TruthBook Religious News Blog

Charlotte White, Promotions Coordinator, www.AuthorHouse.com

SCOTTSDALE, Sept. 9 /Christian Newswire/ -- For centuries chirping was a bird thing. Not anymore. Now millions of people Twitter daily to keep in contact with friends through tweet messages that say what they are doing, much like 58% of the U.S. population who pray daily according to a recent Pew Survey. But can Twitter mesh with spirituality?

"Twitter seems to fill emptiness with short messages of 140 characters or less about what's happening in life. Tweets may provide warmth to senders and receivers like an electronic blanket," says John Groh, author of Rubbing God's Ear With His Promises, a book of prayers. "While Twitter may appeal to some who want self-affirmation, praying arcs away from self by relying on God's promises," he adds.

Like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is a social interconnector that lets "followers" maintain contact with acquaintances. Reportedly the free service played a role in the uprising in Iran this year and the Mumbai massacre of 2008.

Tweeting makes a home in some churches. Micro-blogging raises the bandwidth in several Nashville, Seattle, Charlotte and New York City churches with tweeting during sermons. One man solicits prayers to God on Twitter and then prints, rolls and inserts them in Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Labels: Charlotte White, God, John Groh, prayer, social networking, spirituality, Twitter

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Sunday, September 09, 2007

High-tech focus on higher power

September 8, 2007
Associated Press

Godtube.com is just what it sounds like: Youtube, but only for Christian content

ANDERSON, Ind. -- On any Sunday morning, members of Faith Church in Anderson expect to sing several hymns and listen as Walt Weaver preaches. They also expect to watch some TV without leaving their pews.

Weaver has been sprinkling his services with multiple video clips for more than a year.

More churches are turning to new technology in the hope that it will engage their congregations and stop the national decline in church attendance.

Godtube.com, a new Christian video-sharing site, makes it possible for people to bypass the bricks and mortar and experience their faith in a completely digital format.

The site hosts more than 20,000 clips. They range from amateur home videos to professionally produced television segments, and they include sermons, music videos, comedy bits and infomercials.

Like Youtube.com, Godtube allows anyone to share a video. But videos on Godtube must pertain to Christianity.

Many religious sites have copied nonreligious models. My Church.org is similar to the social networking site MySpace.

More than any other religious Web site, Godtube seems to be billing itself as an alternative to the physical church. A release from the company cited statistics on declining church attendance and a Pew Internet Study that found 82 million Americans use the Internet for a faith-based reason, which is more than the number of Americans who use it for banking or dating.

Weaver said his congregation bucks that national trend and hasn't seen its membership decline. And although he likes Godtube for the videos it provides, he said the site also makes him nervous for the impact it could have on future attendance.

"We like to think of ourselves as the Switzerland of Christianity," said Christopher Wyatt, Godtube's founder and CEO.

He officially launched the site on Aug. 8, but test versions have existed online since January. Within 60 days of going live, the site became the most popular Christian site on the Internet, Wyatt said.

Its growth has continued at a breakneck pace. In July, Godtube users watched about 300,000 hours of video. This month, Wyatt said, he expects them to watch close to 2 million hours.

A former TV producer with CBS, Wyatt now attends seminary school in Dallas. The idea for the site came to him after he learned of statistics describing future downward trends in church attendance.

He calls the trend of Christians going online and using new technology, such as file-sharing and streaming video, to experience their religion the "Jesus 2.0 movement."
But the movement is somewhat restricted due to Godtube's ban on anything it deems objectionable.

Labels: Christianity, Christopher Wyatt, church, Godtube.com, religion, social networking, video

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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