@article {601,
	title = {Contemporary Religious Community and the Online Church},
	journal = {Information, Communication \& Society},
	volume = {14},
	year = {2011},
	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 = {Christianity, Cyberchurch},
	author = {Hutchings, T.}
}
