The Pope celebrated the World Day of Communications on Friday with a statement calling social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace "a gift" that could speak to the "fundamental desire" we all have to connect, so long as people don't isolate themselves online, forget those marginalized by the Digital Divide or violate the "goodness and intimacy of human sexuality." To that we can only say, leave Britney alone!!

In one video already uploaded to YouTube, the Pope calls the internet a new way to talk to God. Perhaps he doesn't see it as a way to talk to nonbelievers on other sites, as embedding of the videos has been turned off. That seems strange given the Church's interest in finding new members, but presumably the Vatican doesn't want the Pope's videos showing up in snarky blog posts like this, or worse. It can get pretty raunchy on YouTube, and though the new Obama adminstration can forgive YouTube its sins with a change in official policy, we hardly expect the Catholic Church to do so.

The Vatican Channel contains 12 videos at launch, most of which are quite short, many under 1 minute long. That's not bad for a religion that is known for holding hour-long rituals, but it truly is a new era of communication. Five seconds is all it takes these days to turn around quickly, open your eyes wide, play some dramatic music and change the world.

Now Put Your Junk in The Box

What will the Vatican be posting on its YouTube channel? So far there's some blessing of lambs and a discussion of the Vatican's relationship with the media. We're hoping to see some gems like when the Pope said last month that homosexuality is as big a threat to humanity as global warming, but we'd be willing to settle for the Numa Numa dance, too.

Who's next? The President of the US, the Pope, who isn't on YouTube these days?

Heavy Metal Islam

The blog's focus is clearly illustrated with the most recent post at time of writing: Mark LeVine and Heavy Metal Islam: The Fight Over What Islam Means. The post explains the story of scholar and professional musician Mark LeVine, who traveled across the Middle East "playing with and studying heavy metal bands in the area after the September 11 attacks in 2001." According to Foley's post, Mark LeVine's work uses "the universal language of music to articulate the diversity of Islam in contemporary times."

The post finishes with a selection of links to various media - Flickr, podcasts, the Heavy Metal Islam homepage, LeVine's blog, links to audio. There's also mention of a radio broadcast LeVine will be doing this Thursday, on 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders' - which is a radio program by one of the organizations behind the blog, Wisconsin Public Radio.

Incidentally, if you want a 1-line explanation of what Heavy Metal Islam is, this quote at the top of the HMI homepage - attributed to one of the founders of the Moroccan heavy-metal scene, Reda Zine - sums it up: "We play heavy metal because our lives are heavy metal."

The trailer for a documentary called Heavy Metal in Baghdad, via InsideIslam

How Inside Islam Started

We asked Kaitlin Foley to tell us more about Inside Islam and how it got started. A recent graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Foley has a degree in International Studies and Political Science. She focused on Islamic studies for her degree and so the blog is kind of an extension of that. She explained:

"The project as a whole is a product of University of Wisconsin-Madison, of which me, the blogger, and the pubic radio shows are only part of... in the end, we hope to have a wealth of resources that people around the world can access about Islam and Muslim culture worldwide. This includes digital stories, blogs, YouTube videos, music, and all other types of popular content on the web."

Foley told us that the response to the blog has been "positive from the Muslim community online." She said that it "seems to be an issue people are really concerned about and want to talk about in a new way." The Internet, said Foley, "is a way to talk about political, cultural and global issues in a democratic way." The blog's goal is to "create a dialogue and raise some debates about hot issues in a meaningful way."

The blog is closely linked to the radio show 'Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders', mentioned above. The first radio show to be broadcast is on tomorrow, about Heavy Metal Islam. The second show is October 30 on the topic of Muslims and social media.

The final question we asked Kaitlin Foley was: are you a Muslim yourself? She replied that she's not, although she said a couple of her supervisors are. She explained further that "even though I'm not Muslim, I think Islam is a big concern for anyone with a T.V. or internet access and [it's] an important way people understand the world."

Islam on the Web

Inside Islam is an interesting use case for a blog - it's using a two-way medium, along with new media tools like podcasting and Flickr, to open up discussion on a religion that, in this day and age, can be easily misunderstood.

For context, we must point out that Islam is already a popular topic in the blogosphere. We noted in a post in November that trend charts showed more Web activity about Islam than about Christianity. There is indeed an Alltop category for Muslims, which has a lot of blogs in it. Not to mention there are some web 2.0 blogs that cover the Middle East, including ArabCrunch and IslamCrunch.

Let us know in the comments about other religious organizations or independent sites using the Web in innovative ways.

Top photo: Mark LeVine

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute

Abbey told us that he has done "a significant amount of research into the Jewish world's usage of Web 2.0 features". And it is clear from Abbey's presence on the site that he is working hard at putting that Web theory into practice.

Features

Alan Abbey listed the following Web initiatives for his organization:

• Weekly postings of original, Op-Ed length essays by the leaders and scholars on topics of interest to the Jewish/Israeli worlds. "We include "talkbacks" (reader comments) on our articles, some of which draw large responses", said Abbey.
• Educational material, including complete course syllabuses.
• Stream and host video lectures from the scholars and leaders, both onsite and offsite. Abbey said that they're using "Blip.tv for full-length videos, YouTube for short ones (we were named 2nd most-viewed Israeli non-profit on YouTube), and Jewish video sites Yideoz.com and JewTube.com for additional distribution (although both sites have their technical issues)."
• Video-enabled distance learning to rabbis, teachers and community leaders in North America. Abbey told us that they are "transitioning this fall to online video via Ustream.tv and/or Mogulus.com." As a matter of interest, LifeChurch.tv also uses Mogulus.
• A blog running on wordpress.com, "to allow us to use some Hebrew, to enhance search, and to give a less formal view of our activities." Abbey said that they're also building sites for some of their leading individuals.
• Hartman is developing an iTunes podcast, both audio and video versions.
• Abbey says that they are "working on enhancing the Wikipedia entries others have created."
• The Institute is developing a Facebook strategy. As of now, Abbey uses his own Facebook page to promote the Institute's content and videos. He's also created a Facebook group for a group of North American rabbis studying with them. "I regularly place our material on related Jewish/Israeli FB groups", said Abbey, "as well as promote through Twitter." He noted that several of their groups use Google or Yahoo groups too, which he wants to formalize some more.

One of the challenges that Abbey notes, is getting their users to participate in social networking on the Web. Abbey puts this down to their audience being "older than the standard online audience", but he thinks they are "slowly making headway."

Analysis

As with LifeChurch.tv, Hartman is making particularly good use of online video. Whereas an apparently well-funded LifeChurch effectively built their own online tv service, Hartman makes use of Blip.tv and YouTube and other third party providers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, indeed it's often a good move because you can tap into existing communities. Alan Abbey wrote in a recent post that "more than 25,000 people have viewed Hartman Institute videos since we began posting them on the Web, and that's not counting the thousands who have seen them on our website's Digital Lectures channel".

Overall Hartman's web presence makes good use of current trends such as online video, RSS and blogging. They are making progress with other trends, such as social networking and online education. It has to be noted that the web design is relatively no-frills, but that can be gradually worked on over time.

It's pleasing to see the Op-Eds sometimes attracting large comments. This indicates that the move towards individual sites for leaders will pay off in the long run, provided those sites are more like blogs than static websites. Similarly, we encourage Hartman to continue to explore ways to entice their users and students to participate on the site - whether it be in writing, video, photos, or any other creative online activity.

Finally, with Alan Abbey leading Hartman's web efforts, the Institute has a passionate web advocate. You really can't ask for more in any organization! Well done Alan and keep up the great work.

In the comments, we'd love to find out about other religious organizations and the web activities they're doing. Don't be shy about promoting your own sites, or those you know of in your particular faith.

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 1: LifeChurch.tv
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam

In this post we'll look at a Christian church, LifeChurch, which is using the Web in an extensive way. In upcoming posts we'll cover other religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Note that we're going to keep a tight focus on the technology - rather than what is being preached with the technology.

LifeChurch.tv is a production of the Life Church, a Christian "megachurch" that formed in 1996 in Edmond, Oklahoma. It appears that the church started its tv operations in 2001, then in April 2006 the LifeChurch.tv "Internet Campus" was launched. This provided weekly live, interactive church broadcasts over the Internet, for anyone in the world to tune into. The website also began offering "online LifeGroups" (small collaborative networks). At the same time a sub-site called LifeChurch.tv Open started, with the aim of offering free content to other churches.

Last but not least, in April 2007, LifeChurch opened a presence in SecondLife. Andrea Useem attended one of the virtual world services, but wasn't overly impressed. "I was looking forward to chatting with people in the cavernous but furnished church lobby", she wrote, "[but] unfortunately, the 15 or so people who attended the service disappeared quickly, and I found myself as I usually am in Second Life -- wandering around by myself." (thanks Marcello for the link)

Praise Be Web 2.0

The LifeChurch websites today are an impressive and well designed collection of content, tools and online video. The main Internet Campus site features a blog which has many 'web 2.0' features: a variety of RSS feeds, embedded video widgets, 'share this' links, live prayer and help options, and connections to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Vimeo. Also the blog has a number of international translations via the Wordpress plugin Nothing2Hide - e.g. the Korean version.

Example video

The Open site also has a blog, written by the church pastors. Its most recent post at time of writing is about a new initiative called LifeShare, which Pastor Bobby Gruenewald describes as a "7-day challenge for the church to move together online with purpose." He describes how they're using the Web to connect with people:

"We're doing this at a few different levels, ranging from simple steps like tweets and internet campus e-invites to more in-depth efforts like sharing online how God is working in your life and embedding video teaching on your blog. We're connecting daily through a live video stream to talk about next steps and pray together. LifeShare is open to anyone, anywhere, so feel free to join us by signing up here."

LifeChurch's Web Apps

What's really great to see is how LifeChurch is using best-in-class web apps to create each different aspect of their online presence - Twitter for real-time communication, Wufoo to create their online forms, Blip.tv for video teaching, Mogulus for live broadcasting, and so on.

But they're also building their own apps, for example the recently announced ChurchMetrics.com, which is a web app that helps churches "track attendance, giving, salvations, and baptisms." As yet the app hasn't been launched publicly, but it sounds like a great example of web analytics applied to the real world (which on this blog means beyond tech!).

The main web app that LifeChurch has released so far is YouVersion.com, a free online Bible which presents Christian Scripture in a variety of media formats, including pictures, video, journal entries, and blog posts. The beta of this app was launched in October 2007. And yes, there is an iPhone app version!

Conclusion

Overall we come away very impressed by how LifeChurch is utilizing the Internet. It is using a variety of web apps to achieve its purpose, and creating its own as well. The church's websites and apps are visually rich and sophisticated in features.

Most importantly, the web activities of LifeChurch are bringing its message to many more people than they would've reached without an online presence. It's a great example of the mainstream web, using many of the tools and trends we've preached here on ReadWriteWeb over the years!

Tell us in the comments about other religious organizations using the Web. We're going to explore a few examples this week, from Christianity as well as other religions.

See also:
Religion and Web Technology, Part 2: Shalom Hartman Institute
Religion and Web Technology, Part 3: Inside Islam