This document discusses themes in studying religious history in the web age. It covers religious responses to technological change, interactions with others online and offline, and how religious organizations can be studied through their online presence and link graphs. Specifically, it examines the cross-border online activities of churches in Northern Ireland and Ireland that span both countries. It also analyzes the 2008 controversy in the UK over comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury regarding aspects of sharia law.

1. The contemporary religious
history of the Web: themes,
prospects and pitfalls
Peter Webster
IHR Digital History Seminar, 9
th
October 2018
Webster Research and Consulting (UK)
@pj_webster / @WebsterRandC
peterwebster.me

2. On the contemporary
religious history of the Web
• ‘Religion in Web history’ in The Sage Handbook of Web History
(December 2018)
• ‘Technology, ethics and religious language: early Anglophone
Christian reactions to “cyberspace”, Internet Histories 2:3 (2018)
• ‘Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, and the sharia law
controversy of 2008’ in The Web as History (2017)
• 'Lessons from cross-border religion in the Northern Irish web
sphere….’ in The Historical Web and Digital Humanities. The
case of national web domains (2019)

3. • ‘Perhaps Stanley will counter that at the
technical end of his period, 2000, the
internet was not what it has become
eighteen years later…. [but] the internet
does not merit an entry in Stanley’s index,
yet it has changed everything.’
• Diarmaid MacCulloch, reviewing Brian
Stanley, Christianity in the Twentieth Century
(TLS, Sept 7
th
2018)

4. Studying religious history in
the Web age (part 1)
• the enchanted Web?
• religious responses to technological
change
• online and offline
• secularisation; radicalisation; law and
public life

5. Studying religious history in
the Web age (part 2)
• doctrine & knowledge, texts & symbols
• organisation, ministry and authority
• practice: prayer, worship and ritual
• interactions with the Other

6. Studying religious history in
the Web age (part 1)
• the enchanted Web?
• religious responses to technological
change
• online and offline
• secularisation; radicalisation; law and
public life

7. Studying religious history in
the Web age (part 2)
• doctrine & knowledge, texts & symbols
• organisation, ministry and authority
• practice: prayer, worship and ritual
• interactions with the Other

8. Studying religious organisations
• Offline:
• flows of people, information and money
up and down hierarchies
• study of horizontal relations harder
• Online:
• hierarchies and networks

9. One island, two states
Counties of Ireland, north and south
(Wikimedia Commons)
CC-BY-SA 3.0

10. A unique mix of faith and politics?
Ian Paisley and Edward Carson, Stormont (1985)
(Burns Library, Boston College, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr)

11. Cross-border religion?
• Historic Christian denominations: RC,
Presbyterian (PCI), Church of Ireland,
Methodist, Baptist
• all organised on an all-Ireland basis
• … spanning two political jurisdictions
• …. and two ccTLDs - .uk and .ie

12. All-Ireland religion
Church of Ireland dioceses
(CoI, via Wikimedia Commons)
CC-BY-SA 3.0

13. Research questions
• Using link graph data, to ask:
• how does web estate of each church
interact across the border (& between
ccTLDs)?
• are there distinct web spheres for each in
NI and the RoI?

14. Baptists in Ireland (2016)
• Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland
has 117 congregations: 28 in RoI, 89 in NI
• 8.5k members, community of 20k
• Including independents, 93 in NI and 30 in
RoI
• 28 congregations with domains in RoI, 77 NI

15. Counties of Northern Ireland
(Map by Maximilian Dörrbecker, CC-BY-SA 2.5)

16. Where are the congregations?
County County Code % of congregations
(with domains)
Antrim AN 44
Armagh AR 7
Down DO 25
Londonderry LD 10
Tyrone TY 10
Fermanagh FE 4

17. UK Host Link Graph (1996-
2010)
• 2008 | catholic_church.co.uk | catholic_church.ie | 4
• 2001 | belfast_anglican.co.uk | derry_anglican.co.uk | 1
• 2002 | derry_anglican.org.uk | derry_catholic.co.uk | 1
• Data in public domain: data.webarchive.org.uk

18. Coded link graph (NI-to-NI)
• 1999 | AN27 | AR07 | 11
• 2003 | DW13 | LD05 | 17
• 2010 | AN11 | AN21 | 3

19. Total NI-to-NI edges
Inbound Outbound Internal
AN 248 299 151
AR 56 98 10
DW 125 64 15
LD 52 20 2

20. Conclusions
• the Baptist web sphere very tightly localised
• … but spread across several TLDs
• despite being one organisation, little cross-
border linkage
• link analysis hard in national web archives

21. Interactions with the Other
• Offline:
• at a national/diplomatic level
• local contact visible only when in conflict
• Online:
• routine/harmonious contact more visible
• remote interaction also more visible

22. Rowan Williams and sharia law

23. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080211003812/http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/1002_sharia.shtml]

24. [ https://web.archive.org/web/20080212010015/http://www.britishblogs.co.uk/categories/sharia-law/ ]

25. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080214231017/http://community.tigranetworks.co.uk/ ]

26. [ http://web.archive.org/web/20011229150036/http://www.bnp.org.uk:80/article78.html ]

27. On contemporary religious
history of the Web
• ‘Religion in Web history’ in The Sage Handbook of Web History
(December 2018)
• ‘Technology, ethics and religious language: early Anglophone
Christian reactions to “cyberspace”, Internet Histories 2:3 (2018)
• ‘Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, and the sharia law
controversy of 2008’ in The Web as History (2017)
• 'Lessons from cross-border religion in the Northern Irish web
sphere….’ in The Historical Web and Digital Humanities. The
case of national web domains (2019)

28. Questions ?
Peter Webster
peter@websterresearchconsulting.com
@pj_webster
peterwebster.me
websterresearchconsulting.com