Online Religion II: Net Wits Set Free

All Quentin Schultze did was run the "Top 15 Biblical Ways to Acquire A Wife" in his online "Internet For Christians" newsletter.

No. 1 was: "Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails and give her new clothes. Then she's yours (Deuteronomy 21: 11-13)." No. 2: "Find a prostitute and marry her (Hosea 1: 1-3)." And so forth.

The problem was that the Calvin College professor's decision to run the list in three installments caused a cyber riot. Legions of readers fired back digital demands for items six through 15.

At that point in March, the "Internet For Christians" site on the World Wide Web already was being used 5,000 times a day, while thousands read copies and copies of copies via e-mail. Before the "Ways to Acquire A Wife" rush was over, the incoming messages "fried" the software that controlled the newsletter.

"That was like the last domino," said Schultze, who recently revamped his newsletter to handle the load. "That told us we had created a real community, of some kind. ... It also told us that humor was a key to establishing that sense of community."

Modern humor takes many forms – from the crass broadsides of network TV to gentle winks that cue friends' inside jokes. However, it's more common to hear people joke about faith at the dinner table than on the Tonight Show. While religion may be a funny, researchers have found that relatively few entertainers dare to prod sacred cows in the secular marketplace. It's safer to ignore religion altogether. Meanwhile, religious media tend to avoid humor that makes people squirm.

However, it appears that the Internet – offering both global networks and personal niches – may actually encourage funny faith.

"Everybody knows that the great masses out there have a whole different approach to life," said Rob Suggs, whose "Brother Biddle" cartoons appear on Christianity Online and in many magazines. "Normal people think a whole lot of things are funny or interesting that cautious editors don't think are funny or interesting."

Net wits can joke around all they want without the blessings of secular producers or skittish preachers. The Web features everything from gentle jokes about church life to biting theological satires. The former will appeal to anyone who frequents a pew or reads Bible stories to toddlers. The later – much of it anonymously written – may appeal only to those who, perhaps, grew up in Dutch Reformed Calvinist pews or face Unitarian toddlers.

Much of the religious humor in cyberspace mirrors mainstream fads. Lists are everywhere, such as the "Top 10" ways for pastors to know if their sermons are boring. (No. 4: When you dream you are preaching and wake up to discover that you are.) Another site notes that "you might go to a fundamentalist church if" women's bee-hive perms keep getting caught in the ceiling fans.

Some of best Net humor blurs the line between computers and faith. One famous example was a bogus Associated Press story saying that Microsoft's Bill Gates had bought the Catholic Church. A later story said IBM retaliated by purchasing the Episcopal Church. Many reports claim to prove that Gates is the Antichrist.

Also, with its interactive blend of text and graphics, the Web is a natural home for cartoonists.

Dennis Hengeveld's "Reverend Fun" site on the Gospel Communications Network combines modern and biblical images, such as a cartoon showing Satan glaring at a beeping smoke detector on the ceiling of hell. Suggs has allowed his readers to offer punch lines and characters to expand on the themes previously explored in books such as "Preacher From The Black Lagoon."

"I think we're about to see a whole new approach to humor and, maybe, media in general," said Suggs. "Things are starting to bubble up from people out there on the Net, instead of just coming from the people who are used to calling the shots. We're all going to have to listen and learn."

Cyberspace Religion: Part I

Quentin Schultze felt relieved and sad as he transmitted what he thought would be his last Internet For Christians newsletter. The communications guru at Calvin College unplugged his cyber- publication after only 18 biweekly issues. It was just too successful. Day after day, 250 or more messages invaded his computers in Grand Rapids, Mich. Night after night, he ate dinner with his family and then vanished to battle e-mail until the clock neared midnight.

"With the click of a mouse, people could write me, ask questions, send in ideas and on and on, world without end," he said. "The main thing I learned is that success on the Net is a good news, bad news situation. ... Sooner or later, this medium forces you to either limit all those interactive responses or direct them somewhere else. Otherwise, you drown."

So Schultze told his sponsors at the Gospel Communications Network that he was waving a white flag.

"It was a real catharsis to sit at my computer and hit `delete,' `delete,' `delete' on hundreds of messages," he said. "But at the same time, it felt like I had lost a friend or thousands of friends around the world."

Soon, Gospel Communications Network executives said they would provide staff help to run the newsletter. Within hours of a May 31 announcement, 90 messages arrived containing items submitted for the first new issue. This time around, Schultze removed his e-mail address and aimed the digital river at a neutral site – ifc- submit@gospelcom.net.

Right now, statistics charting the growth of the Internet, and the graphics-intensive World Wide Web, are changing so rapidly that no one knows what is going on. In the religious marketplace, early projects such as Ecunet, organized by oldline Protestant churches, and the Southern Baptist Convention's work with CompuServe have led to a dizzying number of digital resources – sponsored by everyone from individual scholars to seminaries, from local churches to giant corporations. In April alone, 4.7 million individuals used the Gospel Communications Network's Web sites and 730,000 visited Christianity Online on America Online.

When Schultze started Internet For Christians, he assumed his core audience would be 100 or so loyal readers – mostly academics, denominational leaders and parachurch "decision makers." He didn't think, for example, that many pastors and church leaders were leaping online. Apparently, he was wrong.

However, no one really knows how to count the people who are using the Web, let alone to do business with them. At its peak, the Internet For Christians "home page" was welcoming 10,000 visitors a day and the computerized list of those sent electronic copies contained 5,000 names. But most of Schultze's e-mail came from readers who appeared to have read the cyber-world's equivalent of a carbon copy. Subscribers can – again, merely by clicking a mouse – spray digital copies of texts to online friends, who may turn around and do the same thing. All of this costs far less than letters, faxes or long-distance telephone calls.

"We need a new term for this," he said. "`Word of mouth' doesn't fit. Maybe `Web of mouth' or `word of Net'?"

Another key is that the Web has created a somewhat level playing floor on which small ministries and publications can compete – or cooperate – with large groups. Online, one or more creative people with time and creativity can have approximately the same impact as a well-established organization. A dissident group's online publication may have the same impact as a denomination's official newspaper.

The new medium also makes financial sense, in a world of rising costs for ink, paper and postage. Schultze said his research indicates that the ratio of costs in traditional publishing, in comparison to "digital publishing," may be as high as 1000 to 1.

"Clearly, the Net is becoming a place for religious discourse that is being ignored in public media and isn't being allowed in the sanitized world of official church publications."

Can Reform Jews Keep the Faith?

Time after time, Reform Judaism's new leader made one point: It's obvious that millions of modern Jews are hungry for faith.

"They are tired of the cult of novelty and the caprices of modern fashion," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, during the June 8 rites in which he was installed as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "They are tired of a world in which the heroes for their children are Bart Simpson and Madonna. They are overwhelmed by an avalanche of images and specialized information so dizzying that it stuns the brain. And they can't help but feel that whenever they find a moment to themselves, someone turns up the speed on the treadmill of their lives."

Where, he asked, will these sophisticated, cynical and skeptical people take their dilemmas, their "yearning for the sacred" and their children?

To answer that question, leaders of North America's 850 Reform congregations must face other issues. For starters, they must teach that "fervent prayer in a Reform synagogue should not been seen as eccentric or embarrassing," he said. Educators must insist that Jewish education can have both scholastic and spiritual content. Reform Jews must talk openly about Judaism in terms of religious faith, as opposed to merely secular culture.

Why? There are 3.5 million unaffiliated Jews in North America. While liberal leaders say they want to reach outsiders and assist in their spiritual journeys, that may not be how matters look to others, said Yoffie, the movement's first president who was raised as a Reform Jew.

"Which religious movement takes the greatest interest in the spiritual life of the unaffiliated? Who finds them on campus, or in out-of-the-way places? Who instructs them in the lighting of Shabbat candles and in all manner of Jewish rituals? Who reaches out to them with classes and audiotapes and satellite TV?"

While some Reform groups are getting the job done, more are not, he said. What the rabbi left unsaid is that Orthodox Jews and traditionalists have excelled where liberals have not – reaching the mission field of secular Judaism.

Reform leaders should not be surprised, because liberalism stunted the faith of many, according to conservative David Klinghoffer. In a National Review article that included an ironic dissection of his bar mitzvah in a Reform synagogue, he accused reformers of swapping politics for faith, abandoning Jewish morality and, in general, peddling a kind of Judaism Lite.

The key, he said, is Reform's ideology, a "theoretical contraption asserting the existence of God while denying that the Jews or any other people possess a document containing clearly revealed instructions from Him." The result is "kitsch religion," he said, a Judaism that is "influenced less by the traditions of the Oral Torah than by the editorial page of the New York Times."

Klinghoffer said an angry Reform rabbi, writing in New York's Jewish Times, summed it all up: "We have become a vacuous, no- demand, no-standards, no-requirements, no-guilt, do-good enterprise of sloppy sentimentality: a liberal Protestant Christianity without Jesus."

As the former leader of Reform Judaism's Commission on Social Action, Yoffie was quick to defend the movement's work on behalf of liberal political and moral causes. He also said Jewish pluralism must recognize that there are "many kinds of authentic Jews – less traditional and more traditional, activist and contemplative, believing and unbelieving."

But this doesn't mean that the way to reach unaffiliated Jews is by "erasing boundaries and eliminating distinctions," he said. There must be some differences between those who claim Jewish faith and secularists who do not.

"The warning I was trying to give is this: Some people have said that Jewish community life is enough, that Jewish culture is enough. It isn't," he said, days after his installation service. "If you extract the Jewish element – if you extract the element of religious faith – from Jewish life, then there isn't enough there to sustain a sense of Jewish identity that will live in future generations. ... We must believe that and teach that."

Sin, Repentance, and Kansas

Every year, the Central Christian Church in Wichita, Kan., has "Repentance Sunday" and seeks God's forgiveness.

During a period of meditation, worshippers are asked to write their sins on pieces of paper. Then everyone goes to the front of sanctuary, where the notes are burned in urns.

"It's always a very moving service," said the Rev. Joe Wright, who leads the 3,000-member congregation. "Tossing your sins into the flames is something that really touches you."

This year, "Repentance Sunday" began a chain reaction that touched America. Wright was still thinking about the service the next day when a church member who is a Kansas legislator asked him to pray at the capitol, since the pastor was going to Topeka for hearings on gambling. By the way, he was told, please bring a copy of your prayer for the records.

So Wright wrote a few lines and, as the legislature opened on Tuesday, Jan. 23, he bowed his head, read the prayer and then handed it over. He doesn't remember receiving any strange looks at the time, but a newspaper reporter did ask some questions hours later. As Wright drove home, his car phone rang and the church secretary bluntly asked: "What have you done?"

The easy answer is that he read a prayer about sin. The complicated answer is that Wright jumped into America's tense debate about whether some things are always right and some things are always wrong.

His prayer said, in part: "Heavenly Father ... we confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your word and called it moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self- preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare."

Wright's staff stopped counting telephone calls after the first 6,500 and he still gets dozens each day. He has heard from all 50 states and many foreign countries. He has been on dozens of radio shows and the subject of numerous TV and print news reports. The prayer has been read in other legislatures, causing everything from quiet applause to loud jeers.

"I thought I might get a call from an angry congressman or two," he said. "But I was talking to God, not them. The whole point was to say that we all have sins that we need to repent – all of us. ... The problem, I guess, is that you're not supposed to get too specific when you're talking about sin."

Wright said he didn't try to aim to the left or right or consciously try to fire both ways. A major theme in his preaching, he said, is that "people who think either political party is going to solve this country's real problems are dreaming. ... Politicians aren't big on absolute truths, these days." If he had an agenda, it was to pray about the sins he sees daily in ministries linked to the inner city, suburban families, crisis pregnancies, sexual confusion and other hot issues.

That's what he was thinking about as he wrote: "We have killed our unborn and called it choice," "shot abortionists and called it justifiable," "neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem," "abused power and called it political savvy" and "coveted our neighbors' possessions and called it ambition."

Whether he intended to or not, Wright has become a symbolic figure in an election year that will almost certainly focus on issues of morality and character. He also lives in Kansas.

"No, I haven't heard from ... anybody close to Bob Dole," he said. "If they asked me to pray at the Republican convention, I guess I'd say `yes.' I'd be glad to pray at the Democratic convention, but I'd be rather surprised if they asked me to. ... Truth is, I'll pray anywhere I'm asked to pray, so long as people don't try to tell me what I can pray."