TruthBook Religious News Blog

Fri March 27, 2009
By John Blake

(CNN) -- Leslie Gage knew it was coming, but that didn't take away the pain.
Atlanta Community ToolBank volunteers build playground, and relationships, in their community.

Atlanta Community ToolBank volunteers build playground, and relationships, in their community.

She was working as an architect for a small company in Atlanta, Georgia, when the company's founder asked her into his office. He took off his glasses and rubbed his hand against his forehead.

"We just can't afford to keep you..."

She eventually joined a nonprofit group that renovated homes in her neighborhood, but she also built something else: a place in her community.

Now she wonders whether more Americans will arrive at the same conclusion that she has: We have to rebuild our sense of community, not just our banking system, if we're going to survive.

According to one perspective, more Americans turn to their remote, not their neighbor, in bad times. Netflix officials reported a 45 percent jump in profits during the end of 2008. Gross movie ticket sales are up 18.8 percent this year, according to BOXOfficeMojo.com. And home entertainment business sales are surging, according to sales figures.

Yet there are other signs that the economy is also inspiring Americans to turn to one another for everything from solace to stew.

Making stew for the neighbors

Nonprofit groups report a surge in volunteers. Peace Corps applications are up 16 percent from last year. Online applications for AmeriCorps, a federal program where volunteers tutor needy children and build housing for the poor, have increased three times faster than a year ago.

Thousands of Americans have organized Economic Recovery House Meetings in all 50 states at the urging of President Obama to talk about the stimulus plan and help one another get through the economic crisis.

Turning to Google instead of God

The duty to one's neighbor is a fundamental belief in most religions. It would seem natural that more people would turn to their church, mosque or synagogue for community in tough times.

But don't expect a shaky economy to lead to a national religious awakening, said Nancy Dallavalle, chairwoman of the Department of Religious Studies at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

While individual communities of worship may see some uptick in their numbers, Dallavalle said, fewer Americans depend on traditional religion for support.

Some studies reinforce her point. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, almost all religious denominations have lost members since 1990. Membership in mainline Protestant denominations has fallen for the past 30 years and has been widely documented.

The Internet also siphons people away from traditional religious communities during tough times, she said. Americans who have grown up outside organized religion prefer to get their inspiration through the Internet: online motivational tracts, inspirational speakers and self-help gurus.

Whether people turn to God or Google, this economic crisis will shift people's values, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a commentator and political science professor at Princeton University.

An economic crisis may even cause Americans to rethink what's worth admiring, she said. Instead of watching the "Real Housewives of Orange County," more might become drawn to the real families of ordinary America, where couples lose jobs and get sick, but they still stick together, she said.

Gage, the Atlanta architect, had to do the same for herself. After she was laid off, she experienced an emotional tailspin. For several weeks, she refused to apply for unemployment benefits because she didn't want to get more depressed shuffling along an unemployment line.

Then she volunteered at the Atlanta Community ToolBank. The nonprofit group lends tools and renovates home for the elderly and disabled. She quickly realized that people weren't just inviting her into their homes. They were inviting her into their lives.

She still remembers the first neighbor she visited on behalf of ToolBank. The woman offered her breakfast in her living room and directed Gage's attention to her "Wall of Fame," which held portraits of her children.

"She had 13 children, all of them grown and several with college degrees," Gage said. "She was so proud of each and every one of them because, as she said, education of any kind was hard to come by when she was a girl. ... I won't ever forget that."

Why economic uncertainty is 'awful' for bringing people together

David Putnam is the author of "Bowling Alone," a 2000 book that argued that many Americans are living more isolated lives. The book concluded, after wide-ranging interviews and numerous studies, that Americans belong to fewer civic groups, know their neighbors less and meet less often with family and friends.

That solitary impulse in Americans actually gets worse during hard economic times, Putnam said.

He said economic uncertainty has an "awful" effect on social connections because people become depressed and lose their sense of self-esteem when they lose a job, he said.

One study looking at the Great Depression demonstrated this, Putnam said. He said that civic engagement, measured by involvement in groups such as local PTA groups and Elks lodges, steadily rose in the U.S. from the turn of the 20th century.

But between 1930 and 1935, during the height of the Great Depression, many civic organizations lost half of their membership, he said.

Americans eventually recovered their engagement in community. He said the country's greatest civic book occurred between 1940 and 1965. That boom was driven by "the Greatest Generation," the men and women who came of age during World War II.

"They had just been exposed to five years of war bond drives, scrap metal drives and Boy Scouts asking people to give up rubber mats in their car for the war," Putnam said. "They lived with a sustained notion of we're all in this together."

Perhaps that will happen now. Gage said she's seen it happen in the United States before.

Gage lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina demolished much of the city. What she remembers most is not what was destroyed by Katrina but what was borne out of it: a luminous sense of community.

As she walked through the neighborhoods, she said, she kept encountering people who were cleaning up and looking to help others.

Gage has found a job at an ecofriendly architectural firm in Atlanta. But her memories of her neighbors in New Orleans, and the people she met through the ToolBank, convince her that Americans won't live by Netflix alone in the days ahead.

"It was a tough time, but I saw the entire city come together," Gage said. "I don't see why we can't do that."

Labels: Atlanta, community, faith, God, Internet, John Blake, recession, the economy

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Worshiping online: Is it really church?

By Lisa B. Hamilton, October 06, 2008

...the cathedral is hushed. Some kneel in shafts of light tinted by stained glass. Others leave quietly, a few stopping to light a candle on the way out.

In the courtyard, the mood is lighter. "Nice outfit. How did you get it?" "How did you get it? Shouldn't the question be where?"

This is the Anglican Church in Second Life's virtual cathedral, so the answer involves computer keys and Internet links. And those who've stopped to chat do so in the form of animated characters -- many elaborately costumed -- they've created to represent themselves on the computer screen.

All it takes is an Internet connection to download a free program that lets one participate in the virtual world. Anglican Church in Second Life was developed in 2006 by users of an interactive website called Second Life cathedral who desired an Anglican presence. The Second Life cathedral has 400 to 500 members, mostly from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, with a sprinkling from Europe and Asia. Each week, 80 to 100 members attend one of five online worship services, a Bible study or a discussion group.

Services are traditional in that they are straight from Anglican prayer books, but they do not contain the Eucharist, baptism or other sacraments. Members use their computers to create animated figures call avatars, which may resemble their creators as much or as little as desired, and manipulate them (including kneeling in a pew) using their computer keyboard throughout the 3-D place of worship, which takes its inspiration from medieval European cathedrals.

For some, virtual church offers the safety of anonymity. Nothing prevents members from creating avatars in the opposite gender, or even ones resembling animals more than humans. Not only are there no name tags in the virtual church, but members also take a new name when they enter the Second Life world.

"This is a good place to heal from First Life church," one "parishioner" said during a regularly scheduled Saturday discussion group in the "courtyard" of the cathedral.

"I feel less judged here," said another. When someone types, "community building is what we do best," avatars, which are visible in the discussion group, clap and nod in agreement.

One visitor's initial dip into Second Life's cathedral was marked by acceptance and patience. In a discussion, all questions were answered politely and all participants treated respectfully. When the inexperienced visitor attended Compline and smacked a newly created human avatar into a pillar before landing on the eagle gracing the lectern, other worshipers reassured the visitor that expertise would develop soon.

Prompting discussion

Virtual ministries can deepen conversation about the meaning of the sacraments in the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Barbara Crafton, founder of The Geranium Farm, a website whose offerings include a free subscription to the reflections she writes, also marveled at the Internet's power to heal and to build community. Crafton's "farm" began in early 2002, when her health forced her to retire from fulltime parish ministry and she began e-mailing daily reflections to her parishioners and their acquaintances.

Today, subscribers to those e-mails, called "farmers," number in the tens of thousands, and Crafton's "almost daily" reflections are sent across the globe with the tagline "down-to-earth support for living." Crafton's ability to find spirituality in everyday living is apparent in her reflections, which range in topic from the Scriptures appointed for the coming Sunday to lessons taught her by relationships, gardening, cooking (her two dozen books include The Geranium Farm Cookbook) and her cats. The site also offers opportunities for prayer, chat and reading other writers and bloggers (including Moretz) who Crafton has vetted.

Crafton is well aware that Episcopal churches increasingly go beyond using a website in the same way a parish hall bulletin board is utilized, providing, in addition to service times and directions, sermons to be downloaded in print or in audio, online pledging, church school registration and links to the youth group's Facebook page. Yet, she mused recently, "I am struck by the limited ways many institutions use their websites -- many have a let's-use-the-website-to-make-people-come-to-church approach, but sites can do so much more than that in terms of actually serving people's need for spiritual community."

The Geranium Farm includes a message board with various topics offering opportunities for giving and receiving spiritual care: messages that seek prayer; comfort in grief; alerts on walks for various causes; stories offering inspiration and insight; theological musings. Another Geranium Farm webpage, called candle vigils, allows visitors to type a prayer that, with a mouse click, results in an animated candle that "burns" for a week. Recently, the page contained 527 candles and corresponding prayers.

To those who claim they lack resources to minister virtually, Crafton answered, "Well, I can hardly press the send button, and yet I have a website visited by thousands. Clearly people with knowledge about the Internet have to be part of the enterprise."

Furthermore, Crafton said, "Jesus creates Christian community. He can do that anywhere he is supported by us, whether in bricks and mortar or online."

Labels: Anglican Church, Geranium Farm, Internet, Lisa B. Hamilton, Rev. Barbara Crafton, virtual church

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Religious teaching straight to your iPod

Spiritual podcasts show "religious traditions trying to keep alive and relevant," says researcher David Roozen.

By Ron Barnett, USA TODAY

Evangelists have long used the airwaves to get their messages out to a mass audience. But now, podcast technology is opening the doors to a wider variety of religious teaching than ever before, available on demand and delivered automatically to the computers of a growing number of Americans hungry for spirituality.

A survey last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more people used the Internet to look for religious and spiritual information than to download music, participate in online auctions or visit adult websites.

And a list updated recently by the podcast directory Podcast Alley shows 2,462 podcasts in the religion and spirituality category, the fourth highest among 21 categories, and more than in sports, news and politics.

"The good news about podcasts is this is probably another example of religious traditions trying to keep alive and relevant," says David Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Labels: David Roozen, Internet, Pew Internet And American Life survey, podcast, Podcast Alley, religion, Ron Barnett, spirituality

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Saturday, October 20, 2007

Internet churches and religious webcasts drawing more congregants

By Scott Andron
McClatchy Newspapers

Article Last Updated: 10/19/2007

MIAMI — Every Sunday morning, while hundreds of congregants converge on Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Fla., Stephanie Smith boots up her computer and joins the services — from 1,400 miles away.

Instead of attending a bricks-and-mortar church near her home in Fort Worth, Texas, Smith hooks her computer up to her big-screen TV and watches a live, Web-based videocast via Flamingo Road's "Internet Campus." Some Sundays, she invites family and friends to join her.

Smith is one of a growing number of Americans for whom the Internet plays a central role in their spiritual lives.

Among evangelical Christians, and the largest "megachurches" in particular, many pastors are taking their Web sites far beyond an online ad with a schedule of real-world services.

Many pastors are coming to see the Web site as a ministry in itself, not only as a way to bring people to church, but as a way to bring them to God — even if they never set foot in the physical building.

While most houses of worship now have Web sites, few use them as aggressively and creatively in seeking new converts as evangelicals, for a variety of reasons.

For Roman Catholics, important sacraments like communion are hard or impossible to translate into binary digits. Jews generally don't seek new converts, although the Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch sect, for example, has extensive Web offerings aimed at attracting non-observant Jews.

But "conservative Christians jump on any new medium they can to find new ways to spread the Gospel," said Scott Thumma, a professor of the sociology of religion at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

And megachurches "are doing the most fascinating and interesting stuff on the Web, but they are doing it because they have millions of dollars and thousands of people to draw on."

Like many Web sites run by large evangelical churches, Calvary's includes a step-by-step guide for nonreligious people seeking to convert, links to request "prayer support" for people going through a difficult time, and a searchable video archive of Pastor Bob Coy's previous sermons.

Looking for advice on your marriage? Sex? Forgiveness? Just type in the word, and a list of relevant sermons will appear. Want his advice every day? Subscribe to his podcast and listen on your MP3 audio player. Want to get saved right there in front of the computer? Pastor Bob will pray with you on a recorded video.

For at least one church, the Internet is so central that the church has a "dot" in its name. Lifechurch.tv has 11 campuses in six states, including a new congregation that meets at Palm Beach Central High School in Wellington, Fla. Its 12th campus is on the Internet, and the church tries to give online participants the same experience as those worshiping in person.

All the campuses receive a live sermon via satellite from the main campus in Oklahoma. Before and after the sermon, a local minister is on hand to lead services, announce upcoming events and pass the offering plate.

Internet participants — 700 to 900 on a typical weekend — can join in by clicking an icon to raise their hands in response to the pastor's words.

And after the formal service, they can chat — either by typing or using a webcam and microphone — with the pastor or each other.

Several other churches, including Flamingo Road and Calvary, also offer ways for online participants to interact during services.

Thanks to online shopping, online dating, online social networking and online darn-near-everything-else, many young Americans don't distinguish between their friends from school and those from Facebook.

These youngsters just see them all as friends, said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a consulting firm that conducts survey research for churches and other religious groups.

In fact, Kinnaman's firm predicts that by 2010, 10 percent of Americans will rely exclusively on the Internet for their religious experience.

Labels: church, evangelicals, interactive, Internet, ministry, Scott Andron, spirituality

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Sunday, September 16, 2007

Religion 2.0: Can't make it to church? You can tap into your spiritual side online

Posted on Sat, Sep. 15, 2007
BY SCOTT ANDRON
sandron@MiamiHerald.com

Every Sunday morning, while hundreds of South Floridians converge on Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Stephanie Smith boots up her computer and joins the services -- from 1,400 miles away.

Instead of attending a bricks-and-mortar church near her home in Fort Worth, Texas, Smith hooks her computer up to her big-screen TV and watches a live, web-based videocast via Flamingo Road's ''Internet Campus.'' Some Sundays, she invites family and friends to join her.

Smith is one of a growing number of Americans for whom the Internet plays a central role in their spiritual lives.

Many pastors are coming to see the website as a ministry in itself, not only as a way to bring people to church, but as a way to bring them to God -- even if they never set foot in the physical building.

While most houses of worship now have websites, few use them as aggressively and creatively in seeking new converts as evangelicals, for a variety of reasons.

For Roman Catholics, important sacraments like communion are hard or impossible to translate into binary digits. Jews generally don't seek new converts, although the Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch sect, for example, has extensive Web offerings aimed at attracting non-observant Jews.

LIFECHURCH.TV

For at least one church, the Internet is so central that the church has a ''dot'' in its name.

Lifechurch.tv has 11 campuses in six states, including a new congregation that meets at Palm Beach Central High School in Wellington. Its 12th campus is on the Internet, and the church tries to give online participants the same experience as those worshiping in person.

YOUTH MOVEMENT

Thanks to online shopping, online dating, online social networking and online darn-near-everything-else, many young Americans don't distinguish between their friends from school and those from Facebook. These youngsters just see them all as friends, said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a consulting firm that conducts survey research for churches and other religious groups.

In fact, Kinnaman's firm predicts that by 2010, 10 percent of Americans will rely exclusively on the Internet for their religious experience.

But no one is predicting that the Internet church will replace the physical church -- at least not yet.

'The big fear, especially in the mid '90s and late '90s, was, `Would people leave the pews?' '' said Heidi Campbell, a professor of communication who studies religion on the Internet at Texas A&M University.

That didn't happen -- at least, no faster than it was happening before. In fact, many people Campbell has interviewed say they would prefer to participate in church in person if their life circumstances allowed it.

You'd get no argument from Smith. While she likes participating in Flamingo Road over the Web and introducing family and friends to the church, her longer-term hope is to have a branch campus in Fort Worth.

It may take some time to get there, but the church also would like to see it happen.

Labels: church, Internet, ministry, Scott Andron

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

New keys to religion

Posted on Sat, Aug. 04, 2007

By MELISSA VARGAS
Star-Telegram staff writer

Large and small congregations in Fort Worth, Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County are beginning to join social networking sites to help bridge the Sunday-to-Sunday gap for members. Even more are creating their own Web pages in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience and make themselves more accessible.

Fellowship Web-site users can submit prayer requests, get more information on the church and watch excerpts of sermons and video blogs by the Rev. Ed Young. Some are linked through his Web page, Edyoung.com, or trimmed to present on YouTube. One YouTube sermonette had been viewed 6,282 times in just five weeks.

Sites like Mychurch.org, modeled after Facebook and MySpace, are slowly popping up to cater to younger, more computer-savvy users who spend time on the Internet to communicate with friends.

Online in numbers

More than 141 million Americans use the Internet, according to a 2006 survey by Pew Internet. Of those, 30 percent were using the Internet for religious or spiritual information.

The study found "that the Internet has become a vital force in many faith communities," the report states.

Religion researcher George Barna found that people are warming up to the idea of "cyberfaith." Currently, the most popular spiritual-related activities online are listening to archived religious teachings, reading "devotionals" and buying religious products and resources, according to a Barna nationwide survey in 2000 of 1,017 adults, 605 teenagers and 604 Protestant pastors.

Churches are vigorously adapting to the trend, and many local congregations such as St. Michael's Catholic Church in Bedford and Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth maintain Web pages and offer podcasts and e-mail contact with clergy.

Some religious leaders believe an online presence could replace the church experience for many congregants.

"By the end of the decade, we will have in excess of 10 percent of our population who rely upon the Internet for their entire spiritual experience," Barna wrote in his research. "Some of them will be individuals who have not had a connection with a faith community, but millions of others will be people who drop out of the physical church in favor of the cyberchurch."

Mychurch.org

The idea for Mychurch.org was sparked one Sunday morning when Suh and his wife were sitting in church and realized they didn't know any other parishioners.

Launched in September, the social networking site is viewed 3 million times a month, with 200,000 unique visitors, Suh said. Mychurch.org hosts 6,921 churches and 35,798 members worldwide. In Texas, 538 churches are registered, including a handful in the Dallas/Fort-Worth area.

Parishioners can search for their church by name or ZIP code and can connect with the pages of up to three churches. Once at the site, they can collect friends, share pictures and write blogs. Churches can even upload audio sermons, so people who couldn't make it to a service can listen to it.

As with other social-networking sites, Mychurch.org allows parishioners and church representatives to create their own personal profile on the site.

Cyberfaith

On mychurch.org, you can do the following:

Create a site for your church

Join a church's site

Communicate with your friends

Post and read others' blogs

Share your pictures

Coordinate church events

msanchez@star-telegram.com

Labels: Barna Group, church, information, Internet, Melissa Vargas, Pew survey

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Changing (Inter)Face of Religion

Online religious practices may signal the start of new traditions

—By Evelyn Hampton, Utne.com
April 11, 2007 Issue

Time-worn places of worship, whether they be ornate gothic cathedrals or simple temples, tend to be communal, bringing people together to bump elbows, sneeze, and whisper while they perform the ritual of religious ceremony. Now, an increasing number of the world's faithful come together to practice in cyberspace, suggesting that the next Chartres may very well be built of pixels.

The move to put religion online has been in the works for a while: a 2000 Pew Internet & American Life survey of congregations found that "the Internet has become a vital force in many faith communities." And according to another survey by the research organization in 2004, nearly 82 million Americans -- two thirds of the country's online users -- go to the internet for religious or spiritual reasons.

Today, there are myriad ways the internet is used by the faithful. One way, following the popularity of sites like MySpace, is for social networking. In "Sites Hope To Redeem Internet," Bettye Wells Miller reports for Southern California's Press-Enterprise on the popularity of sites like MyChurch, MEETfish, and Shmooze, where members create profiles to share with a network of friends.

Other sites offer mutual support: at DailyConfession.com, anyone can anonymously confess their sins, baring their soul by typing into a text box and clicking "I Confess." David Briggs of the Religion News Service notes that the website is particularly popular among the young, who are becoming more comfortable sharing intimate secrets and seeking advice online. And share they do: 300 to 400 confessions are posted and over a million people visit the site each day.

Virtual religious services, such as those available in the online role-playing game Second Life, are also increasingly popular rivals to physical-world services, as Cathy Lynn Grossman recently reported for USA Today. Some spiritual sites have "'pray-ables,' animated spots that will pop an avatar into proper praying position, whether bowing on a carpet, kneeling in a cathedral, or landing in the lotus position in a Buddhist spiritual center." One player commented that while his avatar prayed, so did he, mindfully mirroring his virtual embodiment. Some players even build their own holy sites -- one has built a version of the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Within the game are also pan-denominational groups like Avatars of Change, which has 180 members "from Christians to Jedi to Rastafarians, and is styled like a monastic order that functions to gather donations for charity and promotes interfaith discussion."

While Pew's 2004 survey found that online religious activities are a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, similar offline activities, some worry that the internet will lead the faithful astray. Objecting to the virtual practice of religions in Second Life, the chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Denver told USA Today that religion means submitting to "'beliefs and practices revealed by God and passed down by generations of believers. You can't phone that in." Yet as individuals -- particularly young people -- increasingly look to the internet to aid in their religious explorations, they are likely to create new beliefs and practices. What new developments this trend may bring are yet to be seen. One positive probability: Virtual interfaith conflicts would likely draw less real blood.

Labels: confession, Evelyn Hampton, Internet, online, Pew Internet And American Life survey, social networking