Internet and religion in Asia

The return of religion as a topic of theoretical inquiry in the humanities and social sciences has been well documented (Derrida and Vattimo 1998; Hervieu-Leger 1990). The scholarly contributions to this resurgence could be accused of myopia on two counts. First, the overwhelming majority of them focus on the issue of secularism, with “Asia” making an occasional appearance as an added variable in the overarching “metanarrative of social modernization” (Stolow 2005: 122). Relatedly, and this is the other aspect of the myopia, there is the issue of religion’s seeming incommensurability with technology. While scholars of all stripes have acknowledged the importance of new media technologies and digitization on social, economic and cultural life, their impact on religious life has not necessarily been the focus in the “return of religion” discourse.