Steve Goddard, co-editor of Ship of Fools, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's marketing programme, The Message on Friday 12 May, on the subject of the Internet and religious community. The presenter was Alex Brodie, and also in the studio were Fr. Phil Sumner, a priest from inner-city Manchester, and Richard Denton, a former BBC producer for religious programmes. The following is an edited transcript of part of the programme.

GODDARD: Our shipmates.

BRODIE: OK, what did that poll tell you?

GODDARD: It told us that 44 per cent of those who filled in the questionnaire throughout the course of that week could see the day coming when Ship of Fools could become their church.

BRODIE: What do you mean, "become their church"? It's a website!

GODDARD: Well, it's a community, and people have missed the point about the way people on the web interrelate one to another. People find discussion, they find commitment to one another – we know that through the number of marriages that happen – but they also find prayer. A lot of our shipmates end up praying for each other through this virtual medium. Now it comes to a point when you say, well, is this now replacing something that they are not finding in their locality?

BRODIE: So you believe that they are actually rejecting their local church, local community, be it a religious one or whatever, in favour of tapping out on a screen and...

GODDARD: They are open to the opportunity and they are open to the discussion of that.

BRODIE: Why? Why do you think that is?

GODDARD: I think it's because they find this gathering of like minds. Put it from my point of view. I find maybe a handful of people in the town where I live who I feel very close to, theologically or ideas-wise. Suddenly, out of the Net, there are little pockets of these people, five or six in a town, who genuinely do get on, are interested in the same things. Consequently, a community is built, and that's what has happened. We haven't set out to become a church, we're not going to become a church at this point. We're open to the opportunity of discussion.

BRODIE: Well, also with me I have Father Phil Sumner, who does believe in community, and not the virtual sort I suspect, Phil. He's a priest in the Moss Side area of Manchester. Also Richard Denton, who's been involved in religious broadcasting for many years, former editor of BBC Religion's Everyman series, he's now head of documentaries at the production company, Planet Wild. Father Phil Sumner, how do you define community? Do you define it in any way like Stephen does?

SUMNER: There have to be some elements there that are similar, and I'm glad to hear that people are talking about using the Net as a first stage, and coming eventually into some sort of real community. But, my concern with what Stephen is saying is that there can be too much choice, too much picking and choosing. Because there is so much alienation from the mainline churches at the moment, people are much more going into new age where there is a lot of eclecticism, a lot of picking and choosing...

BRODIE: Pick and mix religion.

SUMNER: And I think this is another part of it. It can be all too easy where you choose the sort of God you want to worship at the end of the day, whether that God is real or not.

BRODIE: But you work in a difficult area of Manchester, you work in the community. Can you do that sort of work in a virtual manner, as Stephen's Ship of Fools seems to suggest?

SUMNER: Well, the amazing thing about Moss Side, in terms of the skills analysis of the area, is that there are a lot of people who are able to use the Net. So in fact, in our area, you perhaps could do something of a starting process, for those who are already alienated, and bringing them into the community. But if it just stops there...

BRODIE: But what Stephen seems to be saying is that it's instead of something geographical and real and physical.

SUMNER: Yeah, there has to be the geographical first, but the trouble is that the geographical is letting them down in so many places and that's why there is a need, that's why there is so much alienation.

BRODIE: Richard Denton, from I suspect a non-religious perspective, what do you make of all this talk of community, what does it say about our notions of community?

DENTON: What does it say? I mean, perhaps despite or even because of my background in religious broadcasting, I come without a religion, and my feeling about Ship of Fools is that the sooner it sinks the better. But I think the problem here is the question of community. I mean I think our sense of geographical community is going, and I don't think the Internet community is any kind of replacement for it. I mean, yes, religion gets a lot of hits on the Internet, and so does pornography, probably for much the same reason. So I think religion has tended to appeal to sad, lonely, inadequate people, and the Internet is a very good way of trawling precisely that congregation. I think its great shame that people are using the Internet as a community, when the communities we need to be occupying are the communities we live in. We know who lives in Number 10 Downing Street, but we haven't a clue who lives in number 10 in our own street.

BRODIE: But you accept the thesis, do you, that it is right to use this word "community" about what is going on on the Internet?

DENTON: I think virtual community isn't a community any more than virtual reality is reality.

GODDARD: I'm not saying that Ship of Fools should remain only a virtual community. The inevitable result of meeting on the Net is a desire to meet physically. So we now have a number of Crew Meets, as they've become known, of shipmates who decided they wanted to meet these people who they've been discussing a lot of things with, praying with, even. And so we end up in pubs all over the country, and a sign put up in the corner saying Ship of Fools, and suddenly you are meeting this person that you've discussed things with, for maybe months. And there's now a holiday planned for July in Derbyshire, where a whole load more people will come together for the first time.

BRODIE: It sounds to me as if – I mean using the terminology "crewmates" and all this sort of thing – you're trying extremely hard here, aren't you, to create something?

GODDARD: Not at all, not at all. Two of us sat down and said, let's have some fun, and that fun has resulted in 400,000 hits a month.

BRODIE: What does that actually mean, a hit?

GODDARD: A hit is a page view, one page is viewed.

BRODIE: So you could open the page up and say, oh my God, no, and go away?

DENTON: I hit quite a lot of religious websites in my time, but not with any great joy, I have to say.

GODDARD: I would say that that boils down to about 12-15,000 individual people a month, coming on the site.

BRODIE: Phil, do you think people who do this partially do it because they like the anonymity and that they actually fear crossing the threshold of a church, or community centre, or whatever?

SUMNER: I think the problem is that it's virtual and almost risk-free, whereas religion, almost of its nature, demands risk – it demands a cross in there somewhere. Incarnational theology, getting inside a community, being a part of it, is all a part of what faith is about. Now I don't believe you can do that in a virtual, risk-free way.

Later in the programme...

DENTON: I've visited some of these sites, and frankly they're no more than invitations to partake in psychotic states of hearing voices and seeing visions – and there is no guidance. I think it's very dangerous stuff and given, as I said, the fact that a lot of these people are quite sad and lonely people, sitting at home, not really capable of reacting with other people in the real world, living in the virtual world...

GODDARD: These are huge presumptions, huge presumptions. There are these sad people in anoraks... we still have this caricature, and it amazes me. I think we're going to laugh at this conversation in 10 or 20 years time, because I'm sure 50 years ago people said all these sad people are tuning into television sets in the corner of their room, they should be out there on the playing fields. Or maybe further back, they said the same about people listening to wirelesses. I mean, the Internet is going to become as normal to everybody as every other medium as it came in. So, I think it's –

DENTON: How much time do you spend on the Internet yourself?

GODDARD: Work-wise or leisure-wise?

DENTON: Well, either, really. I mean the fact of the matter is I was invited to look at some of these websites and it took me nearly four hours of wandering around to try and find anything. I mean, four incredibly wasted hours of time, sitting in front of a computer doing this. At least if you watch television, there is a guide, there are intelligent...

GODDARD: But that's the exciting thing about it.

BRODIE: ... informed people putting across what is going on and actually guiding you through things.

GODDARD: Of course, but I think the thing is, the choice is brilliant and I think the content – if you go to the right sites and you know what you're looking for – is good. And to say that therefore you have to be an anorak who is sad just amazes me.

BRODIE: One thing about which there is no doubt, is the huge number of people who do visit religious websites. As Lavinia Byrne pointed out, religion comes third after sex and medicine. Perhaps the attraction though isn't religion so much, as the spiritual, the other-worldly, not so much exodus as X-files, Richard? I mean you've made numerous television documentaries about pick'n'mix religion.

DENTON: Yes, we made programmes about alien abductees, spiritualism, and so on, and they were hugely popular. And that's part of what I'm saying. I think there's a huge hunger for something. I don't think formal religion will satisfy it. Formal religion offers rather childish and simplistic answers, and I think science offers rather sterile, even if accurate, answers. But what there isn't is a decent intellectual debate between those two extremes. And certainly the Web isn't offering it.

GODDARD: You obviously have not gone to sites which –

DENTON: I haven't the time – I spent four hours doing it the other night, it's just –

GODDARD: You can't just spend four hours! You're obviously not brought up on the Net. My son at 16 walks and breathes it, with an hour or two here and there on the Web. Four hours –

DENTON: I think he'd be better off getting a life, really.

GODDARD: Well this is typical reactionary stuff of people who were born before the revolution.

DENTON: I'm not ashamed to be a reactionary on this one.

GODDARD: Fine, fine. But don't expect people to take your views too seriously.

© Ship of Fools 2000