Preaching Through The Media

Date

July 20, 2011

Post by

arZan

Category

India | News

Last month, a senior Vatican official said that Catholic bloggers are an extraordinary reality in the life of the church. As if acknowledging the power and reach of the new social media, the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, last week to send his first tweet, announcing the inauguration of a news portal.

Like their counterparts in the West, India’s globe-trotting spiritual gurus have embraced social media to reach their disciples. Followers of spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in 78 countries can watch and listen to their leader’s satsangs through webcasts. The organisation uses Skype, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter to help devotees interact regularly with their guru. Other groups have been using the Internet and SMS services to send out community news and information on prayer services and yoga sessions. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar explains the inseparability of technology and spirituality when he says: Technology has made the world into a global village, spirituality has made it into a family.

……

Freyan Bhathena, editor of the new Parsi newspaper, Parsi Times, said that their small community dispersed across the world relied on social media to stay together. Earlier this week, when their apex community trust, the Bombay Parsi Punchayet held elections to choose a trustee, these new channels of communication were put to maximum use. “When counting of votes were going on, it was surprising to see many community members in Australia and United States following the timeline of events,” said Bhathena.

Entire article here

2 Comments

  1. dr.arnavaz m havewala

    i know about sri sri ravi shankar’s tech-savvy ways.he has superb systems in place and uses latest technologies to reach out far and wide.

    the question is, why dont we have some erudite religious leaders on-line?
    why cant our vada dasturjis have a blog?
    i think, maybe, they are worried about negative publicity and adverse comments…and they are justified, if our criss-crossing emails are anything to go by..(especially at the time of the recent b.p.p.elections.

    I WISH—OH- I SO DEARLY WISH— we had a blog administered by a religious scholar.
    i am sure all our kids would love to post their queries, and get some answers.

  2. dr.arnavaz m havewala

    i know about sri sri ravi shankar’s tech-savvy ways.he has superb systems in place and uses latest technologies to reach out far and wide.

    the question is, why dont we have some erudite religious leaders on-line?
    why cant our vada dasturjis have a blog?
    i think, maybe, they are worried about negative publicity and adverse comments…and they are justified, if our criss-crossing emails are anything to go by..(especially at the time of the recent b.p.p.elections.

    I WISH—OH- I SO DEARLY WISH— we had a blog administered by a religious scholar.
    i am sure all our kids would love to post their queries, and get some answers.