If you’ve recently moved to a new town or converted to a new religion, you probably know that finding a place to practice your faith can be difficult. Here’s where the Internet comes in; whether you’re trying to find Baptist churches, Jewish synagogues or Hindu temples, the Web can help you out. Here’s a guide to the best of the online resources for finding places of worship.
There literally are dozens of sites for finding
Christian churches; unfortunately, most of them aren’t really comprehensive enough to be useful. Our favorite is
Churches dot Net. It’s great-looking, global and offers thousands of entries. Unfortunately, it only includes churches with websites; for others, you’re best off using
Church Profiles, with hundreds of entries organized by state in an easy-to-use directory. Also worth a look is
Church Online, which covers both the United States and Canada and features churches of such hard-to-find denominations as Wesleyans and Vineyards.
Trying to find a
Jewish synagogue?
Reform Judaism offers the excellent
Directory of UAHC Congregations, with almost 900 entries from around the country. Conservative Jews should check out the
USCJ’s Guide to Synagogues, with listings for hundreds of Conservative places of worship.
If you’re
Muslim, you can find an excellent list of
Masjid Addresses in the United States. It’s a simple, text-based directory of contact information for literally thousands of Islamic communities throughout the United States. It also offers a useful guide to
Prayer Times for locations throughout the world.
Hindus can take advantage of
Hindunet's Temple and Ashram Directories, with directories to websites of dozens of American temples. And Buddhists should check out
Buddhist InfoWeb’s collection of directories for a wide variety of sects, or e-mail the American Buddhist Congress for a list of more than 1,800 affiliated organizations.
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