Religion‐Online.org, a free, full‐text religion website, was created in 1997 to fill the void of religion resources available in developing countries. Rev. William F. Fore, PhD, founded Religion‐Online.org when he was teaching at United Theological College in Bangalore, India and discovered that books were nearly impossible to obtain and very few religious websites provided the text of materials. Fortunately, Rev. Fore had a variety of experiences in television, teaching, and publication including serving as editor‐at‐large of Christian Century,. which provided valuable background to engage in such an endeavor.
Religion‐Online.org contains over 6,000 articles and unpublished papers, speeches, book chapters, and over 200 entire books. A sampling of the articles included found most were originally published in Christian Century to which Rev. Fore has editorial connections. Many of the 200 books were written well prior to 1980 with many between the 1950s and 1970s. For each included item, copyright permission has been obtained, is believed to be expired, or the book is out of print. However, at least one item had the text “Book removed at the request of publisher” underneath the document title.
Religion‐Online.org may be browsed or searched. The site opens to a page that lists 14 main categories such as the Bible, Theology, Practical Theology, Social Issues, and Churches and Society. Each main category has multiple sub‐categories listed underneath. For example, Authority of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, and Bible Commentary are listed under the main category of the Bible. When a sub‐category is selected, links to articles in that category display in a numbered, alphabetical list. Unlike many alphabetical lists, this list does not drop the initial article which causes the article “A Christological Hermeneutic” to appear before the article “Approach and Avoidance”. The number of articles in each sub‐category varies from a few dozen to several hundred. For example, the sub‐category Bible commentary has over 600 articles that are listed in alphabetical order rather than being further sub‐divided by book of the Bible or another tool such as liturgical season.
In addition to browsing by subject, Religion‐Online.org offers an index by author and an index by category. The index by author is an alphabetical list of all included authors with the document appearing next to their name. If an author has multiple items in this site, their name appears multiple times. The index by category is an alphabetical list of all categories used with specific papers, book chapters, and other document types listed under each category in alphabetical order. Religion‐Online.org also offers a Book List that provides an alphabetical list of the over 200 full‐text books included in the collection. Each of these resources consists of one long webpage that may be searched only by using the find function within an internet browser. These pages would be much more useful if alphabetical hyperlinks were available to allow users to jump to a specific portion of the page.
The search capabilities available in Religion‐Online.org are rudimentary. A Search Religion‐Online link appears near the top of the site. This link provides a page with a single search box providing keyword searching only and does not provide an option for phrase searching or Boolean searching. The instructions included on this page mention multiple search boxes indicating that a more advanced search capacity had previously been available. In addition to this search box, a Google search box is provided which contains the necessary text to complete a site search. This provides a much more robust search experience, as phrase searching and Boolean searching are possible.
Rev. Fore is to be commended for identifying an information need for religion scholars in the developing world and his work in putting this site together. Claremont School of Theology sponsors the site by assisting with providing the internet service and other operational costs. Most of the work has been done by group of ten volunteers who have lovingly and painstakingly keyed in the included texts. However, the volunteer work has created some minor problems such as exact publication information and pagination not being included or items being entered twice.
Religion‐Online.org is recommended with reservations. Academic and public libraries in the developed world most likely already have access to Christian Century in another, more robust full‐text database which would also contain exact publication data and have access to a fuller, more up‐to‐date collection of religion books. Very remote public libraries or ministers without access to a library may find the resource useful. Religion‐Online.org remains most beneficial to the original audience for whom Rev. Fore designed the resource.
