Study of the relationship between theology and digital technology
Digital theology or cybertheology is the study of the relationship between theology and the digital technology.
| Part of a series on the |
| History of Christian theology |
|---|
 |
 Christianityportal |
Digital theology or cybertheology is the study of the relationship between theology and the digital technology.
In Catholic discourse, the more dominant term has been cybertheology. [1] [2] [3] There has also been the yearly Theocom symposium since 2012 at Santa Clara University, which has explored topics related to theology and digital communications. [4]
In more recent discourse related to digital humanities and digital religion, some scholars have begun to use the term "digital theology." They identify four kinds of digital theology: [5]
They also suggest a fifth aspect of digital theology, which offers a more integrated yet critical use of digital technology in the study of theology and religious belief and practice. [5]
However, as digital theology is a burgeoning field, much of the literature has been critiqued as having a poor understanding of technology and digital culture. [6]
Much of the research on digital theology relates to church communities online. Some studies have explored churches which only have online existence, [7] whereas others explore the relationship between how people connect through online and offline communities. [8] Often the conversation is around the nature of Christian worship and how it changes when in an online format. [9]
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many churches have needed to implement social distancing measures and make choices to run services online. However, these decisions were often made quite haphazardly and for practical reasons, as opposed to more considered choices about the implications of digitizing church services. [10] This has resulted in growing revived discussions around what it means to be a church and what being socially distant and being online does to ecclesiology. [11] [12]
Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective. More narrowly it is the study of the nature of the divine. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind.
Thealogy views divine matters through feminine perspectives including but not limited to feminism. Valerie Saiving, Isaac Bonewits (1976) and Naomi Goldenberg (1979) introduced the concept as a neologism. Its use then widened to mean all feminine ideas of the sacred, which Charlotte Caron usefully explained in 1993: "reflection on the divine in feminine or feminist terms". By 1996, when Melissa Raphael published Thealogy and Embodiment, the term was well established.
Nondenominational Christianity consists of churches, and individual Christians, which typically distance themselves from the confessionalism or creedalism of other Christian communities by not formally aligning with a specific Christian denomination. According to Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center, nondenominational faith leaders typically maintain a biblical worldview at higher percentages than those of other Christian groups.
Miroslav Volf is a Croatian Protestant theologian and public intellectual and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University. He previously taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in his native Osijek, Croatia and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California (1990–1998).
Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
William Eugene Connolly is an American political theorist known for his work on democracy, pluralism, capitalism and climate change. He is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His 1974 work The Terms of Political Discourse won the 1999 Benjamin Lippincott Award.
Elaine L. Graham is the Grosvenor Research Professor at the University of Chester. She was until October 2009 the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester. In March 2014, she was installed as Canon Theologian of Chester Cathedral.
The Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture, or ARC, was founded in October 1961 by three people: Alfred Barr, the art critic and founder of the Museum of Modern Art, the theologian Paul Tillich, and Marvin Halverson, an American Protestant theologian sometime of the Chicago Theological Seminary and the author of a 1951 booklet, Great Religious Paintings. Its aims and program are based on the deep and complex relationship between religion and the arts. Its first board of directors included these three as well as Unitarian Universalist theologian and parish minister, James Luther Adams, principal developer of the merger forming the United Church of Christ, mythologist Joseph Campbell], Truman B. Douglass; Congregationalist parish minister and theologian Amos Wilder, and Stanley Romaine Hopper, theologian and co-founder of the first Theology and Literature program in the United States.
Theo Hobson is a British theologian and author.
Dion Angus Forster is an academic and clergyman. He serves as a professor of Public Theology in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scholars such as Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi jurist and political theorist, who wrote extensively on how to effectively wield political power, used it to denote religious concepts that were secularized and thus became key political concepts. It has often been affiliated with Christianity, but since the 21st century, it has more recently been discussed with relation to other religions.
The terms internet church, online church, cyberchurch, and digital church refer to a wide variety of ways that Christian religious groups can use the internet to facilitate their religious activities, particularly prayer, discussion, preaching and worship services. The internet has become a site for religious experience which has raised questions related to ecclesiology.
Paul David Loup Avis is an English Anglican priest, theologian, and ecumenist. He was General Secretary of the Church of England's Council for Christian Unity from 1998 to 2011, theological consultant to the Anglican Communion Office, London, from 2011 to 2012, and Canon Theologian of Exeter Cathedral from 2008 to 2013. He was honorary professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University 2017–2021 and is currently Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh (2022-). At the University of Exeter he was visiting professor of theology from 2009 to 2017 and subsequently honorary research fellow until 2021. He is the editor of the series Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History, also published by Brill. Avis was also a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, 2008–2017.
Sino-Christian theology is a theological movement in Mainland China and Hong Kong.
Heidi A. Campbell is a professor of communications at Texas A&M University. She is known for her work in digital religion, and studies related to religion and new media.
World Christianity or global Christianity has been defined both as a term that attempts to convey the global nature of the Christian religion and an academic field of study that encompasses analysis of the histories, practices, and discourses of Christianity as a world religion and its various forms as they are found on the six continents. However, the term often focuses on "non-Western Christianity" which "comprises instances of Christian faith in 'the global South', in Asia, Africa, and Latin America." It also includes Indigenous or diasporic forms of Christianity in the Caribbean, South America, Western Europe, and North America.
Digital religion is the practice of religion in the digital world, and the academic study of such religious practice.
Graham Joseph Hill is an Australian theologian who is a former associate professor of the University of Divinity. Since 2024, he works as a mission catalyst for the Uniting Church in NSW & ACT and a research associate with the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, MA, USA. Hill is the author or editor of 15 theological books. Hill's research focuses on World Christianity but he is also known for his work on biblical egalitarianism and women theologians of global Christianity. He has published in the areas of missiology, applied theology, Christianity spirituality, and global and ecumenical approaches to missional ecclesiology.
Gregory Price Grieve is an American historian of religions, academic and researcher. He is a Professor and Head of the Religious Studies Department at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Kim E. Power is an Australian academic, feminist theologian and church historian, who was a co-founder of the Golding Centre for Women's History, Theology and Spirituality at the Australian Catholic University.
 | This Christian theology article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |