6.5.1 Why the Internet?
Despite extensive literature searches, I was unable to detect publications that specifically address mainstream Christian environmental thought and action in Australia. Goosen, 2000 devotes some comment to Christian environmentalism in Australia as part of a broader view of Australian Christian theology. Leal, 2004a, deals with Christian environmentalism in general, and comments briefly on the Australian context. I became aware of three PhD theses that dealt to some extent with particular aspects of Australian mainstream Christian environmentalism. However, two of these were incomplete and unavailable, and the third (John, 2005), relates mainly to the ecotheology underpinning policies, and is specific to the Uniting Church.
An unconventional research method had to be used to fill the gap in the literature. I chose to undertake extensive Internet-based research as the primary data gathering method used to determine the ‘state of play’ in regards to the ecological policies and praxis of the subject denominations. Internet searches were supported by following-up any significant leads or literature revealed through this approach via email, telephone or face-to-face interviews with individuals and/or organisations identified on-line or otherwise known to be potential sources for data, particularly that which is not accessible on-line.
A consideration in my choice of an Internet-based search was that I did not have any of the ‘insider’ contacts and information that a researcher who was also a Christian environmentalist might have. I had to learn afresh about the structures and specialised terminology associated with the three subject denominations. The Internet proved to be an effective way of obtaining much of this information and using it to gain more specific data about Christian environmentalism.
The Internet is now a significant source of information for people seeking information in general and particularly for those looking for religio-spiritual information. In October 2004, the monitoring firm Nielson//NetRatings, stated that 66% of the Australian population made use of the Internet. The Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne quotes unverified data that “more people use the Internet to find information on religion and spirituality than have gambled on-line,
traded stocks on-line, or banked on-line”84 in stating his belief that the Anglican Church should have a strong Internet presence.
The Reverend Michael Raiter, Lecturer at Moore Theological College in Sydney introduced a lecture85 by stating:
“If you conduct a net search on the Web - which is increasingly the place to start when researching a topic - and look up the websites about religion then you enter into a vast universe of information. If you narrow down your search to a topic such as ‘Spirituality’ you come across a myriad of sites, such as one called simply GOD.com. GOD.com proudly announces that spirituality is the biggest thing on the World Wide Web. In a world hungry for experience and satisfaction, religion is more popular than sex. It boasts that if one asks the Internet search engine Alta Vista to locate sites related to ‘Sex’ it will return 683,643 documents. However, request ‘God’ and it lists nearly three times as many: 1,772,945. So, the Internet which is often portrayed as the domain of sin and sleaze is even more the home of the supernatural and the spiritual.”
The National Church Life Survey of 2001 revealed, “31% of Australian churches use the internet or email to communicate with attendees. The highest users of email and the internet were Baptist (53%), Pentecostal (54%) and small Protestant denominations (55%). Usage at mainstream denominations such as Anglican, Catholic and Uniting ranged between 20% and 30% of churches” (Bellamy, 2005). Given that Australia has a very high rate of increase in Internet usage (Lloyd & Bill, 2001), it is expected that these figures will have grown significantly by 2005-6 when most of the Internet research for this thesis was undertaken. NCLS researcher, Ruth Powell is quoted86 as believing that the rate of Internet use is “much higher” than in 2001. The 2006 NCLS will provide data about the rate of Internet and email usage in this context but this information was not available in mid-2007. The gathering of such information has been a part of the US equivalent of the NCLS, the National Congregation Study since at least 1998 (Scheitle, 2005).
Sam Sterland, (NCLS Research, pers. comm., 09/05) noted that the Uniting Church (NSW Synod) was then in the process of appointing a minister to develop on-line content, indicating the extent to which it values the Internet as a ministry tool.
The Internet is also increasingly used as a research tool, including in the field of religion. In the late 1990’s, Spuler, 2000, made significant use of the Internet and group newsletters when investigating the characteristics of Buddhism in Australia, and reported that she found it useful. The three Christian denominations that are investigated in this thesis are much larger and
84 http://www.melbourne.anglican.com.au/intro/welcome.html accessed 05/05. 85 viewable at http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/culture/thinking/383a/ 86 http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?docid=3536
more established than Buddhism in Australia (Spuler, 2000), and Spuler’s work was conducted several years ago, when Internet use was far lower than at present.
Scheitle, 2005, used external website hyperlinks as an indication of the social (functional) and symbolic (notional) boundaries of a subset of congregations in the USA during 2004. I adopt a version of his method in this thesis. I examine interconnecting hyperlinks on Church websites to indicate the extent of connectivity between the ecological policies, policy-making bodies, and points of praxis within the various parts of the Churches. External hyperlinks on Church websites can also signal interaction or endorsement of Christian and secular environmental organisations where the Church website links to, for example, the website of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
In an article entitled, ‘Religion and science’, (Bainbridge, 2004), used a “massive” Internet-based questionnaire to address attitudes towards the future of religion, science and any relationship between them.
In mid 2005, the following comment on the move of the Church into the Internet appeared on the ABC’s Religion Report website: “It’s been reported in Britain this week that thousands of worshippers are listening to sermons on their iPods and other MP3 players. One Anglican vicar posted some of his homilies on the online music store iTunes, and he was astonished when two and a half thousand people downloaded them. He said it was wonderful to see technology enabling the church to remain in contact with people who were ‘believers rather than belongers’87. It’s called podcasting - or ‘Godcasting’, if you will” (Rutledge, 2005).
All of the three of the Christian denominations that are the subject of this thesis have a substantive Internet presence, with some having extensive links within and between their organisations, sometimes extending from the national administrative level through to regional bodies and down to an individual church. Thus, in researching mainstream Christianity’s ecological policy and praxis, I considered the primary use of the Internet to be sound.
However, at scales below the national level, subsidiary organisations such as the regional administrative and semi-autonomous units known as a diocese (Anglican and Catholic Churches), did not always have substantive websites and few had internal search engines that could be used to search for key terms such as ‘ecological’ and ‘environmental’. In such cases, manual searches were necessary.
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The phenomenon of Christians who remain believers (i.e. affiliate as Christian) but who do not attend church or do not attend frequently and may not associate with a denomination is discussed by authors such as Millikan, 1981; Tacey, 2000, 2003; and Bouma, 2006. This is a growing phenomenon described as the deinstitutionalisation of religion.
This situation was much more restrictive at the parish level, (which represents a local grouping of churches), and at the individual church level, with very few parishes or churches having their own substantive websites. An exception was found in the diocese of Adelaide, where numerous parish websites were listed, though several of the links failed, possibly because these sites had been moved or closed. In some situations, content relating to local and regional environmental policy and praxis was available via the website of the next highest administration level.
Whilst the relatively poor availability of on-line information at the finer scale of Church organisation is a constraint, I initially considered this to be of little consequence because the hierarchical structure of the Churches indicated that matters such as ecological policy would be primarily a top-down process. I also believed that information about organisationally endorsed praxis would also be likely to be evident on the websites of the higher levels of Church organisation, i.e. national and regional bodies. It was only much later into the research process that I found evidence to suggest that my assumptions were only partially valid.
6.5.2 Data collection – the ‘web’
My Internet research commenced in late 2004, with most conducted in 2005 and 2006. I revisited some key websites in 2007. The use of at least two searches for most of the websites that were initially found to have some ecological content proved to be useful in revealing the rate and nature of ‘greening’ in these parts of the Churches.
Data collection entailed visiting each of the three subject denominations’ official websites, following any links that seemed relevant to ecological policy and action, and where available, using internal search features to look for pages containing keywords such as ‘ecology’, ‘environment’, ‘ecojustice’ and variants thereof. As my focus was on the official Internet presence of the denominations, the data was not subject to the problems of credibility that would be associated with a general search of the Internet for any relevant material. Where I followed links from official websites to off-site locations, I was careful to evaluate the extent to which any of the information was representative of the official position of the Churches or parts thereof88.
The kinds of policy material that I searched for included official statements (for example encyclicals, pastoral letters, and synod decisions), religious teachings (liturgy), open letters, issue-specific publications, and media releases. The boundaries as to what is and what is not
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I obtained training in the skilled evaluation of Internet-based information as part of my completion of a Graduate Certificate in Information Literacy at the ANU.
policy in this context are often unclear. This is partly because the Churches do not necessarily produce formal policy statements in the same way that governments or business corporations do. Whilst all three Churches have bodies that deal with ecological policy, they have significantly different forms, with substantial implications for the nature, development, availability and implementation of ecological policy. Some of these differences are connected with long-established administrative and power structures in each denomination. Information about the different structures and their implications for policy and praxis are contained in subsequent chapters.
I made extensive use of hyperlinks in compiling the results of the research, particularly where the link is to a relatively large document. Whilst these were active when researched, some will have changed by the time this thesis is published. Indeed, during the research phase of this thesis, several of the relevant sites were redesigned, sometimes extensively, indicating that the denominations that operate them are expanding or at least updating their on-line presence. Others were several years out of date and did not change during the course of research.
Manual searches of websites did not consistently extend to checking all documents, such as archived newsletters, for ecological policy content. In most instances, I checked recent newsletters, event calendars and any similar links for relevant content. Checks included manual scanning or software-based searches of the text where the documents were in the PDF format. Unless specific information was detected or otherwise received, investigations did not extend to the parish level.
I also used the Internet in the form of email communication between myself and research participants, as well as other interested parties. Some of this communication was through existing email lists relating to Christian and multifaith ecological policy and praxis, for example Faith and Environment Network. I mention some of these contacts in the following section.
I also used the Internet to establish two Yahoo Groups where participants could share information on religious and spiritually motivated environmentalism. I did not use either of these groups in a formal manner, but they played a role in networking and building contacts.
The Christian Ecojustice Group that I established was the more academically oriented and national of the two Groups and I used it in part to discuss and share some of my research findings. It also revealed some of the policy and praxis challenges facing the Churches. It included researchers, authors, ministers (including Australia’s first ‘ecominister’), Christian ecojustice activists, and members of Church ecological policy and praxis bodies. The other group arose from a local interfaith workshop in Canberra on ‘spirituality and the environment’. With its broader field of interest and a small geographic range, it was less relevant to this thesis.
I do not specifically report the information generated by these Groups in this thesis, in part because of the relatively small volume of material generated but also because it was not intended to be used in a formal way. Consequently, I did not ask participants whether any information they supplied could be used in this research. I did not perceive there to be any need for or value in seeking such consent retrospectively. Any information used in the thesis that derives from the Groups is used anonymously to protect participants’ identities.