Religion on the Internet is the first systematic inquiry into the nature, scope and content of religion in cyberspace. Contributors to this volume include leading social scientists engaged in systematic studies of how organizations and individuals are presenting religion on the Internet. Their combined efforts provide a conceptual mapping of religion in cyberspace. The individual papers and collective insights found in this volume add up to a valuable agenda of research that will enrich our understanding of this new phenomenon. Among the contributors are the founders of three of the most important scholarly religion websites on the Internet: the American Religion Data Archive, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, and the Religious Movements Homepage.
Jeffrey K. Hadden is Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Douglas E. Cowan is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Religion on the Internet is Volume 8 in the Religion and the Social Order series published by JAI/Elsevier Science. The series editor is David G. Bromley.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- The Promised Land or Electronic Chaos? Toward Understanding Religion on the Internet.
- Jeffrey K. Hadden and Douglas E. Cowan
- INTERNET RESEARCH: STUDYING RELIGION ON THE WEB
- Researching Religion in Cyberspace: Issues and Strategies
- Lorne L. Dawson
- Religious Ethnography on the World Wide Web
- William Sims Bainbridge
- Doing Research and Teaching with the American Religion Data Archive: Initial Efforts to Democratize Access to Data
- Roger Finke, Jennifer McKinney, and Matt Bahr
- Religion, Rhetoric, and Scholarship: Managing Vested Interest in E-Space
- Douglas E. Cowan
- INTERNET FAITH: RELIGIONS IN CYBERSPACE
- Surfing Islam: Ayatollahs, Shayks and Hajjs on the Superhighway
- Gary R. Bunt
- How Religious Organizations Use the Internet: A Preliminary Inquiry
- Sara Horsfall
- Dispatches from the Electronic Frontier: Explorations of Mainline Protestant Use of the Internet
- Ken Bedell
- Online-Religion/Religion-Online and Virtual Communitas
- Christopher Helland
- On-line Ethnography of Dispensationalist Discourse: Revealed versus Negotiated Truth
- Robert Glenn Howard
- WEBS OF DECEIT: RELIGIOUS PROPAGANDA ON THE INTERNET
- Religious Movements and the Internet: The New Frontiers of Cult Controversies
- Jean-François Mayer
- "So Many Evil Things": Anti-Cult Terrorism via the Internet
- Massimo Introvigne
- INTERNET TEACHING: PEDAGOGY AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB
- Evolution of a Religious Web Site Devoted to Tolerance
- Bruce A. Robinson
- Mapping a "Cyberlimen": A Test Case for the Use of Electronic Discussion Boards in Religious Studies
- Joanne Maguire Robinson
- Confessions of a Recovering Technophobe: A Brief History of the Religious Movements Homepage Project
- Jeffrey K. Hadden