@article {2078,
	title = {Contemporary religious community and the online church},
	journal = {Information, Communication \& Society},
	volume = {14},
	year = {2011},
	pages = {1118{\textendash}1135},
	abstract = {{\textquoteleft}Online churches{\textquoteright} are Internet-based Christian communities, seeking to pursue worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytism and other key religious practices through computer-mediated communication. This article introduces findings of a four-year ethnographic study of five very different {\textquoteleft}online churches{\textquoteright}, focusing on the fluid, multi-layered relationship between online and offline activity developed by Christian users of blogs, forums, chatrooms, video streams and virtual worlds. Following a review of online church research and a summary of methods, this article offers an overview of each of the five groups and identifies clear parallels with earlier television ministries and recent church-planting movements. A new model of online and offline activity is proposed, focused on two pairs of concepts, familiarity/difference and isolation/integration, represented as the endpoints of two axes. These axes frame a landscape of digital practice, negotiated with great care and subtlety by online churchgoers. These negotiations are interpreted in light of wider social changes, particularly the shift from bounded community towards {\textquoteleft}networked individualism{\textquoteright}.},
	keywords = {online church, religious},
	doi = {10.1080/1369118X.2011.591410},
	url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2011.591410},
	author = {Hutchings, T}
}
