Assignment Zero

1. Open-Source Journalism: It's a Lot Tougher Than You Think

2. Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book

3. Stock Waves: Citizen Photo Journalists Are Changing the Rules

4. Q&A: Your Assignment: Art

5. Design Within Reach: Architecture for Humanity Builds the Future of Housing

6. Q&A: The Experts at the Periphery

7. News the Crowd Can Use

8. Q&A: Exploring the Dark Side of Crowdsourcing

9. Forty Strangers in a Virtual Room Talk About Religion

10. Q&A: What Does Crowdsourcing Really Mean?

11. Q&A: Using Crowd Power for R&D

12. Q&A: Crowdsourcing Soccer in the U.K.

Editor's Note: This story is reprinted from Assignment Zero, an experiment in open-source, pro-am journalism produced in collaboration with Wired News. This week, we'll be republishing a selection of Assignment Zero stories on the topic of "crowdsourcing." All in all, Assignment Zero produced 80 stories, essays and interviews about crowdsourcing; we're reprinting 12 of the best. The stories appear here exactly as Assignment Zero produced them. They have not been edited for facts or style.

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Reported by: Sarah Alfaham, Robert Alper, Sarah Arthur, Wayne E. Baker, Craig Bamsey, Shelley Bates, Jeff Beamsley, Sofia Begg, J. Brent Bill, Stephanie Birch, John Melvin Bricker, Joe Carson, David Cohn, Marcy Jeffree Corneil, David Crumm, John Emmert, Victoria Hart Gaskell, Cynthia Hernandez, John Hile, Geri Larkin, Lisa Gray Lion, Gail Katz, Kathy Macdonald, Gregg Mann, Karen Masters, Torrey Meeks, L.A. Millinger, Tim Moran, David Myers, Joseph Naujokas, Michelle Poblette, Cait Ramshaw, L.E. Rayburn, Beckie Supiano, Chris Warner-Carey, Anna Wood.

Written by: David Crumm*

An Adventure in Opening the Ultimate Source

Open. Source. Religion.

They're timeless spiritual terms, but somehow, as a three-word phrase, it doesn't trip off the tongue as easily as those prayers we've known since childhood.

But, for six weeks, 40 brave volunteers from across the U.S. met in a special online forum "Open Source Religion," to talk about their deepest beliefs; along the way, their respectful curiosity wound up defying the old warning about never discussing religion with strangers. This was reported in three phases. For part one, two or three — go here and scroll down to the appropriate section.

What, exactly, is open source religion? It's the cutting edge of individual spirituality that's thriving outside the walls of organized religion. It's a historic shift in power and authority from religious leadership to the consumer-oriented adherents of religious movements.

The volunteers ranged from atheists to evangelicals, Methodists to Muslims, young students to aging scholars. As their emails crisscrossed the continent, the forum members moved from exploring their own spiritual yearnings to talking honestly about their anxieties over religious conflict in the world.

"As the emails started coming from all these different participants, it was so exciting to see all the different viewpoints. I had never been involved in anything like this forum and I really appreciated it," Gail Katz, a vice president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, said as the online forum wrapped up.

Katz now is so convinced of the value of this kind of online discussion that she plans to extend a similar opportunity to women in Michigan. In July, Katz and a number of her Christian, Muslim and Jewish friends from across southeast Michigan are hosting a four-hour informational meeting for women who want to form international email networks of religious women promoting peace.

"My Jewish faith is very important to me, but what gives me the most spiritual energy these days is connecting people across religious and cultural boundaries," Katz said.

That's the nearly universal motive that attracted the participants–who took pains to point out that they're hardly a random cross section of the U.S. population.

But what emerged from the discussions is strong evidence that there's real energy behind open source religion: People are eager to express their most sacred insights within emerging grassroots crowds that are forming around the world.

There's solid sociological data behind this observation. It comes from multiple waves of World Values Surveys, analyzed by University of Michigan sociologist Wayne E. Baker, who also joined our forum. Baker wrote about this in his 2006 book, "America's Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception." As Baker sorted out the data, he showed that religious values are very strong and widespread across America. Americans rank with traditionalist countries around the world, places like Pakistan, in the strength of our religious values. But Americans also are almost off the chart in another powerful value – our desire for individual self-expression. (We rank with Scandinavia on that scale.)

So, faith matters deeply to us – but the reality of open source religion is that we, as Americans, expect to be able to crack open the doors of religion and chart our own individual meaningful journeys through the resources and traditions we find there.

What we discover is sometimes spiritually surprising.

That's the creative inspiration that led an agnostic grad student from New York City to suddenly spot spiritual parallels between his own religious training, years before, and a graduation ceremony he was attending recently.

"The calling of names, one by one, so people can be applauded by friends and family, receive a certificate and walk off the stage again. Oh my gosh! It was my Bar Mitzvah all over again, I realized," wrote New Yorker David Cohn.

Dozens of participants reported that, as they began to think about open source religion over the past six weeks, they began to spot a host of spiritual possibilities right in front of them. That's what led Mel Bricker, a retired United Methodist minister in San Francisco, to look up one day at the faces of his fellow subway passengers and discover, "There were moments of delight and joy in their eyes." That insight was more inspirational to him, he reported, than an art exhibit he'd just attended, expecting to file a report from the museum for the forum.

Florida participant Cait Ramshaw said she picked up more helpful spiritual lessons from a one-day visit to Disney World, where she took notes for the open source religion team, than she ever expected when she rolled into the parking lot that morning.

It's all there in dozens of emails accumulated by the team since mid-April.

Team members did point out real dangers in throwing open the doors of religious tradition. For instance, more than a few people asked: If our Ultimate Source is open to everyone's interpretation, then how can we trust that the timeless tradition won't change?

We never answered that question, but did discover there's value simply in the asking.