Scientology Online

The Church of Scientology has made more than a few headlines in the recent years, and I don't want to just rehash the infamous Tom Cruise video (which was much more sincere than creepy) and call it a day.

A relatively new religion, founded in the 1950s, based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, sci-fi author, it has captured the hearts, minds, and religious fervor of many a Hollywood celebrity. It has attained a cult-like reputation, primarily due to the fact that many of its tenets and structural systems are kept secret from the outside community, and due to its hierarchical nature, even its lower-"ranking" practitioners are not made privy to the beliefs and functions of the whole.

Based in Dianetics (don't ask, it's as complicated as the unity of the Holy Trinity is contradictory) and spreading largely through the use of "Free Stress Test" stands in malls in the 1990s, the Church of Scientology has become one of the most controversial religions in the world. With a very strong internet presence, a centralized website, they claim a membership of 8,000,000, but very little evidence is present to give a corroboration of that membership number.

There are an ever-growing number of websites designed and organized specifically to discount and rebuke the Church of Scientology. Operation Clambake, for example, presents a plethora of grievances against the organization, and more than a plethora of resources one can find to align themselves against the alleged evils of the religion. However, I suppose crazy begets crazy and we've recently seen a good deal of websites such as Lermanet.com, which seems to spout as much rhetoric as the religion's own site.

But the controversy doesn't end there. Recently, the Church of Scientology successfully petitioned Google to remove links to pages within Operation Clambake, under pretenses of copyright violation.

However, when it comes down to the brass tax (there's a subtle pun there) of it, Scientology is no different, legally from Christianity, or any other organized religion. Sure, it's secretive and reclusive, but so were early Christians. Not unlike the anti-Scientology rallies of the past few months, Christians were persecuted by the Romans for preaching peace. So, you dig a little bit into the Scientologist scripture and it's a little shaky? Take a look at the Bible. Talk about contradictions. At the end of the day, the only thing that makes Adam and Eve different from Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy is about 6,000 years.

So why do we make the distinction? Why does legacy contribute so much to choice of a religion? To take a moment to be cynical, people have been establishing off-shoot churches on a semi-regular basis since the beginning of churches. When a bunch of followers decide they don't like how things are being run up top, but still believe in (even a part of) the sacred texts or concepts, they break away. The Wesleyans broke from the Methodists, who broke from the Protestants, who broke from the Catholics, established by the early Christians, who broke from Judaism, which probably originates with the Canaanites.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what your faith does for you-- what you gain from your own spirituality, or from the community of your church or temple.

So judge the Scientologists not, lest ye be judged.

And we'll wait together to see if they're planning to take over the world (which'll probably end in 2012, anyway, so I wouldn't sweat it.)

Christianity Online

This week, I'll explore the largest religion in the world - Christianity. As of 2005, Christians make up a full third of the world's faithful, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. 80% of Americans call follow the call of Christ in one way or another, making this the most wide-spread religion in the world. It's not the oldest, and it's not the newest, but it is by far the most impactive.

Online growth by Christian communities has been staggering. Over the past decade, the number of small-to-medium sized Christian churches with their own website, designed to attract members or communicate with other churches has increased over 400%. That may seem obvious, given the growth of the internet in general, but some sources, like the Hartford Institute for Religious Research say that over half of all Christian churches have a website.

As far as Christians online go, they seem to be ahead of the internet curve. One of the largest Christian sites is that of the Christina magazine, Christianity Today. It seems to be a decent resource for Christians looking for resources to help them explore their faith, find advice for how their religion can help them live their lives, and find how to be a better Christian as a result.

For the Christian family that has everything, but really doesn't want the internet, there's Christianity Online, a Christian Internet Service Provider (ISP) which places a strong emphasis on its content filter, a service you can buy as a stand-alone as well.

At Catholic.org, readers can stay abreast on all the news and goings on within and without the Catholic church, or use their helpful online church locater, to find a church close by right away, in case of what I only imagine can be an emergency confession.

The people at GospelCom are using the internet as an ecumenical tool to bring churches together and provide a great Christian blog and link to great websites to help the individual user grow as a Christian.

Almost certainly because of the incredible spread of Christianity over the western world, there are very few centralized or highly-maintained introduction websites to Christianity, but hundreds of niche Christian sites, or snippet sites featuring quizzes asking you if you are a good person (odds are, you'll have to accept Christ as savior no matter how you score.)

Again, likely due to the demographic of Christians, Christianity is also the religion most likely to be the source of criticism by atheists online, such as at Debating Christianity. Predictably, this means that Christians are the most verbal critics of atheism online. In an example of turnabout being fair play, at Ex-Atheist.com, A.S.A. Jones discusses being a born again Christian after 20 years of atheism.

I'll be back in two weeks to talk about something a little more modern... till then, Happy Spring.