Friday, March 20, 2009

Religion as a SNS: Replacing the Church

In our recent readings on Chris Wyatt, the title of this blog came to my mind. Chris Wyatt is the founder and CEO of GodTube.com, the world's largest Christian-themed social networking site. The whole idea of having religious websites of this sort is really unsettling for me to say that it is morally correct. I feel that now-a-days so many people are taking religion and religious aspects of life and putting them into mainstream, secular ways of life for profit. Websites of these sort seem to take away from the intimacy and personal feel one gets while attending their respective church denominations. Though GodTube.com is primarily a Christian-themed SNS it allows for other denominations and religions to post as they feel on the site, leading to obscenity and hate messages toward other religious groups. After looking up religious SNS on google, I found that there are many of these sites. There is even a Christian Myspace. I'm a Christian myself who loves and adores my fellow Christians, but I think sites such as this myspace take away the connection you get when physically socializing and fellowshipping with members of your home church or place of worship. And another thing, majority of these SNS are Christian sites, are they trying to convert the entire world to Christianity as the "true religion?" So I raise the questions to my fellow classmates, are religious social networking sites replacing going to church and intimately fellowshipping? Should profit be made off of these sites? Do you take away the same messages from these sites as you would in a place of worship? Are they placed in a secular mainstream? Or Do you see nothing wrong with religious social networking sites?