Religion and the Internet

Abstract

The internet has revolutionized religious growth and dissemination. It is multifunctional in this respect, and multi-disciplinarity is required in order to comprehend and benefit from its technological advances. It is still hard to discern whether the internet is predominantly utopian or dystopian in its effects, and a helpful conceptual distinction is that between ‘religion online’ and ‘online religion’; also ‘offline’ religion - the impact internet religion has on more conventional forms of practice and expression. As a new interface for mediating religious belief, ritual and ethical practice, and for constituting community and selfhood, the internet subverts and recasts not only these categories, but others such as ‘world religion’ and ‘minority religious group’. You don't have to be a large operation now to have a global reach - a democratization of religion is in progress.

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