Early users of book-binding and the Gutenberg printing press, Christians have always kept up with communications technology so it’s not a surprise that Christian social networking has taken off as the latest way to connect with believers outside of church walls. Tangle is one popular site.

Candles are lit with the click of a mouse. Prayers are tapped out on laptop keyboards. Preachers share the Gospel and choirs sing hymns, all broadcast over six-by-four inch video players.

This is the world of Tangle, a social network for Christians launched this year with about 600,000 users across the globe and 250 in Chicago, including churches, pastors, musicians and lay people. In many ways, this is today’s televangelism, where churches, and even the Vatican, use digital technology and the Web to connect with Christians outside of the four walls of a sanctuary.

“This is a way to enrich people,” said Walter Bohorquez, who serves as the pastor of El Taller Del Maestro, a Spanish-speaking interdenominational church on Chicago’s North Side. “Maybe they go into tough times and want to light a candle at home or give a testimony online.”

Research suggests that Christians—to say nothing of other faiths—are hyper-users of the Internet and are, at various levels, begging for the Web to be an outlet of belief as much as it is one of interaction and networking.

“You can put your message out there. When you share that testimony, it could be helping others,” said Bohorquez, who considers Tangle a positive example of how the Internet can be used to strengthen the worldwide Christian community—and perhaps reach a wider audience that is not currently engaged.

Like Tangle’s secular counterparts Facebook and MySpace, Christian social networking attempts to recreate face-to-face interactions. Users can make friends and share conversations—electronically. But while online piety extends the scope of Christian ministry (even the Pope has a Facebook application), many pastors say the Internet is a good tool to supplement, not replace, real-world church activity.

Christians’ use of social networks fits with their history of adopting new communication technologies early on, according to Stewart Hoover, the head of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

“The evangelical impulse in Christianity means (for most Christians) that they are always on the lookout for new ways to spread the good news (whether that is about salvation or about social justice) and the digital realm is just the latest of these ways,” Hoover said by email.

Bohorquez first began using Tangle when it was a video-sharing site called GodTube, itself a take on YouTube. Seeing greater potential for Tangle, its developers expanded it into a social network, where members register, make profiles and share videos, photos, blog entries and prayers with each other.

About a quarter of Christians with computers watch online videos, nearly the same portion as the population overall, the Barna Group, a Christian research firm, reported last year. Tangle executives attribute the success of their video-based site to viral marketing in the increasingly Internet-savvy Christian community.

“The reality is that people are experiencing their faith in new ways now; I mean, I’ve got a Bible on my iPhone,” said Trey Bowles, Tangle’s vice president of marketing. “The great thing about the Internet is that it expands what’s possible. We love the fact that the Internet is out there and that we can create a faith-based and family-friendly environment.”

Many churches invite members to pencil out prayer requests on slips of paper, collected in offering trays or slipped into wooden boxes for church leaders to read over. Tangle translates this practice into the digital realm with its message-board-style prayer wall.

More than 100,000 prayers have been posted on its virtual wall. They range from short and—“I pray for love. Simple, all consuming, love”—to much more involved prayers for specific people, mission trips, overdue bills and health problems.

“I think it’s a great idea, the wall of faith, “Bohorquez said. “You can know there’s always people watching. I believe the Lord knows those petitions.”

Tangle is more restrictive than most mainstream sites; it screens all video content for taste and tone before it goes live. Not allowed are gory and vulgar videos or mean-spirited comments. And administrators of the site also secure permission from Christian record labels before posting songs by artists such as Third Day and Lifehouse. The most popular video on the site, depicting a father competing in a triathlon with his son, who has cerebral palsy, has reached more than 14.7 million views.

Still, Bohorquez and Rev. Luis Ruiz, both leaders of Spanish-speaking congregations in Chicago and members of the Tangle site, insist that it comes second to their local church activities. Bohorquez and Ruiz, pastor of Southwest Side church Iglesia Rios de Agua Viva, both quoted Psalm 133, which in part reads, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!”

According to a 2004 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, people who use the Internet for faith-related reasons rely on their churches for more traditional religious activities while using the Internet to explore their personal spirituality.

Ruiz sees online videos and networks as a way to reach out to the sick and others who can’t make it to church, just like when he relied on televised church services when he spent 13 days in the hospital for an appendectomy several years ago.

“It may have a place for shut-ins, but the real thing is Psalm 133,” Ruiz said. “I think that the reason Jesus came is to be personal and real.”

T.J. and Shamane Milan travel the country with their Christian rap production company Kingdomentality Ministries, so they can’t attend a single church regularly at their home in Irving, Tex., outside Dallas. Instead, the couple goes from church to church and finds religious community online.

They post and watch music videos on dozens of social networking sites. Shamane rattles off the list, starting with the faith-based ones: Tangle, Faith It Up, Christian.com, Jesus TV, Christian Family Tube and JC Faith. With all their online accounts to keep up with, the Milans are on Tangle two or three times a week, responding to messages from fans.

“Music is a very influential arena to be in,” Sharmane said. “You must, as a gospel rapper, put the gospel in your music.”

Their most recent video, titled “By Faith,” draws on the recent financial spiral and encourages Christians to turn to God during difficult times.

“The economy was a huge inspiration to our music,” she said. “We must do what the Bible says, ‘Keep the brothers in remembrance,’ so we are reminding people we are to walk by faith and not by sight.”

Don Albert, a 46-year-old Chicagoan considers it his calling to share the Good News watch capitalization; above you have in lower case….through video production. His career follows popular technology, starting in Christian television 20 years ago and continuing today with Tangle and YouTube. Albert also helps with video presentations at his church, Park Community in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.

“It’s powerful,” said Albert, who works for Comcast Sportsnet and also produces EverlastingLove TV, a Christian talk show on cable access. “The media is powerful and it’s very influential, and there’s a bigger audience on the Internet and TV and film and movies.”

Although Albert has uploaded 76 videos to the Tangle site, he doesn’t spend much time actually connecting with others on the site. Despite his activity on the site, he lists just five official Tangle friends.

“I’m not as much a viewer of Tangle than a contributor,” he said.

Many registered users browse or upload videos without participating in the interactive elements of Tangle. Much like Albert, local Christian comedian Sally Edwards, 44, uses the site as a marketing tool. She joined Tangle in February and uploaded clips from her comedy shows, where she tells jokes about motherhood, dances on stage and gets audience members up on stage….But she hasn’t logged on to the site since.

“I don’t actively do it,” Edwards acknowledged. She prefers YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as ways to keep in touch with fellow comedians and corporate clients.

Hundreds of other Tangle users create a profile and, apparently, aren’t motivated to return, despite e-mail updates from the site twice a week.

“That’s true on any of the social networking sites,” said Bowles, who heads Tangle’s marketing efforts. “We’re working on giving them reasons to come back.”

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Tags: Chicago, Christianity, church, Dallas, Internet, social networking

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