Cliff at ethics daily.com gives a good interview of Quentin Schultze.   I latch onto a couple of the responses and ask some questions —- I know that the interview wasn’t lengthy enough to delve this deeply into speicifics,  but having read half the chapters thouroughly and scanned the points of others, I have some question as to whether Schultze has struck a balance between “informationism” and “virtuosity”;  between “cyber-utopian” and “doing the right thing”. 

On religious Web sites cultivating faith: The Web seems to be better for pointing people to faith rather than nurturing faith, which happens in local community. Many people are searching for God online, as strange as that seems. When the history of the Web is written I suspect that careful researchers will find that two major quests dominated the medium’s early years: the quest for God and the quest for sex. Both involve intimacy. G.K. Chesterton supposedly said, “The man who goes up to the brothel door and knocks is looking for God.” I think it is the anonymity of the Web that leads to the religious as well as the sexual searches. Looking for God online is much less intimidating than going through the door of a church.

On community in cyberspace: The richest forms of human community will never exist “online,” only in person. Imagine a church community that “lives” only on the Web or via email. Once someone sent me an email to find out how to do the sacraments online. Can you imagine that? Real community, whether religious or not, exists in geographic proximity and is nurtured in relationships, which enable us to see and touch one another. The “passing of the peace” is a venerable Christian tradition in this regard.