X-SciTech

Online Religion Goes Mainstream

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 22, 2001 / 6:38 PM EDT / CBS

A new study shows that some 8 percent of adults and 12 percent of teenagers in the U.S. use the Internet for religious or spiritual experiences, and the number is likely to grow rapidly in the coming years.

Virtually every dimension of the faith community will be influenced by online faith developments through the likes of self-produced and self-marketed worship music, email, theological chats, broadcasts to congregants who are immobile and prayer groups.

The study by Barna Research, a California polling company that specializes in religious issues, was based on three surveys conducted late last year: one of 1,017 randomly selected adults, a second of 605 teenagers and a third of 604 Protestant pastors.

The polls found that while less than 1 percent of adults and 2 percent of teenagers currently use the Internet as a substitute for a physical church, more than two-thirds of respondents said they were likely to engage in some kind of cyberspace religious activity in the next 10 years.

Such figures, if they held true, could attract a potential audience of up to 100 million adults, survey director George Barna said.

And while not everyone will totally give up on their physical church, "By the end of the decade we will have in excess of 10 percent of our population who will rely on the Internet for their entire spiritual experience," he predicted.

"Some of them will be individuals who have not had a connection with a faith community, but millions of others will be people who drop out of the physical church in favor of the cyberchurch," said Barna.

The study found that, "Born-again and evangelical Christians are every bit as likely as non-Christians to use the digital superhighway. Catholics and mainline Protestants are slightly more likely to use the Internet than are Baptists and Protestants who attend non-mainline churches."

Of special importance to researchers was the finding that teenagers have a very different profile of cyberfaith interests than do their elders. Activities such as reading devotional passages online and submitting prayer requests were of much greater interest to younger people.

Hispanics and blacks have a far greater level of hope and trust relative to the cyberchurch than do white adults. Men and people under the age of 35 are more willing to give the Internet a try in regard to significant faith dimensions than are other segments of the population.

The survey also found that more than 90 percent of the pastors had computers at home or in their offices and 80 percent had access to the Internet. Most of them write their sermons on their computers and use the internet to keep in touch with colleagues. Many are starting web pages for their churches as well.