New York, USA - St. Blog's Parish is a virtual Catholic cathedral with, at last count, 649 Web site homilists and God only knows how large a congregation. In cyberspace, it's hard to keep an up-to-date count.
Add to that the hundreds of Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and even atheist sites compiled by the Center for Religion and Media at New York University and it is possible for New Yorkers to experience every spiritual thing from cloistered nunneries to voodoo sacrifices.
And all without ever seeing a collection plate.
Whether that constitutes worship is another question. Most theologians will argue that worship requires some sort of personal interaction and shared ritual. At the Center for Religion and Media, the argument is a bit more academic. The center cares more for education.
The center is one of 10 university-affiliated operations around the country that the not-for-profit Pew Charitable Trusts fund to stimulate the study and teaching of religion, and the St. Blog directory is just one small part of what NYU does with its Pew funds.
Another important part is The Revealer, a daily review of religion news published by NYU's journalism department. Its editor is Jeff Sharlet, who says of his own religious background that he was raised in "as many churches, synagogues and ashrams as my Christian/Jewish parents had friends."
Sharlet is a secular journalist with a list of credits as long as his arm. In his statement of purpose, he says that belief matters - "whether or not you believe" - and that nobody can afford to ignore the role of religious belief in shaping lives. He also argues that the press does a mostly lousy job of writing about religion.
In any case, the center, which was launched in 2003, provides a staggering number of sites for browsers, whatever their religious affiliation or intensity, plus fellowships, films, roundtables and other forums that promote awareness and importance of religion on everyday life.
For most people, though, the interesting stuff is one click away, on one or more of thousands of something-for-everybody religion sites.
Some sites listed on St. Blog's Parish - its real name, incidentally - claim more than 1,000 visitors a day. This is not a great number, but it's not bad for unadvertised personal cyberpages by Catholics with points of view that they cannot or will not keep to themselves.
There is an online fan club for Pope Benedict and diaries of seminarians. There are sites for lapsed Catholics, converts, overlooked saints, and priests offering their homilies to the whole wide world. Some are gimmicky - The Curt Jester promises "punditry, parody, polemics, politics and puns from a papist perspective."
People who keep track of these things report that religion ranks just behind pornography and sports in online popularity. Some experts even put religion second, behind porn.
If the Center for Religion and Media is any measure, that's easy to believe. Its menu offers something for every believer in anything, and even people with no faith. (One site for nonbelievers, called The Raving Atheist, is recommended as "intensely intelligent and often funny").
The center's editors also provide valuable summaries, and in some cases recommendations, to help window shoppers. The Village Gate, for example, carries a note that it was formerly called The Right Christians (Not the Christian Right).
Jewish blogs - the word combines Web and log - are listed under jblog, which offers some deep and serious discussions and some irreverence and outrage. Names include Velveteen Rabbi, Doing it Maai Vey and Yada, Yada, Yada - three sites worth a visit, incidentally.
There's a roundup called God Beat, which includes sites that deal with religion and media, cults, anthologies and cultural commentary. There is a roundup headlined Holy War, a depressingly long rundown of the world's conflicts involving religious beliefs.
As extensive as its current offerings, the center notes there is plenty more room - 61 more Catholic contributors alone are awaiting approval to join the already crowded St. Blog e-sanctuaries and lecture halls.
One underrepresented category is Muslim blogs.
"We're working on it," a center worker said this week. "We've got a page listing a whole lot of sites that provide information about Islam and Muslims, including one for gays. But blogs? That's not up to us."
Blogging, he said, has not yet caught on among Muslims.