Technology and churches are still big news! The Sunday Times had a front page article called, “Our Father, Lead Us to Tweet, And Forgive the Trespassers.”

Months ago, I blogged about the Trinity Church tweeting the Stations of the Cross. I thought it was the only interesting use of the technology other than for PR folks. Turns out it had some glitches. See, the issue with Twitter is that it’s interactive, and people started tweeting back (and not things like “Amen.”) The church took it in stride and were at least pleased these interactors were paying attention.

This article is the latest in an evidently growing number of articles about religious institutions and technology. (See post below on CyberSynagague.) The uptick has occurred because these institutions are now having to deal with Web 2.0. Do we use Facebook? We’ve signed up for Twitter, but now what? (Which is what everyone else is say too, no?)

The difference for religious institutions broadly is that much of the benefit they provide, particularly these days, is community and fellowship–something that is in direct contradiction to the isolation of digital technology. Individual faiths also have specific issues, such as Muslims’ concerns with being watched by antiterrorist investigators and Catholics’ concerns with message control.

What has happened, though, is what happened with marketing–one by one, each group finds some way to use the technology to further their needs.