The emergence of digital and internet technologies has created new spaces for religious engagement and introduced alternative venues for community-building, identity construction, and religious practice for marginalized new religions. Ethnographic research on the Family International’s reconfiguration as an online community, subsequent to a sweeping reorganization introduced in 2010 referred to as “the Reboot,” explores the role its integration of digital media and virtual spaces played in the renegotiation of the movement’s religious identity and community. The movement’s journey to networked community affords insights into transformative ways that religious culture may be reconstituted through digital engagement, and the challenges new religious movements face in retaining community boundaries and distinctive identity within the interconnected and increasingly globalized context of today’s digitized world.

Since its founding in 1968, The Family International (TFI) has been an important case study for social science investigation of new religious movements. Its persistence and adaptive organizational development throughout the world, in spite of periodically strong social opposition, initially suggested a long and increasingly stable career ahead. However, in 2009, TFI leaders announced a dramatic shift in belief, practice, and organization, which they termed The Reboot. As a consequence, most of the structures and previous functioning of TFI as a visible organization have been dismantled, leading to questions about the group’s future viability. This article summarizes the changes that have taken place, suggests some of the reasons for these, and assesses TFI’s prospects for continued existence in the new form it has assumed.