When Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, they entered the German zeitgeist with seemingly supernatural speed. The printing press, which decades earlier had carried the Holy Bible to the masses, now brought them Luther's heresies. When technology cuts the cost of spreading the word, strange things happen.
Potentates grow insecure and marginal dissenters feel their oats.
Monoliths splinter and the splinter groups splinter again. The Internet, which pushes the cost of spreading the word down near zero, could carry this atomizing trend to unplumbed depths. Out on the fringe of the World Wide Web, beyond mainstream religion, storefront preachers and offbeat theologies are springing up like mushrooms. The growing smorgasbord of upstart religious movements ranges from earnest, even plausible, efforts at finding a new creed for a new era to theologies that could be described as, um, eccentric. In the latter group is, for example, the Aquarian Concepts Community Divine New Order Government.