Holy virtual congregation

Mainstream religion is starting to embrace virtual worlds. The BBC is reporting that the UK Christian site Ship of Fools (note due to /. effect they have an alternate home page) is launching Church of Fools “the world's first 3D internet church is going to be virtually unique”. Meanwhile the Diocese of Oxford has i-church and is looking for a “web pastor”.

Comments

[Richard Bartle]

1.

Ren Reynolds>“the world's first 3D internet church is going to be virtually unique”.

I don't know where they got that "first" from. I'm sure I read a paper about the E-Church 5 or 5 years ago...

Richard

[greglas]

2.

Fwiw, from "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat":

One of the outstanding proponents of the anti-violence point of view was motivated to open the first Habitat church, the Order of the Holy Walnut (in real life he was a Greek Orthodox priest). His canons forbid his disciples to carry weapons, steal, or participate in violence of any kind. His church became quite popular and he became a very highly respected member of the Habitat community.

http://www.scara.com/~ole/literatur/LessonsOfHabitat.html

[magicback]

3.

There was an interesting article in the current or previous issue of Wired that talks about a guy with the vision to bring Armageddon and peace to the world by building a virtual prophetic temple in Jerusalem.

The design incorporates a laser-beamed visual of the temple over the Temple Mount and a game with virtual Jerusalem.

Interesting idea to say the least.

Do read the interesting article:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/holyland.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Frank

[crankyuser]

4.

Wagner James Au's New World Notes has a post about a Catholic mass in Second Life.

[Scott Moore]

5.

And let's not leave this to the Judeo-Christian folks. There is the Daioh Temple of Daioh Mountain which hosts the Jomoh Temple, a sub-temple of Daioh-in, representing a virtual temple created for the Internet. They host virtual services for lost information.

Requires a VRML browser (remember VRML?)
http://www.thezen.or.jp/index.html

[greglas]

6.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3706897.stm

The BBC follows up.