In the twenty-first century, religious life is increasingly moving from churches, mosques and temples onto the Internet. Today, anyone can go online and seek a new form of religious expression without ever encountering a physical place of worship, or an ordained teacher or priest. The digital age offers virtual worship, cyber-prayers and talk-boards for all of the major world faiths, as well as for pagan organisations and new religious movements. It also abounds with misinformation, religious bigotry and information terrorism. Scholars of religion need to understand the emerging forum that the web offers to religion, and the kinds of religious and social interaction that it enables.
Religion and Cyberspace explores how religious individuals and groups are responding to the opportunities and challenges that cyberspace brings. It asks how religious experience is generated and enacted online, and how faith is shaped by factors such as limitless choice, lack of religious authority, and the conflict between recognised and non-recognised forms of worship. Combining case studies with the latest theory, its twelve chapters examine topics including the history of online worship, virtuality versus reality in cyberspace, religious conflict in digital contexts, and the construction of religious identity online. Focusing on key themes in this groundbreaking area, it is an ideal introduction to the fascinating questions that religion on the Internet presents.
Contents
1. Introduction: Waves of Research
Morten T. Højsgaard and Margit Warburg
Part One: Coming to Terms with Religion and Cyberspace
2. The Mediation of Religious Experience in Cyberspace
Lorne L. Dawson
3. Utopian and Dystopian Possibilities of Networked Religion in the New Millennium
Stephen D. O’Leary
4. Cyber-religion: On the Cutting Edge between the Virtual and the Real
Morten T. Højsgaard
Part Two: Religious Authority and Conflict in the Age of the Internet
5. Crossing the Boundary: New Challenges to Religious Authority and Control as a Consequence of Access to the Internet
Eileen Barker
6. Seeking for Truth: Plausibility Alignment on a Baha'i Email List
David Piff and Margit Warburg
7. A Symbolic Universe: Information Terrorism and New Religions in Cyberspace
Massimo Introvigne
Part Three: Constructing Religious Identities and Communities Online
8. Constructing Religious Identity on the Internet
Mia Lövheim and Alf G. Linderman
9. Online Buddhist Club: An Alternative Religious Organization in the Information Age
Mun-Cho Kim
10. Virtual as Contextual: A Net News Theology
Debbie Herring
11. Christian Web Usage: Motives and Desires
Michael J. Laney
12. Digital Waco: Branch Davidian Virtual Communities after the Waco Tragedy
Mark MacWilliams
Biography
Morten T. Højsgaard is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History of Religions at the University of Copenhagen, and is editor of the journal Den digtale kirke (The Digital Church). Margit Warburg is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Copenhagen. Her books include Baha'i (2004) and New Religions and New Religiosity (1998, co-edited with Eileen Barker).