The Encyclopedia of World Religions

computers and religion S 97

Computers and the Internet have benefited religious organizations in several ways. They have even benefited some ultraconservative communi ties that may otherwise appear old-fashioned, such as the Lubavitch community of Hasidic Judaism. Computers allow organizations, including religious organizations, to keep more accurate records and analyze them more quickly. They can identify trends more easily—for example, when they are losing or gaining members—so that they can respond to those trends. Some religious orga nizations and individuals have also used comput ers for study purposes. It is possible to store entire volumes on a single CD and then to search those volumes quickly for information on a specific topic. For example, CDs allow people to compare quickly many different translations of the B IBLE or to find a H ADITH on a specific subject. Some wealthy organizations have even made individual, computer-aided learning a part of their educa tional programs. Through the Internet religious organizations can communicate with people over greater dis tances much more quickly. For example, a Hindu organization in India can now communicate vir tually instantaneously by e-mail with one of its branches in South America, as can a community in Japan with one of its branches in Europe. Such organizations may use e-mail to spread news, dis tribute new instructional materials, raise money, or even, in a few unfortunate cases, coordinate violent activities. In addition, most religious orga nizations now have Web sites. These Web sites make it much easier for people to learn about the organizations. For example, people with access to the Internet can now find out quickly where the synagogue, church, temple, or mosque closest to their home happens to be. In fact, Web sites are a relatively inexpensive way for new and small reli gious organizations to establish themselves. People have worried about what effects com puters might have on religion. For example, some have worried that computers might harm religious communities. Because of computers people would encounter each other less. Many people now think, however, that computers have been more helpful

parodies that went to the extent of fake masses that substituted obscene songs for litanies and burned old shoes instead of incense. At the Jewish P URIM , solemn rabbis may be mockingly imitated by comedians or children. In the Roman Saturna lia, held at the same time as modern C HRISTMAS and N EW Y EAR FESTIVALS , roles would also be reversed as masters waited on slaves, for a major feature of religious clowns is the way they and their antics upset the usual social order and the expected way of doing things. Religious and other clowns particularly appear in boundary times and situations, such as festivals that appear at the winter solstice, like Saturnalia or New Year’s, or like Carnival around the beginning of spring, and among groups like choirboys or students or marginalized clans in some Native American tribes that are ambigu ously situated between priests and laypeople. They often dress in costumes that combine stripes or dots of wildly contrasting color, and are baggy and ill-fitting. All this gives clues to the meaning of clowns. They are meant to provide comic relief at solemn occasions, and simply to entertain. More than that, though, they also show something important about the sacred cosmos: It includes all opposites, high and low, funny and serious, that which fits and that which doesn’t fit. It is bigger than the neat cat egories of the human mind, and so it has to bring in those things that show up the pretensions and limitations of the mind. Humor is very religious when it shows that we humans are not as great or as perfect as we like to think we are, and religious clowns make that clear. computers and religion The development of electronic computers in the second half of the 20th century changed many aspects of life, including religion. In particular, changes in religion have been brought about by the development of the per sonal computer in the 1980s and of the Internet in the 1990s. These effects are still taking place, and people are still trying to determine exactly what they have been.