Robert Glenn Howard
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814773086
- eISBN:
- 9780814790748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814773086.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter discusses the growing diversity of the virtual ekklesia as it moved onto the World Wide Web between 1996 and 2000. As the movement adapted, the new medium exacerbated an existing tension ...
More
This chapter discusses the growing diversity of the virtual ekklesia as it moved onto the World Wide Web between 1996 and 2000. As the movement adapted, the new medium exacerbated an existing tension between the need to express individual authority and the need to engage others in deliberation. As a wide range of individuals experimented with different ways to mediate this tension, Marilyn Agee's Bible Prophecy Corner website prefigured the most robust deployment of Internet media by individuals in the movement today. Even before the advent of new software that would allow the World Wide Web to easily integrate user-produced content into existing Web pages, Agee created her own sort of proto-blog using simple HTML computer coding. After 2001, the form of Marilyn's website suggested it would become the most common sort of site used for ritual deliberation in the movement.Less
This chapter discusses the growing diversity of the virtual ekklesia as it moved onto the World Wide Web between 1996 and 2000. As the movement adapted, the new medium exacerbated an existing tension between the need to express individual authority and the need to engage others in deliberation. As a wide range of individuals experimented with different ways to mediate this tension, Marilyn Agee's Bible Prophecy Corner website prefigured the most robust deployment of Internet media by individuals in the movement today. Even before the advent of new software that would allow the World Wide Web to easily integrate user-produced content into existing Web pages, Agee created her own sort of proto-blog using simple HTML computer coding. After 2001, the form of Marilyn's website suggested it would become the most common sort of site used for ritual deliberation in the movement.
Robert Glenn Howard
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814773086
- eISBN:
- 9780814790748
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814773086.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In the 1990s, Marilyn Agee developed one of the most well-known amateur evangelical websites focused on the “End Times,” The Bible Prophecy Corner. Around the same time, Lambert Dolphin, a retired ...
More
In the 1990s, Marilyn Agee developed one of the most well-known amateur evangelical websites focused on the “End Times,” The Bible Prophecy Corner. Around the same time, Lambert Dolphin, a retired Stanford physicist, started the website Lambert's Library to discuss with others online how to experience the divine. While Marilyn and Lambert did not initially correspond directly, they have shared several correspondents in common. Even as early as 1999 it was clear that they were members of the same online network of Christians, a virtual church built around those who embraced a common ideology. This book documents how such like-minded individuals created a large web of religious communication on the Internet, in essence developing a new type of religious movement—one without a central leader or institution. Based on over a decade of interaction with figures both large and small within this community, the book offers the first sustained ethnographic account of the movement as well as a realistic and pragmatic view of how new communication technologies can both empower and disempower the individuals who use them. By tracing the group's origins back to the email lists and “Usenet” groups of the 1980s up to the online forums of today, the book also serves as a succinct history of the development of online group communications.Less
In the 1990s, Marilyn Agee developed one of the most well-known amateur evangelical websites focused on the “End Times,” The Bible Prophecy Corner. Around the same time, Lambert Dolphin, a retired Stanford physicist, started the website Lambert's Library to discuss with others online how to experience the divine. While Marilyn and Lambert did not initially correspond directly, they have shared several correspondents in common. Even as early as 1999 it was clear that they were members of the same online network of Christians, a virtual church built around those who embraced a common ideology. This book documents how such like-minded individuals created a large web of religious communication on the Internet, in essence developing a new type of religious movement—one without a central leader or institution. Based on over a decade of interaction with figures both large and small within this community, the book offers the first sustained ethnographic account of the movement as well as a realistic and pragmatic view of how new communication technologies can both empower and disempower the individuals who use them. By tracing the group's origins back to the email lists and “Usenet” groups of the 1980s up to the online forums of today, the book also serves as a succinct history of the development of online group communications.
