Friday, May 30, 2003

Driven to Partake in Offline Religion Brasher relates a story that I want to relate to all those who dount the "draw" that the web can be for face-to-face communities.  It is a story about a webiste of "Christ in the Desert Monastery",  and is followed up by a story about a divorced man in his fifties,  who happened upon the site,  and ended up visting the monastery after becoming attracted to the "feel of the community" he received from the Website.   (the story is related on pages 78-85) 10:17:04 AM    comment []

Gimme Some More of that Earlier blogs on Give Me That ONline Religion : here (oct 4, 2002), here in Translate THIS,  and other places I'm sure (still looking) 9:44:11 AM    comment []

Give Me That Online Religion Reloaded Back in October 2002,  I blogged some observations about Give Me that Online Religion by Brenda Brasher.  (see Give Me That ONline Religion for that original post).  Now,  having picke it up again in recent days,  as I ran across a few references to the book,  I blogged a few days back about something........let me look it up Anyway, "reloading it" may well have come after taking my son to see "The Matrix Reloaded",  which kind of deflated me a bit at the end as it implied that everything in the story up till now was all a grand bit of AI.  This may turn out to also be a trick,  as the twists and turns will no doubt continue in the Sequel's sequel (part two,  coming up in November) 9:35:17 AM    comment []

The Soul of Cyberspace The Soul of Cyberspace by Jeff Zaleski is a "on the scene" book of interviews during vistis to several "Web incarnations" of attempts to strike up theological conversatrions with people on the Web. If 55% of the world's Christians are Catholic,  but less than 25% of the sites categorized by Yahoo in 1996 were Catholic,  what does this tell us?  Something more, I think (and is echoed by Zaleski) than the demographics of the Web (dominated by America) and of World Religion (most of America is Protestant,  therefore affecting the percentages of Catholic-leaning Web fare).  The issue of authority and of  the value and role of "conversation" in theology is also a key factor.  This one small example with wide implications from Zaleski is exemplary of the wealth of sociological and psychological explorations that can be mined from this book. This book is definitely NOT to be confused with a similar title "The Soul IN Cyberspace" by Doug Groothius,  which was a treatment which basically advanced a bibliolatry heresy,  glorifiying the book,  and making it a divine ordination; advancing  the exclusivity of revelation from all channels OTHER than the written word (the "proof" adavanced was the Ten Commandments.  9:09:44 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 2:34:55 PM.