There was a reasonably long slot on this. The general line was that "On Wednesday the General Synod will receive a report examining the ethical & spiritual implications of …the Internet. Cybernauts Awake has taken 3 years to produce, but many people say it is already out of date, and only tells us what we already know"
The actual coverage was quite sensible, pointing out the wide range of religious websites from one dedicated to the Gospel songs of Elvis to the Vatican and Christian Aid (also used for fundraising). It agreed that there is a dark side, claiming that 10% of the websites are pornographic and that 70% of all traffic is related to them (this is now untrue - most of the web use is mainstream commercial by now).
A writer called Andrew Brown was produced to describe the report as "just completely ridiculous...ridiculous, it is full of flannel" and to say of Add a Cyber-Stone or two "I think this is a completely absurd idea, the last thing the world needs is another website. There are 750M websites already. It’s like saying all Christians should have bumper stickers, you use the car for other things." To be fair he may have some constructive comments which were cut, so I've emailed him to ask if he has anything contructive to say. (Not a lot - he thinks the report raises important issues, but is "bathetic". To be fair though, he is described in Nature as one who 'writes like an angel' and his comment on Dawkins' birth "The good fairy gave him good looks, intelligence, charm, and a chair at Oxford specially endowed for him. The bad fairy studied him for a while and said: `Give him a gift for metaphor.' " is a gem.)
They also came up with the examples of Falung Gong whose UK head was 'coverted' to this over the Internet, where he could download all the information for free (a salutary demonstration of the power of the web for evangelisation - there are Christian sites where you can download it all for free as well) and with "Alyson Leslie, a Scottish Management Consultant, who set up The Cyberspace Church 18 months ago. Run by volunteers, it offers devotional materials and Christian Music. 500 people a day visit the web church. For Alison we are way beyond asking questions like what is the net and what are its ethical implications. The real issue is how it could be used to best effect." (I couldn't find the site on Altavista or NorthernLights - but there is a US equivalent, but the BBC sent the URL). {As I suspected, she is not really that simplistic: she has emailed to say that she hasn't read the book but will try to comment in due course.).
We understand that they have no objection to our posting the whole clip on RealAudio so we'll do so as soon as we can.