ABSTRACT
It has been suggested that the religious media is the least effective form of media, as the narrative is now controlled not by religious organisations, but rather by mainstream media and popular culture. Alongside this, there is the view that the Internet and new media would lead to a loss of religious institutional authority, as it would result in a digital Protestant Reformation. In this chapter, we highlight that this is not the case, and show that at each step of the way Christian communities have been early adopters of technology and that in each instance institutional authority from the offline world has been reflected online. To highlight this, we explore the practice of Christian blogging and the uptake of social media by Pentecostal Churches in Australia with the advent of Web 2.0 that has seen the development of religious celebrities in the form of pastor-preneurs.
