BARNA RESEARCH announced earlier this year that in the next ten years, 50 million people in the United States will do their spiritual searching, worshiping, and studying solely on the Internet.

A survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more Americans seek spiritual help online than have gone to Internet gambling sites, bid in online (see "Items of Interest," p. 4).

These figures came as no surprise to Tom Nickell, president and CEO of FaithandValues.com, which has its headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky. In April, their Web site was voted "Best of Class" by the Religion Communicators Council.

"Our goal is to promote the vitality of faith and spiritual experience in everyday life," says Nickell, "and we do that by expanding people's opportunities to learn about faith and to use the resources of faith in their daily lives.

"When someone wants to learn what a faith group believes, find out what it has said on an issue, or just spend some quiet time with an inspirational reading or meditation, we're available. They can come to our Web site and get what they need right away, and at any time."

This readiness to respond quickly to people's needs has also been central to the mission of spirituality.com, which makes the ideas in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy available to people seeking spirituality.

Executive editor and general manager Christine Raymond believes that it's very important to recognize and acknowledge the genuine "spiritual progress" going on in the world today.

"Our Web site gives this progress a voice, broadcasts it to the public, shows how ideas are connected," she says. "It celebrates humanity's progress spiritward. It verifies that the leaven of truth is at work in human consciousness. We are showing that Christian Science is universal, and that Science and Health is for everyone."

Steven Waldman came to beliefnet.com after a year as national news editor of U.S. News & World Report, and, before that, seven years with Newsweek mainly in Washington, D. C. He is now beliefnet's editor-in-chief and CEO. He says he had been feeling that mainstream journalism was not covering what were most important to people a lot of the time—religion and spirituality. "Journalism was not really tapping into people's deeper needs and thirsts."

Waldman emphasizes that Websites are not replacing the bricks and mortar of church life but creating new and different forums that have the potential to invigorate traditional spiritual communities. Sometimes, he says, people supplement the faith of their childhood with a hybrid that more effectively meets their current needs.

He points to the extraordinary mix of anonymity and intimacy found on the web. "People usually open up more quickly than in person because the exchanges are somewhat anonymous. The downside is that people are less accountable for what they say. This sometimes leads to harsh and intolerant and even hurtful dialogue.

"But more common," he says, "is the extent to which people are exposed to and learn about folks who are different from themselves. The environment is less intimidating than when people talk religion face to face. I often say, 'Think about your five closest friends and tell me how much you know about their inner spiritual life.' Usually the answer is, 'Not much, because it's a sensitive topic.' Yet people come on the Web and talk about it openly."

In several ways, Web sites have redefined the spiritual community "People expect a faithrelated Web site to provide personal responses, not just automatic replies, so we devote a fair bit of time to correspondence," says Nickell.

"Our readers seem to feel a very personal, almost intimate, connection with our site," he continues. "They'll write to ask for prayers when they're sick or in trouble, or to thank us for explaining a point of faith they hadn't understood.

"Children have asked for help with school assignments, and we give it, as best we can. Sometimes they write back later to tell us how well they did. 'You would have been proud of me,' wrote one little girl we'd helped with an assignment on Martin Luther King, Jr. That just made our day!"

Raymond points out that spirituality.com is a community-generated Web site. Most of the content—articles, community boards, live chats —are provided by the people who use the site.

"They describe how spiritual ideas have made a difference in their life and bettered it, and how these ideas can help others," she says. "Site users ask questions of other site users, and they respond with their own experiences that verify, for them, the existences of spiritual laws —God's laws in action."

Spirituality.com's users represent many different faith traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha'ism, and those who claim to have no faith tradition at all. "But they all are looking for the universal Truth, the guiding Principle of life," adds Raymond.

The writers for spirituality.com find their work most satisfying when they are able to provide "spiritual counter-facts" to challenge the disturbing news of the day, she continues. "The immediacy of the Web speeds up this call to action as we go about countering terrorism, grief, fear, lawlessness. And I am most pleased when we provide specific content to help heal public concern, in addition to our coverage of issues that demand prayer."

Raymond cites, as examples, their response to 9/11, the disputed 2000 US presidential election, the war in Afghanistan, Middle East coverage, their handling (in Spanish) of the Argentine financial crisis, the floods in Germany (reported in German), and last month's Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders in Geneva.

The beliefnet.com offices, which are located at 23rd and Park in New York, were uncomfortably close to the action on September 11, 2001. "But it was helpful to our staff, on an emotional and spiritual level, to have a mission and something really useful to do," says Waldman. "People came to our site to grieve, to offer prayers, to be with each other. We saw incredible love playing out between them. Also a real desire to understand Islam—not just from a book but by talking to Muslims in a very direct way. We were pleased to be able to provide a forum for national grieving, and a way of wrestling with the big existential questions like, Why did God let this happen? Should we forgive? What's the proper role of vengeance? And so on."

Among the topics that have drawn most response from users of spirituality.com says Raymond, are those dealing with relationships, depression, weight loss, drug addiction, and current events. She recalls a man who wrote in asking for help because his wife wanted to leave him. Many responses came in from Website readers offering helpful spiritual ideas and support, and also personal experiences that were similar and showed that healing is possible.

Later, the man wrote: "Thank you for your touching replies. I've been away from the site for a week, and you don't know how much I needed to hear those words, espescially today, sitting in my deepest deep and darkest dark. The question is, Do I need or do I want this marriage? I think I'll leave the answer to a higher authority—Love."

FaithandValues.com helps congregations get online themselves, providing various ministry "tools" that go along with a Website—additional content from a variety of sources fed to their site, Internet video or audio streaming, fundraising, and community tools such as message boards and newsletters.

"A church community is mainly local," observes Nickell, "so we want to provide tools to faith communities in a way that will best, and most widely, reach spiritual seekers. In this way, they are able to communicate more efficiently and effectively among their members, as well as extend their reach and impact in their communities.

"Of course, the Web doesn't replace other kinds of human interaction," Nickell adds. "In our experience, the people who are most active in using the web to meet their spiritual needs are also active in more traditional faith communities. So they're using the Web in addition to, not instead of, involvement with a church or synagogue. This seems likely to continue."

"The Web allows anyone to join this spiritual community, without preconceived notions relating to geography, culture, race, gender, creed, or denomination," says Raymond. "There are no boundaries.

"Think for a moment what a traditional faith community offers—the opportunity to share experiences with one another, and to share the spiritual wisdom drawn from those experiences; to support one another along the spiritual pathway; and to share inspiration and ideas that enrich the broader community and world. I believe that on spirituality.com and other sites like ours, we are expanding the definition of spiritual community," " she says. "We encourage this kind of dialogue. It allows us all to reveal our better selves."

"A million people come to beliefnet.com each month," says Waldman. "We have 3.8 million subscribers to regular e-mail newsletters that provide Bible verses, quotations from other sacred texts, and inspiring stories, which help them through the day.

"I believe that spirituality as a topic on the Web is only going to get bigger and bigger," Waldman concludes, "and probably better and better. We're still in the early stages, making mistakes, learning, but we're going to get smarter at figuring out how to make Web sites a really useful part of people's spiritual life."