AtlantaSaints.com is a group of Christian men, women and children who meet for worship in their homes. Neil Carter is a teacher and website designer who is a member of this group who blogs. Contact Neil Carter.

Michael Van Dam is Director of Communication at Christian Brothers Investment Services.

Steven Waldman co-founded and served as editor-in-chief of Beliefnet before becoming senior adviser to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He is the author of Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty.

Read a June 30, 2007, New York Times story about the intersection of social networking sites and religion.

Read a March 4, 2009, Personal Tech column from The New York Times on dealing with the anxiety created by the deluge of emails.

An October 2009 Religion News Service story, posted at Crosswalk.com, discusses the issuing of a “digital fast,” and it includes links to columns by Christian leaders discussing the pros and cons of social networking.

Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this National Public Radio story from March 2009.

Observing a “fast” from Facebook and Twitter and even email is becoming a popular spiritual practice — at Lent, for example — as shown by this Star-Ledger story from March 2009.

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI also cautioned that if “virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence, and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.”