The Internet: A new venue for religion

By Gabriel Faimau


A day before the winner of the US presidential election was formally declared on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the influential Internet newspaper The Huffington Post, had already declared the winner: The Internet.

Analyzing the 2008 US race, she argued that, "From the way campaigns connect to supporters, to the way those campaigns are covered, to the way voters decide who to vote for, 2008 has delivered the first truly 21st century presidential race. And election night promises to fortify the Internet's victory."

Arianna was right. The success of Barack Obama in being elected the 44th President of the United States cannot be judged without considering the influence of the Internet. His way of organizing grassroots' supporters and movements through a very unique and sophisticated online networking including fundraising, email networking, blogging and text messaging, is truly remarkable.

Indeed, the increasing rate of Internet use has been phenomenal over the past two decades. It is bringing about a global revolution characterized by the flowing of information and therefore providing easy access to the many aspects of life that were traditionally limited by the boundaries of time and space.

Besides politics, religion has also been affected and transformed by its presence. To what extent does it reshape religion? According to Christopher Helland, religion manifests itself in two different ways, namely, religion online and online religion.

Religion online is based upon the traditional religious hierarchical structures that see the Internet as a tool of top-down organized communication. Its use is therefore limited to a controlled environment through which organized attempts are created to utilize traditional forms of communication to present religion based upon a vertical conception of control, status and authority. In religion online, it is a tool of communication which functions to relay traditional information concerning a religion.

On the other hand, online religion represents a new development of religious praxis with new egalitarian forms of communication and the ideal of unstructured, open and nonhierarchical interaction. This second form offers Internet users a form of religious touch and sense outside the traditional religious structures. For online religion, the Internet is a place of interaction in various forms such as online sermons, offers of healing prayers, religious counseling and faith sharing or even astrological charts.

Among the world's religions, Roman Catholicism is known as the first religion that used it as a "religious tool" with the creation of the official Vatican website in 1995.

Today other organized religions have also developed websites as a tool for both information on religion and the formation of people's spiritual life. Within Islam, academic studies indicate that the development of the notion of ummah or Muslim brotherhood through Internet has been notably significant.

Since Muslims' websites are accessible globally, Internet therefore constructs a "new geography of the ummah" and brings Muslims closer to one another in online discussions, sharing of faith, information and opinions. Religious figures have also made use of it for their work.

Recently I conducted a simple survey on Internet use involving 81 Indonesian-speaking Catholic missionaries from the Divine Word Missionaries who are working in more than 50 countries.

One of the interesting findings is how the participants have made use of the Internet for the spiritual formation of the people they are responsible for. Of 81 participants, 84 percent indicated that they have used information from it to prepare their sermons.

When the frequency of Internet use for sermon preparation is scaled, 48.1 percent of the participants indicated that they always use it on a regular basis and another 40.7 percent indicated that though not on a regular basis, they do frequently use it for preparing sermons.

Online interaction is notable. 93.8 percent said they normally read or listen to the online sermons. Moreover, there is also an indication that it is used for spreading religious messages. Nearly 47 percent of the participants have published their sermons or writings online.

Social networking has also been part of their religious activities. 95.1 percent of the participants said they have made use of the online social networking facilities for faith sharing or spiritual counseling.

Predictions of the demise of religion have proven wrong over the years. With the presence of Internet, religious participation has crossed not only geographical boundaries but religious boundaries also. To a certain extent, it could be argued that the Internet has flattened the hierarchal religious structure. The Internet itself has no religion but indeed it has a message. Today it has become a new space and venue for religious information and spiritual formation at the same time.

*[The Jakarta Post 24/12/2009] Diakses 28 Januari 2009 15:34


The writer is currently pursuing doctoral research in the Department of Sociology, University of Bristol, UK and member of Forum Academia NTT.