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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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