A new study may give hope to those who worried that the darker corners of the Internet would overshadow its potential to inspire more noble pursuits.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that 25 percent of adult Internet users, about 28 million people, had gone online to find religious and spiritual material.
That is more than the number of Internet users who have visited gambling Web sites, participated in online auctions or traded stocks online, according to other Pew surveys. It is also a jump from 20 million people who said they had used the Internet for religious activities in a similar study last year.
"There's no Yahoo (news/quote) for religious users; they're all over the place," said Lee Rainie, director of the project.
"People who are already deeply involved with a specific congregation and a specific faith are using the Internet for church logistics – planning meetings, passing out information," he said. "They're using it for highly utilitarian purposes."
But the other subsets of religious surfers the study identified take various approaches to their online spiritual activities. People who do not belong to a specific congregation, as well as those who belong to a religion they do not consider mainstream in their community, tend to go online more to interact with others, the study found. Those who have converted to a new faith use the Internet primarily to educate themselves.
"They seem to be deeply enmeshed in the study of their new faith," Mr. Rainie said.
Because the data come from two surveys conducted from the end of July to Sept.10, the statistics do not reflect patterns that may have changed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In separate Pew studies this fall, 23 percent of Internet users said they had gone online to get information about Islam, and 41 percent of Americans who are online said they had sent or received e-mail prayer requests.
"As we were watching these sites post- Sept 11, there was a lot of angst, spiritual angst," Mr. Rainie said. "A substantial number of people were saying, `Where is God in this?'