show called "You. Are. Here."

On the opening show, I gathered a pastor, a yoga teacher and a rabbi who led meditation and worship via virtual reality.

They talked about the deep experience of connection that their VR congregations experienced.

It struck me that VR allowed anyone to join these meetings regardless of physical ability or appearance, offering a chance to be seen without judgment in ways that offline communities do not.

We worry that the internet has rendered physical presence secondary to manufactured sights and sounds, but for some this can be liberating.

Indeed, all people seem to feel less inhibited online, which can lead to deeply connected and spiritual community.

One of the earliest online Christian communities was founded by the Rev. Chuck Henderson, who started the First Church of Cyberspace in the mid-1990s.

Members met in an HTML chat room on Sunday evenings and "did church" together with what Henderson called an "intimacy" that allowed people to open up and be real with one another.

Digital communities also render proximity secondary to affinity.

When I was serving as an associate dean of religious life at Princeton University, a Buddhist student needed to go home for a semester to West Virginia, where she didn't have a community that shared her spiritual practice.

An online group of like-minded Buddhists in New York City allowed her to join them for weekly meditation, download the teachings and assuage her sense of alienation.

Online communities can sometimes even meet spiritual needs in ways that in-person congregations fall short.

Early in her career, Christian theologian Deanna Thompson had nothing but disdain for the internet.

But when she got a very serious form of cancer, her brother created a page for her on the online community site Caring Bridge, where people could support her and get updates on her treatment.

In her book "The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World," Thompson wrote that her internet community was more "there for her" than her local church.

"I started to realize," Thompson wrote, "I was being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses greater than any I could have imagined before. ... I've been awakened to a new — indeed, almost mystical — understanding of the church universal, mediated through what I've come to call the virtual body of Christ."

In some small way I understand what Thompson means.

My network on Facebook often feels more like a prayer circle, and Instagram posts offer me inspiration, religious and secular alike.

My religious friends on Twitter offer Bible commentary, teach from the Torah and offer wisdom from their Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim traditions.

The ability to learn and commune with people of other faith traditions online is almost unending.

Of course, for many, and perhaps most, of us, virtual contact isn't sufficient — especially for those who live alone, are single or simply get fed by the presence of others.

An avatar doesn't replace human touch, smell or the voices of a crowd.

Virtuality doesn't always overcome the screen.

The online world can also be fraught and even dangerous for those seeking spiritual sustenance.

The ability to delete, unfriend, and unfollow those who do not agree with our theology or politics can make online communities fragile, or ultimately isolating.

Hate too often flourishes unchecked in the digital world.

Fear is promulgated and violence is promoted against individuals and entire communities.

But religion has always existed outside of our physical bounds, and good people need to act against the evil of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, misogyny and targeting of vulnerable communities everywhere.

My deepest prayer is that in the coming years, people of good faith will commit to redeeming the internet for good.

Perhaps the millions of faithful turning in these fearful days to digital spaces for spiritual community might demand that the internet be that for them.

I don't long for a world when my religious practice is purely online.

Certainly, we can't share Eucharist or other traditional rituals online. This crisis, too, demands that we show up for one another in person in brave ways.

But being forced into "social distancing" doesn't mean we can't be present and be a blessing to one another in new ways that digital technology allows.

The most important quality that any religious community can offer is love and comfort in times of sorrow and celebration and gratitude in times of joy.

The resources of the internet can allow us to continue our faith traditions by praying and caring for one another during this time of great need and the other crises that are sure to come.

• Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister, is senior adviser for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith Youth Core and former president of the Association for College and University Religious Affairs.