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.