In Religion Dispatches (@RDispatches) author Elizabeth Drescher (@edrescherphd) writes,”Over the past couple years, religionistas of all sorts have attempted to navigate a new media landscape in which old constructions of religious authority, identity, and practice are changing almost by the minute. This surely marks the beginning something of a Second Coming of religion in digitally-integrated form.”
...it seems worthwhile to take a look at some trends in social media that are reshaping religion and spirituality:
1. Social Prayer: Throughout 2011, the “Jesus Daily” Facebook page has outranked soccer superpowers and celebrity superstars like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber as the “most engaging” locale on Facebook. But it’s hardly spiritually lonely at the top for the inspiration and prayer page started by weight-loss doctor Aaron Tabor. The “Dios Es Bueno” (God is Good), “The Bible,” and “Joyce Mercer Ministries” pages all hang out in the top ten, and five more religious pages fill out the bottom half of the top twenty. In all, more than half of the top twenty most engaging pages—pages that move beyond mere broadcast messaging to share content that inspires participants to interact with one another—are religious.
While tracking Twitter trends is somewhat trickier, hashtagged memes like #prayer, #spirituality, #bible, #Jesus, #Buddha, #Allah, and so on are consistently robust, and event-related hashtags like #haroldcamping, #rapture, and #LDSconf mark Twitter as no less significant a site for religious expression, exploration, and engagement than Facebook. Indeed, religious participation on Twitter is sufficient to have captured the attention of Claire Diaz Ortiz, the network’s manager of “social innovation,” who is courting religious tweeters to encourage greater Twitter-specific social networking involvement...
2. Ministers-On-The-Go…
3. O Holy App…
4. Curate as Curator…
5. A Few New Commandments…