Once relegated to cheap newsletters distributed to a handful of like-minded readers, critics of prominent evangelicals are finding an inexpensive yet powerful platform on the Internet’s World Wide Web.
Both Christian fundamentalists and secular liberals have created forums on the Web, reproaching individuals and organizations, and giving them electronic visibility rivaling their targets. The World Wide Web is the most popular incarnation of the Internet, meshing text, graphics, and sound.
“You have a potential audience of 40 million or 50 million people,” says Mark A. Kellner, author of God on the Internet. There are official and unofficial Web “home pages,” as the electronic displays are known, for dozens of top evangelicals. Internet search engines, which catalog the contents of the Web, make no distinction between official and unofficial sites, between those supporting and those opposing their subject, or between massive corporate sites and small sites created by a resourceful loner.
“What these groups are counting on is random action provided by search engines,” Kellner says. “Once they get you there, they keep you with this dramatic sensationalism.”
Observers say critics are drawn to the Web by the confrontational nature of the medium as well as its colossal potential audience at little cost.
“The cyberculture encourages people to be critical and sassy,” says Quentin J. Schultze, communications professor at Calvin College and author of Internet for Christians. “It’s all about saying whatever you like. Religion is just one aspect of this. It’s true for every kind of institution you can imagine.” There also are anti-corporate Web sites for every major corporation.
For organizations not accustomed to severe criticism, Schultze says, “the Internet represents an enormous public-relations nightmare. Any critic can find other critics and marshal a case against you.” A few years ago, detractors often were limited to writing letters. “Now you can wage a campaign for almost nothing.”
REALITY CHECK: But while the potential audience is astronomical, real traffic can be infinitesimal. Some sites measure the number of times, or “hits,” a Web page is accessed. However, a page with five graphics may register between one to six hits each time it is visited, depending on several variables.
Poppy Dixon, director of the Postfundamentalist Press Web site (http://www. postfun.com/pfp/), says their site registered about 50,000 hits a month when it first went on the Web in September 1995. Now, she says, they receive between 5,000 and 10,000 hits a month, with a dozen electronic-mail messages a day. By comparison, the official Promise Keepers site (http://promisekeepers.org/) receives about 1 million hits a month. Even more important than the number of hits, Schultze says, is who is visiting the sites.
“Evangelical Christians haven’t caught up to the cyberculture yet. They won’t run across these sites,” he says. “Years down the road, these organizations’ constituencies will be a part of the cyberculture. Then the organizations will be in trouble.”
In most cases, the best policy for the targeted organizations is to ignore the sites, Schultze says, and that is exactly what is happening.
“We’ve seen all of them,” Don Clarke, Web site editor for Promise Keepers, says of the critics’ pages. “We’re not concerned in the slightest. We believe we’re where we’re at because of God.” Clarke says the organization has attempted to respond to the most common questions and criticisms in their Frequently Asked Questions section of their site, but not because of the sites.
“We’re not going to invest time and resources tracking down and answering the questions on critical Web sites,” he says.
With its Web site and an electronic mailing list of 20,000, Promise Keepers is one of the few highly targeted organizations with a strong presence on the Internet. Fundamentalists on the Web attack it for being too ecumenical. Liberal sites accuse it of having a sexist agenda.
Other targets, including author and evangelical sociologist Tony Campolo, are aware of the critics’ sites, but are doing nothing about it.
“If we had unlimited time and resources, we’d get our own Web site,” says Larry Slagle, executive director of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education/Campolo Ministries. “Fortunately, people have taken that up for us. There’s a lot on both sides, pro-Tony and against.” One of the critical sites has been created by David W. Cloud, a Fundamental Baptist minister who edits O Timothy magazine (http://wayoflife. org/~dcloud/). His site includes articles titled “Tony Campolo: A Dangerous Man” and “Billy Graham’s Disobedience.”
“The Web is for all to see, whether they agree or not, whether they are Christians or not,” Cloud says. “I get a lot of feedback from all sides, but I’m writing for Fundamental Baptist churches.”
Cloud says he receives 1,000 e-mail messages a month, with a lot more scathing letters than he expected. Nonetheless, he sees his mission as a righteous one. “We have the traditional goal of seeing people saved, but beyond that we are defending the truth in what we see as the last days. It is divisive. God demands the truth to be divided from error.”
IN THE COURTS: Online criticism of religious leaders and organizations sparked one of the greatest controversies on the Internet when the Church of Scientology sued former members in 1995 for copyright infringement. Hackers on both sides of the argument attacked Web sites and e-mail addresses of their opponents. A similar battle is now taking place with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who threatened legal action against a critical site in Norway.
Might there be a similar case in the evangelical world? Kellner and Schultze say it could happen, but not anytime soon.
“Religious groups won’t do anything until they feel challenged in their fundraising or constituencies,” Schultze says. “That’s not going to happen in the short run. Later, there could be a cacophony of religious fighting online.”
Cloud says he is nervous about lawsuits, but more over slander and libel than the copyright infringement issues that drove the Scientology and Jehovah’s Witness firestorms.
“We’re not worried,” says Postfundamentalist Press’s Dixon. “We’re a parody.”
With the targets largely ignoring or unaware of their critics’ sites, any retaliation is likely to come from angry Web surfers. So far, there have been no successful attempts to hack, or illegally tamper with, the Web sites. However, Dixon says she has been spammed, a term for flooding an e-mail address or mailing list with hundreds of useless messages.
Both Dixon and Cloud say the messages they receive are evenly divided between support and opposition. Those against it, however, can be abusive and threatening. “I had to ask one woman, ‘Hey, do you praise God with that mouth?’ ” Dixon says.
Dixon and Cloud say their goal is to galvanize support for their causes, whether fundamentalism or, as Dixon calls her organization’s mission, “defending the rights of the unborn-again.”
Kellner and Schultze say religious grievances on the Internet have created some positive effects. Criticism of the Worldwide Church of God fulminated on the Internet, which led to a reformation of the denomination. Conservative Episcopalians trying to maintain what they consider orthodoxy have also used the Web and other Internet tools to unite.
“For anyone who’s controversial, be it the Scientologists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Willow Creek, there’s going to be a Web site against them,” says Kellner. “Anyone who has a high profile is going to get criticized.”
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