=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Preparations vital for virus threat

=== Falun Gong
2. A Foe Rattles Beijing From Abroad
3. China Arrests 6 Falun Gong Followers
4. falungong guru tells China persecution will fail
5. China Scientist Alleges Falun Gong Got U.S. Cash
6. Falun Gong Denies U.S. Congress Gave It Funding
7. Jiang Zemin Says Hong Kong to Deal With Falun Gong on Its Own
8. Leader Vows to Protect Hong Kong
9. China keeps up opinion war on Falun Gong

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
10. Reports from China's government-controlled media

» Part 2

=== Scientology
11. The Bavarian Report on Scientology

=== Unification Church
12. Moon to speak at SeaTac Tour: 'We Will Stand' event promotes religious harmony, racial reconciliation
13. Rev. Sun Myung Moon draws crowd to Minneapolis church
14. Local pastors welcome Moon

=== International Churches of Christ
15. Controversial religious group returns to Cal State-Long Beach

» Part 3

=== Islam
16. Taleban's Act Flies in Face of Islam's Tenets
17. Taliban Praises Statues Destruction
18. Statue attacks expose rift in Taliban leadership
19. Moscow courts its million Muslims

=== Buddhism
20. Buddhists protest increasing Christian conversions in Lanka
21. Teen Karmapa Raises Controversy

» Part 4

=== Mormonism
22. Church formally requests use of full name
23. Text of First Presidency letter of 23 February 2001
24. Technology boon for LDS, apostle says
25. Separation of church and career in Salt Lake City

=== Hate Groups
26. Compound to be center of tolerance
27. New Future for Idaho Aryan Nations Compound
28. Aryans want to carry loaded guns in parade
29. Klan Can Join Highway Clean-Up, Court Says
30. Holocaust deniers spread their lies in Middle East

» Part 5

=== Other News
31. 'Rebirthing' bill clears committee
32. French radio says sect members may have been killed by outsiders (Solar Temple)
33. China Sentences Cult Leader to 12 Years in Prison for Raping Women
34. Cult of the chairman (Mao)
35. Checks tightened on sex traffic of voodoo girls
36. Ted Turner apologizes for ``Jesus freaks'' comment
37. White House Defends Religion Program
38. 'God's Top Gun' Has Big Plans

=== Noted
39. The gospel according to Luke (Skywalker)
40. From sin to spirituality? Internet's evolution explored


=== Other News

31. 'Rebirthing' bill clears committee
The Denver Post, Mar. 9, 2001
http://www.denverpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Mar. 9, 2001 - Without a dissenting vote, a measure designed to stop the kind of ''rebirthing'' therapy that led to the death last year of a 10-year-old North Carolina girl cleared a Senate committee Thursday.
(...)

The bill's Senate sponsor, Sen. Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, described in chilling detail how Candace had been told to lie in a fetal position and was covered with blankets while four adults pushed on her in an exercise supposed to simulate an infant's emergence from the womb.
(...)

His bill specifically prohibits ''the therapeutic technique known as rebirthing,'' making it illegal to use physical restraint or create the potential for suffocation. The first offense would be punishable by up to a $750 fine and six months in jail. Subsequent offenses could be punished by up to two years in jail and a $100,000 fine.

Candace's case ''went far beyond that,'' Hillman noted. Two of her therapists are scheduled to be tried next month on charges of reckless child abuse resulting in death.

Several mental health professionals testified that they'd like to see the bill expanded to include a broader ban on the use of restraint in any therapy.

The bill's title, however, limits it to rebirthing only. Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, the bill's prime House sponsor, said she's working on more inclusive legislation, but it may have to wait until next year.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


32. French radio says sect members may have been killed by outsiders
BBC Monitoring, Mar. 7, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
New evidence on Wednesday shows that seven followers of a religious sect, whose burnt bodies were found in a forest clearing in France, may have been murdered by people from outside the group, France Inter radio reported.

French police found the bodies of the members of the Temple of the Sun sect in a clearing in the Vercors mountains in southeast France in December 1995.

After a four-year investigation, Judge Luc Fontaine concluded that two of the seven people had killed the others before committing suicide.

But tests carried out at the request of the victims' families have shown the presence at the scene of a large quantity of the flammable substance phosphorous, which couldn't have been handled by the members of the sect themselves, the radio added.
[...entire item...]


33. China Sentences Cult Leader to 12 Years in Prison for Raping Women
AFP, Mar. 6, 2001
http://www.insidechina.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BEIJING, Mar 6, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) A court in northern China has sentenced a religious cult leader who claimed special healing powers to 12 years in prison for raping his female followers, local reports said Tuesday.

Li Shuhua was recently convicted of raping women during his ''healing'' sessions by a court in Chaoyang county of Liaoning province, according to Health News.

Li set set up a cult called ''White Sun Religion,'' and convinced his female adherents that if they had sex with him, they would be healed of their ailments.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


34. Cult of the chairman
The Guardian (England), Mar. 7, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A miracle happened in Shaoshan, birthplace of Mao Zedong, on December 20, 1993. President Jiang Zemin had come with an entourage of party grandees to unveil a 6 metre-high bronze statue of the late Chairman Mao, looking, as the guidebook has it, ''firm and steady, and glowing with health''. Anyone who sees it, the book continues, ''can feel the magnetic power of a great leader, a victorious leader''.

December in Hunan province is a cold, dark month, with constant rain or sleet. The freezing winds won't let up until the spring. But on that miraculous occasion, just as President Jiang was pulling the sheet off Mao's shining face, the sun came blazing through the clouds and, even stranger, the moon shone brightly.
(...)

Mao Zedong has clearly entered the pantheon of Chinese folk deities, along with the Yellow Emperor and other legendary sages and heroes in Chinese history. And Shaoshan, visited by millions over the years, is the Lourdes of his cult.

This is not so strange. Humans have been worshipped as gods for thousands of years in China, and the point of Mao, in the eyes of the believers, is no longer whether he was good or bad; such categories do not apply to godmen. The point, as a taxi driver in Hunan pointed out to me when I asked him about the Mao charm dangling from his rearview mirror, is that Mao was Great, or weida . Greatness, in the sense of projecting great personal power, is much admired among the Chinese peoples; think of the continuing popularity of Mein Kampf in Taiwan.

A godman in China or Japan can still have entirely human characteristics - more so, perhaps, than Jesus Christ, whose status with some Chinese is somewhat similar to Mao's. In Changsha, the capital of Hunan, where Mao went to school and founded the regional communist party, I visited the provincial museum, where there is a lavish display of Mao's underwear. That is the interesting thing about godmen: they are both divine and very human.

Divine beings in every society promise salvation and good fortune, and where there are miracles, there is business to be done. This, too, is universal. Mao's divine status has brought a great deal of business to Shaoshan.
(...)

One of the tasks of great Chinese leaders is to carry on Chinese civilisation, and the core of that civilisation is the word, which finds its highest expression in calligraphy. No matter how much tradition Mao and his followers smashed - and they smashed a great deal - he kept the word. And so did his successors. Not only is Mao's own rather wild calligraphy everywhere to be seen in Shaoshan - on paper, on rocks, on walls, on silk - but also that of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. Shaoshan, the birthplace of the greatest wrecker of Chinese tradition, has become, in many ways, a repository of it.

There is, none the less, something curious about the cult of Mao, which began in the 80s, roughly 10 years after the Great Helmsman's death. First of all, folk cults are usually suppressed by a nominally communist government which officially, in good Marxist fashion, dismisses all religion as superstition. Governement approved, so-called patriotic churches, subservient to the party, are tolerated, but spontaneous cults are viewed with deep suspicion. Secondly, memories of the famines and mass murders associated with the Mao years have not faded away, even though younger generations often know little or nothing about them.

However, the bad memories - the bloody purges, the violent anarchy of the Cultural Revolution - are officially classified as ''mistakes'', committed when Mao was old and no longer in control of his evil courtiers. His alleged greatness - the reason for his divinity and the thing admired by the Hunanese taxi driver - is something very traditional. Mao is supposed to have created order in the Chinese empire by kicking out the barbarians, punishing evil-doers, and restoring virtue. His great achievement in the eyes of his admirers is moral, more than political. Or rather, politics and morality come to the same thing. As the Confucian phrase goes: ''Only the virtuous can rule all under Heaven.'' Mao's revolution, so it is believed, brought back harmony and virtue were there had been chaos and corruption. And, like all peasant messiahs, Mao promised a society in which all men would be equal.

The deification of Mao happened just as Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms once again made chaos, inequality and corruption visible in China.
(...)

Maoism was, in fact, a lethal mixture of Stalinism and Chinese authoritarianism. Like Chinese autocrats before him, he believed that obedience had to be enforced and that social harmony is a matter of imposing ''correct thinking'', not of finding peaceful solutions to inevitable conflicts of interests. The moral dogma to be imposed can be Confucianism or Marxism, or Maoism, or Communism with Chinese Characteristics. Whatever the dogma, opposition to it is not just wrong, it is immoral. When class enemies are wiped out, there will be no more conflicts. And those who still claim personal interests are evil, and have to be wiped out too.
(...)

So whenever conflicts come to the boil - students or Falun Gong supporters demonstrating in Beijing, farmers rioting in the countryside, academics writing critical articles on the internet, or workers protesting against factory closures - the government falls back on that old Maoist mixture of dogma and tradition. People are told to cultivate correct thinking, to redouble their studies of Marxism-Leninism, to strengthen China, and to struggle against foreign imperialists and class enemies.

Perversely, the same intellectuals and businessmen who support China's economic reforms are often as fearful of political reforms as the party leaders. They may hate communist propaganda, but they tend to associate multi-party politics with disorder, selfishness, and mob rule. And so, in the name of economic development and stability, they endorse authoritarian measures to control protesters.

What they often fail to see is that cults are a direct result of blocked politics. Just as autocratic Chinese governments have always justified their monopoly of power by claiming superior virtue, peasant rebellions and religious protests have done the same thing. They were the virtuous rebels who rose in the name of all kinds of folk gurus and deities, including Mao Zedong, to fight corrupt officials and evil rulers, and restore morality. This is why the government is now so spooked by Falun Gong and the many ''underground'' Christian cults: they offer alternative dogmas which undermine the rulers' already shaky claims to superior virtue.

There is no evidence that any of the cults in China are about to explode in violent rebellion. Most believers, like the pilgrims in Shaoshan, hope for good health, good fortune, or just a good time. But there is much resentment over betrayed loyalties and dashed illusions. Like the neo-Maoists, many Falun Gong believers were once fervent communists who believed that a new moral Chinese utopia was at hand. The spectacle of party hacks and gangsters helping themselves to riches, while others languish in the margins, has bred a great deal of anger.

There are democratic institutions to contain such anger. But without the freedom to build such institutions, the Chinese are reduced once again to waiting for the next Mao, or violent messiah.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


35. Checks tightened on sex traffic of voodoo girls
The Daily Telegraph (England), Mar. 9, 2001
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Girls are being brought to Britain from Africa as ''asylum seekers'' and then taken from social services by gangs who smuggle them to Europe to work as prostitutes.

The girls - some as young as 12 - think they have been hired for domestic work, but they end up in brothels. Threats of ''voodoo'' revenge, playing on the girls' African religious beliefs, are then used to control them.
(...)

Det Sgt Andy Cummings, of Sussex Police, said: ''They control these females with voodoo. It sounds bizarre but there was a lot of control. That's why the girls just disappeared. Before they left Africa a couple of girls said they had had part of their hair cut, their pubic hair taken, and their under-garments and their nails, and they had been involved in some sort of sacrifice of animals. That would be the control they believed in.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


36. Ted Turner apologizes for ``Jesus freaks'' comment
Reuters, Mar. 9, 2001
http://finance.individual.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Outspoken U.S. media mogul Ted Turner apologized Friday for calling Catholic employees ''Jesus freaks'' for wearing ashes to mark Ash Wednesday.

The comment last week from Turner, dubbed ``The Mouth of the South'' for his free-wheeling comments over the years, had outraged Christian groups.

``I apologize to all Christians for my comment about Catholics wearing ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday,'' Turner, the founder of the Cable News Network and vice chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc., said in a statement.

``I do not believe in any form of prejudice or discrimination, especially religious intolerance.''

Turner, 62, made his comment on Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent, before about 300 people Feb. 28 at CNN's offices in Washington.

Noticing several staffers had ashes on their foreheads to mark the religious holiday, Turner reportedly stared at them and said, ``I realized you're just Jesus freaks. Shouldn't you guys be working for (rival network) Fox?''

The gaffe was reported by Fox News, a unit of News Corp. Ltd., Tuesday. Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter, celebrated by Christians to mark Jesus Christ's resurrection.

The comment from Turner, who once said Christianity was ''for losers,'' had drawn fire from Christian groups.
(...)

Turner is noted for his shoot-from-the-lip comments over the years. Among them, he said the 1997 mass suicide in which 30 members of the Heaven's Gate cult killed themselves was ``a good way to get rid of a few nuts.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


37. White House Defends Religion Program
AP, Mar. 7, 2001
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House's point man on involving religious groups in government programs issued a spirited defense of the program Wednesday, taking on critics who have raised a host of objections to the idea.

''Compassionate conservatism warmly welcomes godly people back into the public square while respecting and upholding - without fail - benevolent constitutional traditions,'' John DiIulio, head of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said in remarks prepared for the National Association of Evangelicals in Dallas. A copy of the speech was made available in Washington.
In his most extensive public rebuttal to date, DiIulio defended the rights of religious groups, even if they receive government money, to make hiring decisions based on religion.

He said people who don't want government money to go to religious groups outside the mainstream, such as the Nation of Islam, must realize they are not entitled to that kind of veto power. And organizations who fear government money will corrupt their religious core, he said, ''ought to simply opt out'' of the program.
(...)

DiIulio, responding to similar worries, said government will use performance standards to determine which religious groups get money, just as it does for secular groups.

''The Constitution gives taxpayers no right to insist that government decisions, including procurement decisions, will not offend their moral judgments,'' he said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


38. 'God's Top Gun' Has Big Plans
Washington Post, Mar. 5, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22338-2001Mar4.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Robert ''Dr. Shine'' Freeman says he receives visions from God. The images are sharp, he says, like those appearing on the big-screen video monitors that he and about 400 members of his church watch during a break in his Sunday sermon.

He lets the video paint a moving picture of his vision. On screen, a digitally enhanced Freeman flies through a cirrus-stippled sky, over a textual graphic that brands him ''God's Top Gun of Deliverance.''

The video goes on to suggest that his Save the Seed Ministries Inc. -- a combination drug, alcohol and ''illicit lifestyles'' treatment center, nondenominational church and multimedia production studio in Charles County -- will grow into an evangelical empire spanning the globe.

Freeman says he can see his adrenalized sermons bouncing off satellites and into the homes of billions. He can see Save the Seed branches popping up in all 50 states and many foreign countries. He can see crowds treating addictions not by entering 12-step programs, but by targeting the sin he believes lies at addiction's root.
(...)

He's in a zoning battle to expand his ministry in Charles County, and he plans to open branches in Baltimore and Georgia within the next few years. He's also interested in taking part in the Bush administration's program exploring faith-based solutions to social problems -- a program that could open federal funding to organizations like Save the Seed.
(...)

It might sound far-fetched to a nonbeliever, he knows, but so might his past. In 1987, Freeman was a convicted thief with a cocaine habit, unable to keep a job at a Safeway store in Prince George's County. A year later, he kicked cocaine, got hooked on God via Jimmy Swaggart and started treating drug addicts through Bible study in his home. By 1990, his split-level home in Fort Washington housed 54 people.

A decade later, Freeman's nonprofit ministry is based on a sprawling 20-acre compound in Waldorf. The property includes dormitories for the ministry's nearly 300 full-time residents, a cafeteria, tennis courts, a swimming pool, lots of office space and the church. Rent exceeds $50,000 a month.
(...)

The congregation watches the video jump to a new scene: Freeman and his wife, Dee Dee, are shown standing in front of Kenneth Copeland, the Texas-based religious broadcaster whom Freeman considers a mentor and a prophet. The tape, made in November, shows Copeland telling the couple that their ministry is about to enter a new phase, something he calls Stage Two.

''You're stepping tonight through a door of ministry that until now looked like just some kind of dream,'' Copeland says. His voice gathers momentum before he lays his hands on them: ''I separate you now, into the office of the prophet. . . . You will walk in it as a seer, a knower. That ministry will develop from this night forward!''
(...)

About 50 men gathered in one of the ministry's rooms on a recent weekday for a session with Jody Chittams, who runs the men's program. Many of the participants were from the District, but others came from as far away as North Carolina, New York and Kentucky -- all areas where Freeman's message has traveled through word of mouth or satellite feed.
(...)

''Everything works by words,'' said Freeman, 44. ''When you understand that, you understand that the words you give these people -- God's words -- can change them.''

Save the Seed does not keep a tally of successes or failures; that's not the job of the church, Freeman says. But several current enrollees in the program say that so far it has succeeded in restoring hope.
(...)

The Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy Jr., pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Northwest Washington and a former D.C. delegate to Congress, said he has followed the progress of Save the Seed since its inception and is convinced that it effectively treats numerous social ills.
(...)

Fauntroy said Save the Seed could be a model program for the Bush administration's faith-based efforts -- if the ministry avoids proselytizing.

Freeman said that his organization will seek funding under the Bush initiative. Any federal money would be used for the ministry's outreach and job-training activities -- not what he calls its ''deliverance programs.'' But he said he would be reluctant to participate in a federal program if it compromised his control.

''Either they [the federal government] meet my criteria or we won't do it,'' he said.

The ministry takes in about $3 million a year, Freeman said, and that number is growing with the expanding range of television. As ushers in black tuxedos and white cotton gloves passed around collection baskets during a recent church service, Freeman told his congregation that the word of God is like a copyrighted product: Those who don't pay to use it are bootlegging the word of God, he said.

''Federal funding would just be icing on the cake,'' Freeman said. ''But we've already got the cake.''
(...)

Within the next three months, Freeman plans to start construction on a 5,000-seat church that he will call ''The Deliverance Dome.''

''All of the top Christian speakers and all the top entertainers will come here,'' he said. ''And we'll broadcast them live. You won't be able to come into Waldorf without seeing that dome.''
(...)

The mere thought has prompted scores of Hughesville residents to knock on doors and pass out petitions against the plans.

In mid-February, about 200 residents attended a hearing of the Charles County Board of Zoning Appeals concerning the ministry's proposal. Another meeting is scheduled March 13.
(...)

Hor has provided the Board of Zoning Appeals with a 1990 letter written to the Prince George's County Council by Arnetta Ramsey, whose daughter was a resident at Save the Seed when it was located in Freeman's Fort Washington home. According to Ramsey, Freeman physically abused residents and staff, occasionally forced residents to be nude in front of other residents and performed ''exorcisms.''

Freeman denies the physical abuse allegations. The only time he ever forced anyone to be nude, he says, was during strip searches to ensure that people weren't smuggling drugs when they checked in. He says he occasionally lays hands on people to rid them of demons, but he objects to terming it exorcism.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

Mr. Freeman's social programs appear to be based on word-faith theology - an increasingly heretical system of teachings leading people into unbiblical beliefs and practices. This includes the idea that words and formulas have power, that you have to pay to receive God's blessings, and that God wants everyone to be healthy and wealthy.

=== Noted

39. The gospel according to Luke (Skywalker)
BBC, Mar. 6, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
You may be a fan of the Star Wars films, but are you a follower? Moves are afoot to have the fictitious Jedi philosophy the movies espouse recognised as a proper religion.

If 8,000 New Zealanders have heeded an e-mail asking them to declare Jedi as their faith on this week's census forms, then Star Wars will have spawned an officially recognised religion.

Kiwis who went along with the jape may have to explain themselves to the authorities since it is an offence to enter false information in the census.

But then surely no one can seriously adhere to the ''ancient'' Jedi creed so keenly observed by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in the blockbuster series of films.

Wouldn't you have to be a crackpot to put any faith in ''The Force'' as explained by Yoda - a wrinkled puppet whose voice was supplied by Frank Oz, the vocal talent also behind Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear?

Perhaps not. Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola suggested George Lucas should turn the Jedi philosophy he invented for Star Wars into a fully-fledged religious movement to mobilise the global wave of interest the films had sparked.

''I remember [Francis] saying: 'With religion, you really have power.' I told him: 'Forget it. I don't have any interest in power,''' the multi-millionaire Lucas has said.

Some moviegoers still regret the director's lack of ecclesiastical ambition.
''If George Lucas turned this into a religion, it would blow L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics [a central part of the sci-fi writer's controversial belief, Scientology] out of the window,'' Star Wars fan Won Park told the New York Times (while dressed as Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn).

Other fans of The Force have taken it upon themselves to distil it into a religious cannon, taking the film scripts as their scripture.

The Jedi Creed is a website operated by fans revelling in such assumed names as Jedi Relan Volkum and Lord Scorn. It addresses such theological questions as ''Should Jedi work for government?'' and ''Vomiting: Disgusting, or Lesson on Life?''

The central tenet of the creed is that The Force is ''an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together'', as Sir Alec Guinness opined in Star Wars (1977).

The Jedi Creed site suggests by using The Force (and doing some sit-ups), followers can reach their full potential. ''Remember,'' it says, ''our human brain only uses about 15 to 20% of its capability.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


40. From sin to spirituality? Internet's evolution explored
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mar. 3, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In the beginning, there was sex. Pornography, actually.

Then there was God.

At least that's the genesis story of the Internet, according to Quentin Schultze, a leading observer of the impact of communications technology on religion.

And not only are those two subjects still among the most powerful draws on the World Wide Web, he says. Mainline churches are not doing well at either combating the forces of darkness or taking advantage of the potential for light in cyberspace.
(...)

''There are two kinds of content online that really attracted many people,'' said Schultze, author of 11 books, a nationally interviewed scholar, and professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. ''One is pornography. Just as with the videocassette recorder, the pornography business has been the single biggest boon to the rise of cyberspace.''

By driving large numbers of males to the Internet, pornography was a major force in achieving the economy of scale that lowered Internet access costs for everyone else, Schultze said.

''Another is the human spiritual quest, the search for God,'' he said. ''It seems to me that those two human quests always shape the development of a new mass medium. I'm going to talk about what's behind these two quests, specifically the human need for identity and intimacy.''

Martin E. Marty, a prominent Chicago-based theologian and expert on American religion, thinks Schultze may be on to something.

''Everything reverberates positively in me,'' Marty said when a reporter summarized Schultze's main points. ''I have a hunch he's right, (but) it's hard to get empirical data.''

Mark Edwards -- president-emeritus of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, an observer of Internet trends and an occasional columnist for Christian Century magazine -- does not agree with all of Schultze's writings. But Edwards found some common ground.
(...)

People will bare their souls and more on the Internet, often anonymously, but Schultze terms these efforts ''pretend intimacy'' and ''promiscuous spirituality.''

There is contact with people whom they don't know, with whom they have no real relationship, and to whom they have no responsibility or obligation, said Schultze, who is working on a book on the ethics of Internet culture and communication.

When people seek religion on the Web, he added, they often don't know whom they are dealing with. Cults and small evangelical groups are much more adept and aggressive at recruiting on the Internet than are more traditional churches, he said.

Conversion to mainline faiths such as Catholicism or Judaism is a long process, Marty said. With virtual reality evangelism, people can sign up in one minute.

Mainline churches, slow to use the Internet, still mainly offer ''Yellow Page information'' rather than market themselves, Schultze said. They also have not adequately addressed the online pornography threat, partly because preachers are reluctant to talk about sex from the pulpit, he said.

When people pick and choose their faith online, they can become ''truly lost in the digital cosmos,'' Schultze said. That's because the information is not all grounded in a real community where religious tradition, scholarship, and personal contact with a minister, priest, rabbi or other religious leader provide a crucible for testing and purifying truth.

''Somebody takes bits and pieces of religious information from various Web sites and kind of cobbles that together into a personal belief,'' Schultze said. ''A tremendous amount of that is happening.

''The spiritual quest online is just as profound a part of cyberspace as pornography. And I've tried to understand why that is, and I've talked to a lot of people who are often called online seekers of religion.

''It seems that, just as when you meet somebody on an airplane and may open up to them or they just reveal intimate things about themselves and you don't know this person, there's a similar sociological factor online where people are willing to open up spiritually and test different religious ideas or practices. But the same people may not be willing to walk into an actual church or a synagogue.''
(...)

Schultze recommended that, before attempting Internet evangelism, churches focus on strengthening their religious services, education programs, and other ministries so that their current members, especially youths, won't drift away into cyberspace.

Next, they should use e-mail and Web pages to strengthen internal communication, provide information about their church and invite non- members to participate.
For more information, log on to www.gospelcom.net/ifc/ or www.internetforchristians.org.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]