The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
In a true twist of irony, one of the only areas of the Internet besides pornography to be rapidly expanding has to do with religion. Just about all religious groups have now realized the power of the Internet, and the world-wide audience which can be reached online. With most people who use the Internet being relatively young as compared to the rest of the population of North America, churches are making an attempt to reach out to this age group in ways that are familiar to them. Message boards focusing on religion and religious questions, websites, daily readings by email, online prayer groups, and now actual virtual parishes are beginning to play a role in our religious experience. Beginning on May 11th of this year, the Methodist Church in England was the first to open a virtual parish. The website, www.shipoffools.com, is a full featured parish. Once you have logged in, you find yourself in a church building online, looking like something out of a video game. You are assigned an avatar who can walk around the church, look at the stained glass windows, stand and examine the religious icons posted around the building, go downstairs for a cup of coffee and hold a discussion with others who are in the parish at the time. As well, your avatar can of course sit in the pews of the church and listen to a sermon if there is a service going on. The first service in the church was "hosted" by the Bishop of London, who preached appropriately enough on the Tower of Babel and on global understanding. This three month pilot project has had an overwhelming response, with over 41,000 parishioners passing through the virtual doors in the first 24 hours the church was open to the public. Another popular site is the official website of the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church. This site, www.vatican.va, is a massive collection of not only all things Catholic (documents, catechism, speeches by the Pope, etc.) it is also a beautifully designed site, with sections allowing people for the first time to view many of the countless works of art which the Vatican holds. There are also sections on the site listing books held in the Vatican libraries, and even the fabled Secret Archives of the Church are online. As well as the mainstream churches, others, predominantly end-time Christians who believe the Second Coming of Christ is near, have also begun to use the power of the net to get their message out to people. A site called Rapture Ready (www.raptureready.com) has gone so far as to post a "thermometer" online showing how near we are to end of the world based on a points system of world events. Even if you are not interested in the theology behind this site, it is still interesting to check in here every now and again to see what their "rating" of the week's events is. The Internet is allowing people to explore their own religion, reach out to others, and be a part of a community with others they never would have met otherwise. ([email protected])
