Notes From the Epicenter: Hallelujah.com

Andrea Dudrow

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Freud said, among other things, that as average people became more educated, their reliance on organized religion and spirituality would fade and eventually disappear altogether. Obviously, this has yet to happen. Though my generation (I’m on the early cusp of the so-called Generation X) is likely the first in which a large proportion of Americans have grown up without direct religious participation, religion is far from gone from the American landscape. And we are far from uneducated, no matter what you or George W. Bush might say about the state of the public school system.

Religion appears to be here to stay. And it’s not just your parents’ religion either. Major world religions have continued to change and evolve and relatively new faiths (ranging from things like Scientology to the so-called cult religion of Heaven’s Gate have flourished. And it turns out that some religions (Heaven’s Gate may be a prime example of this) have flourished in recent years thanks to the Web.

Which Came First, the God or the Web?
In her new book “Give Me That Online Religion,” Brenda E. Brasher argues that the Web will end up having much the same effect on religion as the printing press did hundreds of years ago. Basically, she says, with the proliferation of the Internet (much like the proliferation of cheaply produced Bibles and Torahs), religion becomes more accessible and easier for the average person to participate in.

Ms. Brasher notes that various religious Web sites (ranging in faith from Tibetan Buddhism to contemporary Judaism) seek in some ways to take the place of physical religious experiences, like actually going to the temple or synagogue. This is an interesting notion, because though many Americans attend some sort of religious service on a regular basis, many who identify as belonging to a particular faith do not.

Online Worshipping
Consider myself: I’m what I suppose you could call a semi-practicing Jew. I observe major holidays but I only go to services about once or twice a year. Perhaps through the Internet I could attend virtual services, which would somehow connect me with a Jewish community yet wouldn’t cause me the bother of having to leave my home. Ms. Brasher mentioned a Web site in her book that would be holding an online Seder (the feast and service celebrating Passover, which generally occurs around the time of Easter). I pointed my browser to Seder 2000 and was partly dismayed and partly relieved to find that the organizers were too busy opening a new Hollywood club, not to mention the vagaries of putting together the world’s largest jazz festival, to have been able to devote the necessary amount of time to the interactive Seder. So the Seder went unfinished, which if you ask me is as American a way to celebrate a holiday as any.

Are people really going to want their religious experiences delivered to them over the Internet? Perhaps. Television evangelism sure didn’t hurt religious proliferation in this country. But it remains to be seen whether people are ready to turn from television to the slower, more hassle-prone (though admittedly more interactive) world of the Web. Of course this argument could be made for a lot of Web applications (movies, music, reading…) and Jane Q. Public has certainly shown he isn’t averse to using the Internet for them.

What Role to Take Though?
Which brings up another point: Will people worry that the Internet, which has so far made its biggest splash in the commercial arena, minimizes religion? I’m not sure Americans are necessarily put off by commercialization; after all you can find churches in strip malls, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Heritage USA Christian theme park was the third most popular park in the country in the 1980s, after Disney World and Land. But I do think it takes a little while for us to get used to it. And the Web hasn’t been around for all that long.

Which is probably why many sites, such as Religion Online, are casting themselves in a more informational light, rather than trying to do much preaching and/or selling. The British magazine Cybersociology recently published a series of articles about online religion that use academic thought to examine how the Internet will affect religious experience. And Ms. Brasher’s own site offers up links to a variety of online religious sites for the curious.

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is generally marked by a day of fasting, discussion, and prayer. I wonder what that will be like when we are celebrating it on the Internet.