Religion and Cyberspace

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.

Piff, D. and M. Warburg (2005). Seeking for Truth: Plausibility Alignment on a Baha'i Email List. Religion and Cyberspace. M. T. Højsgaard and M. Warburg, Routledge: 88-101.

List of illustrations
vii
List of contributors
ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: waves of research
1 (12)
Morten T. Hojsgaard
Margit Warburg
Part I Coming to terms with religion and cyberspace
13 (52)
The mediation of religious experience in cyberspace
15 (23)
Lorne L. Dawson
Utopian and dystopian possibilities of networked religion in the new millennium
38 (12)
Stephen D. O'Leary
Cyber-religion: on the cutting edge between the virtual and the real
50 (15)
Morten T. Hojsgaard
Part II Religious authority and conflict in the age of the Internet
65 (54)
Crossing the boundary: new challenges to religious authority and control as a consequence of access to the Internet
67 (19)
Eileen Barker
Seeking for truth: plausibility alignment on a Baha'i email list
86 (16)
David Piff
Margit Warburg
A symbolic universe: information terrorism and new religions in cyberspace
102 (17)
Massimo Introvigne
Part III Constructing religious identities and communities online
119 (80)
Constructing religious identity on the Internet
121 (17)
Mia Lovheim
Alf G. Linderman
Online Buddhist Community: an alternative religious organization in the information age
138 (11)
Mun-Cho Kim
Virtual as contextual: a Net news theology
149 (17)
Debbie Herring
Christian Web usage: motives and desires
166 (14)
Michael J. Laney
Digital Waco: Branch Davidian virtual communities after the Waco tragedy
180 (19)
Mark Macwilliams
Index 199