{"id":1617,"date":"2013-01-17T17:13:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T17:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/religion-may-not-survive-the-internet.html"},"modified":"2013-01-17T17:13:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-17T17:13:00","slug":"religion-may-not-survive-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/religion-may-not-survive-the-internet.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion May Not Survive the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocks\u2014or, in crass economic terms, to retain market share. \u00a0Some Christians have turned to\u00a0soul searching<\/a>\u00a0while others have turned to marketing. Last fall, the LDS church<\/a> spent millions on billboards, bus banners, and Facebook ads touting \u201cI\u2019m a Mormon.\u201d\u00a0 In Canada, the Catholic Church has launched a \u201cCome Home<\/a>\u201d marketing campaign.\u00a0 The Southern Baptists Convention voted to\u00a0rebrand themselves<\/a>. A\u00a0hipster mega-church<\/a>\u00a0in Seattle combines smart advertising with sales force training for members and a strategy the Catholics have emphasized for centuries: competitive breeding.<\/span><\/div>\n
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In October of 2012 the Pew Research Center\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that for the first time ever Protestant Christians had fallen below 50 percent of the American population. Atheists cheered and evangelicals beat their breasts and lamented the end of the world as we know it. Historian of religion, Molly Worthen, has since\u00a0offered<\/a>\u00a0big picture insights that may dampen the most extreme hopes and fears.\u00a0\u00a0Anthropologist\u00a0Jennifer James<\/a>, on the other hand, has called fundamentalism the \u201cdeath rattle\u201d of the Abrahamic traditions.<\/span><\/div>\n
In all of the frenzy, few seem to give any recognition to the player that I see as the primary hero, or, if you prefer, culprit\u2014and I\u2019m not talking about science populizer and atheist superstar\u00a0Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/a>. Then again, maybe I am\u00a0talking about Tyson in a sense, because in his various viral guises\u2014as a\u00a0talk show host<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0tweeter<\/a>\u00a0and as\u00a0the face<\/a>\u00a0on scores of smartass Facebook memes\u2014Tyson is an incarnation of the biggest threat that organized religion has ever faced: the internet.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocks\u2014or, in crass economic terms, to retain market share. \u00a0Some Christians have turned to\u00a0soul searching\u00a0while others have turned to marketing. Last fall, the LDS church spent millions on billboards, bus banners, and Facebook ads touting \u201cI\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion May Not Survive the Internet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocks\u2014or, in crass economic terms, to retain\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/religion-may-not-survive-the-internet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religion May Not Survive the Internet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we head into a new year, the guardians of traditional religion are ramping up efforts to keep their flocks\u2014or, in crass economic terms, to retain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/religion-may-not-survive-the-internet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-17T17:13:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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