When a priest was killed in the rectory of Mother Seton Roman Catholic Church in Germantown, Md., last June, grieving church members turned to each other and to the Internet for support and the latest news about the investigation and funeral arrangements. While the Maryland case is surely unusual, the notion of a religious community looking to the Web as a source of information is not. A new study finds more congregations are going online. There are about 336,000 places of worship in the country, according to the study.
Some churches use the Web to reach out to teen-agers or to connect with people overseas.
Eight in 10 sites encourage visitors to attend services, and more than 75 percent of sites post sermons, mission statements and links to religious information. About half of the congregations that responded to the survey provide schedules, meeting minutes and other such internal news, the study found. E-mail this story to a friend. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the expressed written consent of the Lexington Herald-Leader is prohibited.