Internet Mormonism: Threat or Opportunity?
I have taken this title from a great blog on Mormon Inquiry
I am particularly interested in the fact that in countries were the language is not English very little is available about the History of the Mormon Church. Dave reported an article about the Japanese experience:
[There was] a minor crisis that developed for Japanese Mormons because of the Internet. The Internet is an increasingly important source of information in Japan. The Japanese surfer will find that a majority of websites and bulletin boards on Mormonism are either critical or antagonistic toward the Church, giving historical information on Mormonism unfamiliar to most members.
Then Dave continues:
Once again, the Church really shot itself in the foot a few years ago when it made every ward and stake shut down their nascent websites in favor of LDS.org and its numerous subdomains. I call this the “One True Website” model. The flaw is that you end up with One True Hit on a Google search page, along with nine antagonistic sites. If every ward had been allowed to set up and run its own website five years ago, a search for “LDS Church” or “Mormon missionary” or even “Mormon polygamy” might have brought up a cascade of LDS ward sites. With the sudden appearance of several pseudo-official weblogs by COB staffers (such as here, here, and here), I’m guessing they’ve finally realized that what they need is a thousand good LDS sites, not one great one.
Later Dave wrote as an exhortation to all Mormon Bloggers:
Your Mission, Jim
…The message in this analysis to all LDS bloggers should be clear: Your mission is to create searchable, linkable LDS content that comes up on Google searches using LDS search terms…
Considering the news about Jim Engebretsen, see the article Foundation explaining polygamy via the Net… I think that Dave choose the right generic name… “Jim”. So Jim and More Good Foundation move forward and do it!