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In the early 16th century, Martin Luther, assisted by enterprising printers unhandicapped by copyright laws, swamped the market with five pamphlets for every one put out by his Catholic opponents. Other Protestant writers poured out their own flood of sermons, treatises, polemics and devotional writings. For more than three decades Protestants dominated the recently invented printing press. By the time the Catholic authorities found a way to use the new medium to their own advantage, the religious landscape of Europe had been utterly and irreversibly transformed.

The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web as a source of information, a venue for publishing, and a forum for dialogue now defines libraries nearly as much as the more familiar milieu of printed texts. The technological dimensions of this shift are less intriguing than the cultural ones. And from where I sit, the developments are a decidedly mixed blessing.

A few years ago a technology consultant told a group of seminary deans and presidents that computer-based information technology is like a fast-moving train. “It doesn’t matter whether you are in first class or third class, but it is essential that you get on the train.” One of the deans commented, “Now I know what it feels like to be a ticketless hobo riding the rods.”

Churches with Web sites and pastors using e-mail are praising how the electronic media keeps them in touch and enriches congregational life, a recent foundation-funded study discovered. But in a good news–bad news scenario, the authors of a separate survey warn that having a Web site designed chiefly to attract newcomers to the brick-and-mortar site is worse than having no Internet presence at all.