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Lo and Behold, the Sacredness of the Internet

By Martyn Smith

…Behold and his earlier films. We can reach all the way back to Fata Morgana (1971) to see Herzog’s insistence on finding or creating new myths for our time. In Lo and Behold this approach easily allows Herzog to escape the bonds of technical exposition and present instead the emotions and passions that swirl around that thing we call the internet….

Was Islam Responsible for the Boston Bombings, or Was “Internet Islam”?

By Ivan Strenski

…me essentialized notion of Islam to which Mark Juergensmeyer makes rhetorical appeal. It’s just that in the case of Islamophobes, Islam is essentially bad. Here, left and right, as is often is the case, mirror each other. I want to put in another perspective. First, the title of “Islam” is up for grabs, at least in the Sunni world. And, what we are witnessing today are the skirmishes, back-stabbings, cavalry attacks and such of a worldwide struggl…

Republican Scandals Drag Secretive ‘Family’ Into the Big Time

By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston

…nions… But here we go: The predominant perspective, among liberals in general, along with the media, scholars, and other intellectuals, is that through open dialogue, the airing of opposing views, and the difficult work of listening to the “other,” we will approach an increasingly just, balanced, and free society (“the noise of democracy,” as James Buchanan put it). That is to say, left and right, religious and secular (in the widely understood de…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…our behalf as to go there yourself? Is God “closer” if you visit the physical wall than if you simply view a digital image of it? A replica of the Wailing Wall has recently been constructed in Second Life, the popular user-built online virtual “world.” The creator of the virtual Wailing Wall, “Xanadu,” explains that the digital wall, “is a peaceful spot to sit and grieve, pray, meditate, or comfort a friend. The wall accepts self-created notecards…

Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

By Rachel Wagner

…lotova Alva has been dubbed “the first documentary shot entirely in a virtual online platform.” The Second Life avatar who stars in the production, Molotov Alva, is physically modeled after Douglas Gayeton, the producer of the series. However, Alva is now marooned in Second Life, gradually losing his grip on his connection to his real self (his embodied self) and to his creator, presumably also Gayeton. Gayeton asks via Alva: If this new reality w…

The Internet is Not Killing Organized Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…wn, unaided by new social media. Beck’s argument, briefly, was that the banal social interaction that once filled post-worship coffee hours had been absorbed by day-to-day Facebook interactions. I suggested back then, among other things, that if swapping Jell-O recipes and catching up on local gossip was the main draw of Christian churches and other religions, the smoking gun was hardly digital. Recently, Valerie Tarico updated the theory over at…

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ly excluding or otherwise diminishing them. It is the blurring of the virtual/real boundary that made me so pleased when one of my digital besties, Pastor Keith Anderson, stole a moment from the celebration of his own incarnation to share a link to the most recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The Social Side of the Internet.” In a survey of 2,303 adults in November and December of 2010, researchers uncovered striking findin…

Religious Right Historian: Net Neutrality is “Unbiblical Socialism”

By Julie Ingersoll

…s the slew of potential Republican Presidential candidates who seem to be falling all over themselves to cozy up to Barton) mean by socialism and, ultimately, how they understand freedom. Most of us understand socialism as a system in which there is no private ownership and all power (political and economic) is centralized in the State; so tea party accusations that any policy they oppose is “socialist” seems, at best, like hyperbole. But in B…

Birth of Hipster Hasidism?

By Nicole Greenfield

…on the trend. For an essential difference between the Satmar community of Williamsburg and the Chabad community of Crown Heights is the latter’s focus on proselytization to other Jews. Indeed, several comments on the post at COLlive highlight the potential of the changing demographics to do kiruv, or outreach with the aim of bringing Jews closer to God. And now that Matisyahu, hipster Hasid icon, has shaven his beard and renounced the Orthodox fai…

Pornography’s Dirty Little Secret: What We Say vs. What We Do

By Shira Tarrant

…neighbors. For all the public debate about religion, pornography, and sexual morality, there is a disjuncture between what people say and what people do. While many conservative religious groups object to pornography, the data on porn-use patterns reveal there is robust access to adult content within US states that skew more religious. Over a two-year period, researchers Cara C. MacInnis and Gordon Hodson found that in highly religious and conser…