Digital Faith

'Digital Faith' is a new module taught by Dr Eric Stoddart, first in semester 2, 2010-2011.

Our lives are increasingly enmeshed in digital technologies in which diverse hopes and fears are placed. There is considerable debate as to the extent to which we are living in a qualititatively different environment; some calling it an information society. The ways in which we receive, process and disseminate data may be changing rapidly but profound questions arise concerning our understanding of one another in many spheres.

The images we select in order to present ourselves on digital platforms are, arguably, more amenable to manipulation than ever before. Our personal boundaries of privacy and disclosure are fluid and not always within our control. Our response to being under surveillance can be at times enthusiastic then highly suspicious and fearful.

Faith communities often have ambivalent relationships with digital technologies. The potential for communicating to diverse audiences with tailored messages can be embraced with careful discrimination or a minimum of forethought. The challenges of being heard amidst the cacophany of cyberspace can be tackled with great sophistication or naive blundering.

This module aims to consider digital technologies from a theological perspective. By examining pre-digital theological approaches to technology students lay the groundwork for then engaging with more recent attempts to articulate Christian responses to digital technologies. Theological perspectives on the digital image and on surveillance are be unpacked in order that students can wrestle with our complex relationship to a digital environment.

Critical questions are asked about the way Christians are using and being shaped by digital technologies. Case studies of mainstream and marginal Christian practice are examined.

Residential Study Week Lectures by Eric Stoddart

• Why do we need to think theologically about digital technologies?
• Is ours an information society and why would it matter to Christians if it were?
• Technologies and the Bible: What we’re inheriting.
• Technology as toys.
• A theology of toys and play.
• Technology as (risky) toys: a theological perspective.
• Religious use of the Internet in the US and UK.

Module Lectures by Eric Stoddart

• "Fuelled by dreams and powered by imagination". (Parts One and Two)
• Borgmann – with an eschatological rather than a nostalgic turn.
• Making Space for Liberative Reform - co-opting Feenberg.
• Digital Technology and Surveillance – Beginning a Theological Appraisal.
• Privacy and Digital Technology – Some Biblical / Theological Allusions.
• "There isn’t much to say about online Christianity" – a rebuttal.
• Virtual church and the order of Melchizedek.