Online Religion and Finding Faith on the Web: An Examination of Beliefnet.org

ASK you to consider these two scenarios: In the first, a small Hindu temple sits at the end of a narrow, winding road in the mountains of southwest India. The people outside gaze at the elaborate carvings in the white stone temple, waiting patiently for hours to work their way to the front of the line and enter into the temple’s heart. Inside, an image of Kali rests in the center, surrounded by devotees stretched out in prayer. The place is alive with sounds, smells, tastes, and sights that absorb the visitors and monks in a sacred, awe-inspiring experience with transcendent otherness. Now, in the second scenario, imagine visiting the same Hindu temple online via a computer terminal. Instead of entering an edifice that appeals to all of the senses, the Web page simply provides the visitor with an image, perhaps the smiling image of a Shiva. Hyperlinked text brings the user through a menu of worship experiences, including utterances of Vedic praise and a QuickTime movie of mystical, rapidly alternating images with accompanying sounds to which the user can meditate. Brenda Brasher, in her recent book Give Me That Online Religion (2001), opens her discussion with these examples to illustrate how, in the transition from temple to screen, a radical alteration of the sense stimulation has taken place, consequently altering the religious experience itself. My own experiences with religion reflect the same kinds of incongruities described in Brasher’s examples, prompting me to look further into this phenomenon of religion on the Internet. It seems that God has arrived on the Internet, and with a rather imposing presence that is hard to overlook. Bob Jacobson (1999) found that the Internet has become a major purveyor of spiritual expression at a time when spiritual hunger is growing in the West. In a study of religion and the Internet conducted by sociologist Ken Bedell of the United Methodist Church (Martin, 1999), nearly 80% of the respondents said the medium played a role in their spiritual lives, with some turning to it up to three times a week. Of the 600 people surveyed, 53% said they solicit prayers through e-mail. The Pew Internet and American Life Project (Larsen, 2000) discovered that more people use the Internet for religious purposes than for many secular reasons. More than two million Americans search the Internet for religious or spiritual material, and religious institutions are increasingly integrating the Internet into their everyday practices. Why are millions of electronic pages dedicated to sharing the ineffable, that which can’t be expressed in words? Is cyberspace becoming a new—or the new—sacred space? As it expands, the world of virtual worship is sparking controversy that cuts to the heart of what “religion” means. Several theological—as well as cultural and social—questions arise in the wake of this modification of religious sensibilities. Within this context, I find the possibility and