Cyber Faith – Religion Lite

Gerald L. Zelizer

Rabbi David Krishef of Grand Rapids, Michigan engaged in six months electronic communication with officials of America On Line, urging the removal of Hebrew Christians from the "Judaism "section of "Hometown AOL." He argued that whereas any religious group should be provided a forum for expression , Jews who had converted to Christianity but still asserted claims to Jewish identity ,were beyond the boundaries of legitimate Judaism and should be assigned own place. That way, seekers of information on bona fide Judaism would not be misled. The "Web Enforcement Team" at AOL disagreed, ruling that self declaration was sufficient, and that Hebrew Christians could remain on the Judaism site. Rabbi Krishef then alerted by e mail 600 people, including many rabbis, who wrote others and objected directly to Steve Case, CEO of America Online. Within weeks, AOL changed its policy, and shifted the Hebrew Christians to a separate site. Throughout this whole controversy, Krishef remained as a volunteer on the Ask A Rabbi section of AOL , responding to queries for information and opinions on his religion. This experience reflects both the opportunities and challenges to formal religion in cyberspace. There, the walls of religion which expand to include more people and transmit greater information than is possible in the standard church, are, at the same time, more porous to information and spokespeople who challenge conventional doctrine.

Some rate the importance of the cyber religion as equal to the invention of the printing press, which also broadened access to sacred communication that was previously limited to clerics. Barna Research found that in one recent month, 25 million people used the internet for religious purposes. George Barna projects "that by 2010, something like ten to twenty percent will get their faith on the internet. It will be significant chunk of the population and continue to grow. " In their book, Shopping for Faith, Don Latin and Richard Cimino call the Internet a "vast, chaotic spiritual supermarket…(which) allows people to go directly to source material…ideas they might not be exposed to in their church." They claim that the most significant effect of computers in the new millenium on religion will be to "forge direct links between individual believers and religious groups, bypassing denominational control…"

Quantitatively, religion is pervasive on the internet. The Alta Vista search engine finds the word Christian on 5 million pages, Jewish on a million, Islam on 500,000, Buddhist on 250,000, and Hindu on 230,000. With a flick of the mouse, one can attend online services at the Filadelfia Pentecostal church in Reykjavik, Iceland, witness lighting of Hannukah menorahs in Jerusalem, Moscow, and New York, or visit the Hosshinji Soto Zen Monestary in Japan.

Qualitatively, though, the cyber church and its parishioners hardly use this new medium , in the prediction of Latin, " to "circumvent organized religion' and to " bypass denominational control" and According to the most comprehensive study of Internet use prepared over ten months by Ken Bedell for the United Methodist Church and the Louisville Institute , the most common usage is to find information about one's own faith, rather than the formation and new religious communities and practices. Most consumers are connecting with web sites of their existent churches and denominations in order to read mission statements, upcoming church events, link with chat rooms and informational sources on their own religion, or e mail their pastor. Why is the internet used for more conventional religious reasons than those predicted by the writers and prognosticators? Because the medium inherently confines and limits the message.

Most importantly, core rituals cannot be performed in cyberspace. Christians can only be baptized with "living" water. A minyan, a quorum of ten for Jewish prayer, requires ten Jews who are physically in one space. A Moslem can see the ka'bah in Mecca on the net, but cannot fulfill religious obligation except by actual pilgrimage.

Also, what is the authority and qualifications of those purveying the information? For example, the Islamic Information Office, responding to 1000 e mails a month, is staffed by Muslim laity but no imam or Moslem scholar. Catholics for a Free Choice, an advocacy group for abortion rights, obviously does not speak for the church. The anonymity of those who transmit at the other end of electronic communication was captured in a famous cartoon by Peter Steiner in the New Yorker depicting two dogs sitting a room near a workstation. The one at the computer confides to the other, "On the internet, no body knows you're a dog."

Religions originate and perpetuate in ongoing faith communities composed of like minded people who are born, initiated, marry, give birth, and die in the same group. Participants in religious chat rooms are not bonded in this comprehensive and lifelong manner.

Then too, religion includes the donning of costume, the taste and scent of foods, the sound of song, and touching and embracing on sacred occasions. Cyberspace religion is limited to mostly sight and some sound.

While the internet certainly provides ample religious information, it conveys limited religious experience. It is, after all, religion lite.