These Web sites are meant to supplement the "brick and mortar" church. What about virtual congregations and virtual churches? Will we ever want to set foot in a real church building again?
Harvest Christian Fellowship, in Southern California, was one of the first churches to go online in 1995. In 1997, they became one of the first to broadcast services via the Web. "Every service has been Web-cast live and archived on the site [for future viewing]. The site has audio and video presentations on Christianity, MP3s with daily devotional messages, Christian music, and even live online counseling so visitors can chat in real time with a church counselor about matters of faith. According to Harvest, about 4 million people visit their site annually with 250,000 "attending their church services online" (ACFnewsource). The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, has live web-casts of Sunday sermons. This site has about 10,000 people tuning in by Internet each Sunday. Non-denominational churches aren't the only ones web-casting. Atlanta's Peachtree Presbyterian Church also web-casts its services. At a service in 1999, 1,600 people watched via the Internet.
Both of these churches have buildings, and hold services there. What about cyber-churches? They have no building. They exist totally in cyberspace. The First Church of Cyberspace (www.godweb.org) is one such church. It was organized in 1994 by a Presbyterian minister, Charles Henderson, "as an attempt to bring Christianity online with thoughtfulness, humor and a willingness to address more controversial questions that tend to be avoided in the traditional church" (godweb.org). The site offers sermons, inspirational music, a multimedia Bible, and a "virtual" sanctuary with a "virtual" eternal flame. Cyber-churches are not just for the Christian. IslamiCity (www.islam.org), based in Southern California, is a virtual mosque that serves the worldwide Muslim community. Buddhists have BuddhaNet (www.buddhanet.org) to help in their spiritual life. Jews have The Wall.org (www.aish.com/wallcam/). This site allows the faithful to type out messages, which students in Jerusalem print out and place in the Western Wall.
What will the future bring? Will cyber-churches (and mosques, and temples, etc.) become more popular than physical places of worship? In 1998, 1 in 6 teenagers said they rely on the Internet to augment their spiritual needs and expect to stop attending a physical church altogether sometime in the future. By 2010, researchers predict that between 10% and 20% of American Internet users will rely on the Web for all of their worship and faith-related endeavors. Of course, a lot can change in eight years…
Sources: Larsen, Elena, et. al. Wired churches, wired temples: Taking congregations and missions into cyberspace. Pew Internet & American Life Project: Washington D.C., December 20, 2000 (chart data). "High Tech Religion." ACFnewsource, February 16, 2001 (congregation and cyber-church data); "Holy Log-on." ACFnewsource, various dates 1999. Online. Available: http://www.acfnewsource.org. March 7, 2002. Andrew Careaga. "Cyber Congregations Go Fishing on the Net." Church Business (October 2000). Online. Available: http://www.churchbusiness.com. March 7, 2002. P.J. Huffstutter. "God is Everywhere on the Net." Los Angeles Times, 14 December 1998. Abraham McLaughlin. "Onward Online Soldiers." ABCNEWS.com, 22 April 1999.
1 Agnostic, atheist, and humanist are a part of the "Other" category in the graph.
2 Only includes adherents to Judaism.
3 Some data in the table extrapolated using a world population of 6 billion.
4 Although Judaism consists of many branches (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc.), the source cites it as a single religion.
5 In this panel, members refer to those who are affiliated with a religious group. Percentages were derived by subtracting the percentage of adults who switched out of a religion from the percentage of adults who switched into a religion. Data obtained from American Religious Identification Survey.
6 PEN stands for Pagan Educational Network.
7 Lines in italics are the traditional organized religions. "Protestant, no religion specified" was italicized because it could include the traditional Protestant religions. "Christian, no religion specified" was not italicized because it appears in the graph, but may also include traditional Christian religions.
8Percentage change is from 1990-1999. No data was available for 1980.
9 There were an additional 46 other Taoist institutions, spread over 18 states and the District of Columbia, where the Taoist beliefs and practices were taught.
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