God is my BFF
The Vatican's website considers a patron saint of the internet, Muslims debate divorce by text, and Jews pray by email; How does the inevitable transition to the virtual realm affect religious experience across the world? Religion Dispatches reports on the increasing use of the internet and computers in religion
Religious texts can now be searched, hyper-linked, downloaded, spliced, copied, truncated, e-mailed, text-messaged, recited with video accompaniment, chanted on iPod, and piped from watches into earplugs—they are available in as many digital forms as there are devices to access them.Hopeful worshippers are even constructing their own online religious “texts” in the form of digitized prayers, video accompaniment to existing religious texts, and the recording and sharing of recitation of prayers and liturgy. But as religious texts go digital, they acquire new qualities. What are the new forms that sacred texts are taking? And what are the implications of these transformations?
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