It was every daughter's nightmare. Last February, Judy Spiegal's father had a heart attack and was found to have severe heart disease. For three weeks, Spiegal, 43, a freelance marketer from Marlboro, N.J., found herself shuttling between the hospital and her home. Increasingly exhausted, she turned for solace to the usual sources: her husband, daughter, friends and rabbi.
But Spiegal also found herself seeking the support of strangers. After a friend told her about a religious Web site called Beliefnet, Spiegal, a Reform Jew, logged on and started a virtual prayer circle for her father. The first day, a dozen people of different faiths posted prayers, some anonymously."I got support from people all over the country," she said. "In between my visits to the hospital, I would log on to read the prayers."
The Internet has transformed investing and shopping, and now it is having an effect on how people practice their faith. A 1998 study by the Barna Research Group estimated that of the 100 million Americans online, 25 percent used the Internet for "religious purposes" each month, mainly to communicate with others via e-mail or chat rooms about religious "ideas, beliefs or experiences."
Religious sites abound on the Web, encompassing everything from modest home pages of local churches and synagogues to ambitious, venture-capital-backed religious portals like Beliefnet www.beliefnet.com and the forthcoming Faith.com and Spirit Channel.com, which hope to attract people from across the spiritual spectrum.
Fostering discussion
"In a way, our site is not all that different than the sex sites on the Web," said Steve Waldman, 37, a journalist who
started Beliefnet in January. "Religion is really important to people the way sex is. The anonymity of the Web leads to intimacy." That intimacy, he said, fosters discussion.
To hear boosters like Waldman tell it, Web sites like Beliefnet are simply the next step in the democratization of religion, a process that began with the printing of the Gutenberg Bible six centuries ago. But you have to wonder: Is the Internet, a medium not exactly known for rewarding long attention spans, an appropriate venue for meaningful religious exploration? Is a 56K modem consistent with the staples of real-life religious practice, like singing and praying with others?
"I don't think any religious site is going to replace religion, but the Internet is accelerating changes that are already happening" in American religious life, said Don Lattin, co-author of "Shopping for Faith: Religion in the New Millennium" (Jossey-Bass, 1998) and a longtime religion reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. "People are paying more attention to their own personal spiritual quests, and this contributes to the breakdown of institutions. People are linking up with other denominations. For example, if someone is gay, they might choose a denomination that accepted gays. It is said we are in a postdenominational era."
Tom Beaudoin, a Catholic theologian and the author of "Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X" (Jossey-Bass, 1998), said: "The Internet is an invitation for people who are skeptical. They feel released and can ask the religious questions they want to explore. I've received e-mails at 3 a.m. from people who haven't stepped inside a church in years."
As one half of an interfaith couple, Lance Fritter, 35, a computer scientist from Germantown, Md., has been active in religious discussion groups online for years. When Fritter discovered Beliefnet, he joined discussion groups about intermarriage, agnosticism and religion and science. But he avoided the prayer circles. "I guess they are good for some people," he said. "For some people, I imagine it's a real turnoff because prayer is so personal."
Working through crisis
But for some seekers, a site like Beliefnet is a place to work through a personal crisis, either by joining a prayer circle, as Judy Spiegal did, or even erecting a virtual memorial to a deceased loved one. (Not all calls for prayer are of the life-and-death variety. One woman on Beliefnet simply asked for prayers because her Realtor was being "pushy." She wrote: "I can't take it anymore. I need God's help to get me through this.")
"I had a colleague whose wife died, and he created a Web page in her honor," said Jeffrey Hadden, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and founder of a scholarly Web site about religious movements www.religiousmovements.org. "I felt squeamish about it because I wouldn't want to share my grief with the whole world. But I was wrong. It really helped him mourn her."
Some critics argue that sites like Beliefnet cast such a wide net -- there is information on roughly 50 religions -- that they are trying to be all things to all people and in the process give only cursory attention to any one faith. Faith.com, which is set to go into operation this spring, will be made up of seven portals, covering a total of 172 denominations, said Pamela Meyer, the site's founder.
Like Beliefnet, Faith.com will have a discussion area and a commerce component. It will rely mostly on user-generated content like prayers and reviews of books, movies and videos. Visitors will also have access to an audio and video library where they can download sermons and videos of, say, a well-known spiritual writer speaking on a topic like forgiveness.
Beaudoin, the theologian and author, is troubled by multifaith sites, saying they contribute to the "menuification" of religion. "They give the appearance that religious identity is about choosing what's right for you," he said. "Personal choice is important, but what about your responsibility to a particular tradition?"
The Spirit Channel aims to go beyond the multifaith concept to embrace all aspects of religion, New Age spirituality, holistic health and even the paranormal. The brainchild of Issac Tiggret, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues, Spirit Channel wants to become the "first holistic lifestyle brand," a press release says.
Tiggret wants to sell spirituality the way he sold rock memorabilia and the blues. While the site has presented Webcasts like the Gathering of World Religions last December, it is still under construction and is scheduled to be fully functioning sometime this year.
Convenience religion?
The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of convenience religion -- churches and synagogues accommodating overscheduled congregants with innovations like Wednesday night services and on-site child care. With the Internet, convenience religion is going a step further. Beliefnet posts daily, nondenominational, guided mediations, a spiritual exercise that its founder, Waldman, argues is well suited for the Internet because it can be "sandwiched between meetings."
Indeed, convenience is one of the things that Spiegal appreciates about the site. "Because of the busyness of life, sometimes you don't get to participate as much as you'd like," she said. "This way, you're able to turn on the computer and learn or pray."
Religious sites like Beliefnet are also instructive, focusing on ceremonies for rites of passage like marriages and births, and how to raise a spiritually healthy child. Beliefnet and www.ibelieve.com, a Christian site, both have entire sections devoted to child-rearing issues. Faith.com will have a Family section.
"I print out articles about marriage and parenting and give them to my family all the time," said Cindy Wenz, 31, of Houston, who logs on to Ibelieve.com daily, mostly for the articles about family life. "They teach me how to relate to my kids in a Christian way."
An Ibelieve article suggested that if parents are having a hard time getting their children to talk to them, they should give the child a toy to talk to instead so that the child feels less intimidated. "My daughter thinks it is silly, but I think the idea is cute," said Wenz, who gave her daughter a stuffed bunny to talk to. "I never would have thought of it myself."
Media Metrix, a company that tracks Internet usage, does not keep numbers on any religious sites, nor have the Internet research firms Forrester Research or Jupiter Communications done any studies on them.
Still, David Card, a Jupiter analyst, said he is "bullish on the opportunity" that sites like Beliefnet have to attract users because of increased interest in spirituality in general. But he is not sure that these sites are destined to make any money.
"Marketing on a multifaith site is a challenge because there is not necessarily affinity among users," Card said. "It would be much easier to market to people of a particular religion."
Dollars and spirits
Then there is the sticky question of religious Web sites' trying to make a profit in the first place. Beliefnet, which is backed by Highland Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm that financed eToys and Lycos, has an online store that sells everything from Deepak Chopra books to vacation packages to Israel. The store also sells products that have little to do with religious or spiritual matters, like cozy wool blankets and aromatherapy oils.
"When we were putting together the store, we were very conscious that some people might think that religion and commerce were strange bedfellows," said Tony Uphoff, the chief executive of Beliefnet. "We try to sell content-driven commerce." The company recently signed with Saatchi & Saatchi for a $20 million advertising campaign. So far there are no plans for an initial public offering.
"Religion is a topic people are passionate about," said Chip Austin, a managing partner in IHatch, a Manhattan-based venture capital firm that has provided seed money for Faith.com. "The raw size and shape of the religious market and the fact that no one has really attacked it yet made Faith.com very interesting to us." Faith.com will sell merchandise on its site and provide help for churches and synagogues that want to establish Web sites through the Faith.com network.
"I can wrinkle my nose at the fact that they sell stuff on these religious sites," said Hadden at the University of Virginia. "But whether we like it or not, commerce is the great success of the Internet."
Connecting spirits
The other great success of the Internet is that it connects people who are far apart. Some congregations are using the Internet to broaden their reach, much like preachers have traditionally used radio and television to expand their ministries.
Salem Baptist Church in Chicago www.sbcoc.org broadcasts five services each week over the Internet to accommodate congregants unable to attend in person. In February, 15 Salem members who were away at college worshiped from their dorm rooms, said the church's leader, the Rev. James Meeks. "My preference is for people to come to church," said the Rev. Meeks, who presides over a congregation of more than 10,000. "But if someone is out of town, ill, working or away at college, they can still join us. Or they can watch it later at their own convenience."
Online services have been incredibly successful at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas www.cathedralofhope.com, which has a gay and lesbian congregation of about 3,000 members. The church's pastor, the Rev. Michael Piazza, said that the Internet services allow him to reach gays and lesbians all over the world, many of whom feel uncomfortable attending services in person.
"The Internet reaches people who have no other church," the Rev. Piazza said. "If you live in a small town in east Texas and you're closeted, where are you going to get community?" About 500 people tune in each week for the church's four weekly services. But "if online religion is all you have," Beaudoin said, "then you have an impoverished sense of the religious life. Online religions can only be a supplement for flesh and blood community."
Spiegal, whose father is now happily settled in a nursing home, said that she would never use Beliefnet as an alternative to going to temple but that "it does enhance my spiritual life."