If you are reading this review, you are probably aware of the far-reaching effects of the Internet on modern culture. The last several years have seen the World Wide Web grow from a few hundred pages visited only by academics to a sprawling, almost tangible entity that has changed the way we live. Hop online and you can shop, listen to music, gamble, and yes, even find religion online. Brenda Brasher explores many different online religious experiences in this well-researched, thorough book, from the funny to the serious, from simple church websites to simulcasts of Passover Seders.
Brasher posits that religion is good for society and that the Internet is a necessary tool to ensure the future of religion. The Internet allows individuals and religious organizations large and small to bring their message to untold masses. The advent of the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on the dissemination of knowledge, comparable to the effect the printing press had around the time of Martin Luther. Technologies like chat and real-time video make the online religious experience more real for website visitors. In one chapter, Brasher compares the online religious experiences of three individuals. One, a young woman named Ashley, went online looking for information about Judaism when she started dating an observant Jew. Her search led to her participation in a Cyber-Seder, in which a real-life Seder was broadcast over the web and online participants were able to chat with each other. Ashley enjoyed the experience and ended up converting to Judaism.
On the lighter side, Brasher highlights a few online shrines to celebrities. Again, the Internet provides an unprecedented method of showing admiration for celebrities. The tongue-in-cheek website of The Dudes of the Keanic Circle celebrates the wisdom of Keanu Reeves. There are hundreds of websites devoted to "Star Trek." After Princess Diana died, shrines to her sprang up all over the web. These celebrity websites are good for online religion as a whole because they challenge more traditional religious institutions to make their website content more engaging in order to attract more visitors. In this way, they will be brought into the Internet age and will continue to flourish.
Along with mainstream religious websites and pop-culture paeans, doomsday prophets have found a home on the Web. Apocalyptic sentiment typically spreads when a social or natural crisis approaches. For the members of Heaven's Gate, a small religious community, the arrival of the comet Hale-Bopp in 1997 was their signal that the end was at hand. The group, which supported itself with a website design business, posted its intentions on its site shortly before 39 members committed suicide in accordance with their beliefs. More recently, the Y2K crisis prompted record numbers of apocalyptic evangelists to spread the word that the end of days was near. Even though Y2K came and went without a hitch, apocalypticism prospers online.
There is an almost infinite variety of religious experiences to be had online. People who go online looking for a spiritual lift are likely to surf around a bit until they find what they are looking for. As Brasher points out, it is often difficult for people raised in the 20th century to relate to religious texts that were written for agrarian societies. It will be interesting to see which religious institutions keep up with the changing times and learn to use online media to create religious experiences for a wired world.
>--- Reviewed by Amita Guha
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