The Sunday Oregonian
Sunday, July 8, 2001
Living Today: Mind-Set: Internet Religion
By: Nancy Haught

Welcome to the Chapel of the Web

Three times a week, Mark Rosenau attends morning prayer in cyberspace. While the 42 year old is part of the flesh-and blood community of Sts. Peter and Paul Episcopal Church in Southeast Portland, he belongs to an online religious community, too.

Rosenau discovered the beauty and solace of morning prayer five or six years ago and used to do it the old fashioned way, flipping back and forth through the Book of Common Prayer and his Bible in an intricate dance Prayers, psalms,canticles and Lessons. Then, about three years ago he discovered a Web site that did the nuts-and bolts work for him.

"I can log on and. they will have done all the flipping and choosing," Rosenau says. "I just have to follow along." But the, convenience is only part of why he keeps coming back to www.missionstelare.com.

There is a sense of community that I feel by logging on there and doing morning prayer online," he says. "I'm not physically in the presence of other people, but part of doing (morning prayer) to begin with is that somewhere around the world, somebody is always doing it You are joining in that community."

It doesn't bother Rosenau, a groundskeeper at Concordia University, that he doesn't know exactly who it is he's joining for prayer every morning. "That other person and I have decided to worship in the same way at the same time in the same virtual place, he says. "That's enough."

Rosenau is one of a growing number of people who've made the Internet part of their spiritual lives. A recent survey by the Pew Internet Project found that 19 million to 20 Million Internet users about 21 percent have gone online to find religious and spiritual information. On any given day, the survey found, 2 million people­ take their spiritual quest into cyber­space.

Brenda E. Brasher, author of "Give Me That Online Religion" Jossey Bass, $24.95,203 pages ), suspects the Pew numbers are low. In her 11 years of studying the phenomenon, she's found that most people who use the Internet in their spiri­tual practice are reticent to say so.

"There's still a bit of sense that there's the Internet and there's religion, and that these are two different things," Brasher says, "that technology and religion are not quite at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but almost."

But most people Brasher talks to about their Internet habits, eventually confide that they have, gone online for some sort of spiritual pursuit. Such use, Brasher says, "is one of the best kept secrets of cyberspace.

Brasher, a professor of religion and philosophy,,at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio, has counted more than 1 million online religion Web sites and posts dozens of the most interesting ones on her own, www.brendabrasher.com. The phenomenon of online religion is both deep and wide, she said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, where she's.studying holy sites on a fellowship.

The Virtual Meeting Hall

Spiritual use of the Internet ranges, she says, from individual congregations exchanging information in, virtual church bulletins, to institutional churches informing members of policy decisions, to religious reference libraries and global prayer chains.

Prayer requests and information searches are the most common uses followed by community-building efforts. "But the search for religious humor is a close fourth," she adds, probably because there are so few other outlets for it.

Then, too, cyberspace, because it functions as a sort of grand virtual meeting hall, is the perfect setting religious protest by those want to publicly dissent from their denominations or organize across denominational lines, Brasher says.

"And we have people experimenting with cyberspace as a kind of sacred space in and of itself," she says. "Religious architecture is all about changing our sense of time and space. Cyberspace does that inherently. The next natural step, she says, is the development of online rituals.

Already Websites are springing up that use technology to tweak tradition. It's possible now to light a candle online, post a prayer on the Western Wall in Jerusalem, even confess your sins. -- unless you want to receive formal absolution which the Catholic Church has said can't happen without face to face contact between priest and penitent.

That lack of physical community is one of the drawbacks to online religion, some say. People whose notions of community include eye contact, handshakes and hugs may find the Internet cold and impersonal.

On the other hand, Brasher says, "face to face community doesn't always mean integrity." She recalls working with a real world congregation that shattered when its treasurer, a third generation member, was found guilty of embezzling a large sum of money over a period of years.

"The sad truth of congregational life," Brasher says, "is that there could be people who are there for whom healing and community don't necessarily happen."

Mainline reticence

The reaction of real world religious groups to online possibilities has been mixed, she says. Some, such, as evangelical Christians and Muslims, have been quick, to see the Internet's potential for proselytizing. Others like Orthodox Jews, see it, as a means of uniting far-flung, sometimes small congregations. For still others, like neopa­gans, the Internet affords an op­portunity to try to dispel stereo­types and explain to outsiders just what modem pagans do and don't believe. Generally, mainline Chris­tian denominations have been the last ones to go online, Brasher says.

Marc Marenco, a Pacific University professor who studies ethics and public policy, is looking at the reasons for mainline religion’s reticence when it comes to the Internet and new communications technology.

"Relgions vary in how they respond to powerful new realities," Marenco says, comparing the Internet to Darwin's work on evolution and Corpernicus' insights into the solar system, -- discoveries in the past that had radical effects on religion. Some religious groups are avoiding the Internet, even demonizing it, he says. Others are embracing it, sometimes cautiously, even as they try to control their members’ access to it – at least to those parts that a group find unacceptable.

"All of us, within our respective religious communities, are groping, trying to grasp what is happening to us because of the Internet," Marenco says."It’s there, it’s in our fces, there’s nothing we can do to stop it, but we don’t feel like we’re prepared for it. We’re somewhat afraid; we can't foresee the consequences of interaction with the Internet.

While Marenco speaks of online religions in mesaured, cautious tones, Brasher is more enthusiastic, convinced that the phenomenon is, on the whole, a positive one.

"For all the risks entailed", she writes, "the wisdom Web pages and holy hyperlinks that are the stuff of online religion possess the potential to make a unique contribution to global fellowship in the frequently volatile area of interreligious understanding."

That, and they can make it easier to practice morning prayer.

You can reach Nancy Haught at 503-294-7625 or by email at nancyhaught@news.oregonian.com

Share the Faith With Web Links

"Religion Web sites may be the coffee shops of cyberspace. There seems to be one on almost every ‘corner’, and each seems to have its diehard devotees. Here’s a small sampling of what a cyber pilgrim can do online:

Light a candle at www.gratefulness.org, an interfaith, interactive web site founded by Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Bebedictine monk who’s written widely on the subject of gratitude. Click on the candle icon and follow simple directions to light a virtual taper that "burns” online for 24 hours. on the two months the online ritual has been up and running, 7852 candles have been lit.

Confess your sins at www.theconfessor.co.uk, a site founded by Premier Christian Radio, a nondenominiational radio station based in London. Click on the arrows to read Scripture passages and reflections on the nature of sin and its consequences before confessing your own, either by typing them in or selecting a ‘prepared’ statement. Confessions are confidential and deleted immediately, organizers say. The Catholic Church does not recognize the online sacrament as valid, but a million people logged on during the Web site’s first 72 hours.

Meditate at www.wildmind.org, as site created by Bodhipaksa, a member of the Western Burddhist Order who teaches in the religious studies department at the University of Montana. The site offers free guided meditations and personalized four-week sessions for a fee.

Check out the saint of the day at www.christdesert.org, which posts "today’s Martyrology.” The site is sponsored by the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine abbey near Abiquiu, N.M.

Brush up on the Bible at http://bible.gospelcom.net, a site that allows you to compare a passage in as many as ten translations of the Bible. Another web site http://www.unboundbible.org, allows you to navigate several English translations, as well as Hebrew and Greek texts and other ancient version. Click on "Read the Bible in a Year” for a daily portion in your preferred translation.

Post a prayer on the Western Wall at www.virtualjerusalem.com. Click on "send a Prayer” and type in your petition. Someone in Jerusalem will print it out and slip it into a crack in the hallowed stone wall.

-Nancy Haught

Institute will study Internet, values

The Internet’s role in religious life is one of several realted topics that scholars will explore in a summer institute sponsored by Pacific University’s Berglund Center for Internet Studies.

"Education, Community & Values: Their Interface on the Internet” is the theme of a week-long residential program starting Monday on the Forest Grove cmapus.

The Berglund Center has named four scholars as fellows, whose work will inform the summer institute and continue through the 2001-2002 academic year. The fellows are Marc Marenco, professor of philosophy and director of the Pacific Institute for Ethics and Social Policy, styduing the emerging attitudes of religious groups toward the Internet; Michael R. Steele, professor of humanities, developing online materials for the Oregon Holocaust Resource center, of which he is executive director; Mark Szymanski, who teaches education at Pacific and is a research associate at the University of Oregon Center for Advanced Technology in Education, designing tools for knowledge networking as it might be used by high school students; and Deborah L. Wheeler of the University of Washington Center for Internet Studies, looking at how Internet use has affected education, community, ethics and politics in the Islamic world.

For more information about the Berglund Center or the summer institute, call pacific University, 503-352-2294.

-Nancy Haught