Digital Religion

Digital Religion offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and new media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of new media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. From cell phones and video games to blogs and Second Life, the book: provides a detailed review of major topics includes a series of case studies to illustrate and elucidate the thematic explorations considers the theoretical, ethical and theological issues raised. Drawing together the work of experts from key disciplinary perspectives, Digital Religion is invaluable for students wanting to develop a deeper understanding of the field.

This book offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and digital media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of digital media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. From mobile apps and video games to virtual reality and social media, the book: • provides a detailed review of major topics including ritual, identity, community, authority, and embodiment; • includes a series of engaging case studies to illustrate and elucidate the thematic explorations; • considers the theoretical, ethical, and theological issues raised. This unique volume draws together the work of experts from key disciplinary perspectives and is the go-to volume for students and scholars wanting to develop a deeper understanding of the subject area. Thoroughly updated throughout with new case studies and in-depth analysis of recent scholarship and developments, this new edition provides a comprehensive overview of this fast-paced, constantly developing, and fascinating field.

This book offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and digital media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of digital media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. This unique volume draws together the work of experts from key disciplinary perspectives and is the go-to volume for students and scholars wanting to develop a deeper understanding of the subject area.

Digital Religion: The Basics explores how digital media and internet platforms are transforming religious practice in a digital age and the impact this has had on religious culture in contemporary society. Through exploring six defining characteristics of how religion is acted out online, including multisite reality, convergence practice, networked community, storied identity, shifting authority, and experiential authenticity, the book considers how digital religion both shapes, and is influenced by, religion offline. Questions asked include: How is religion being performed and reimagined through digital media and cultures? In what ways do the practices of religion online merge or correspond with shifts in perspective taking place in offline religious practice? How do the key findings of religion online reflect broader social, cultural, and structural practices observed within mobile, networked society? With case studies and further readings, Digital Religion: The Basics is a must-read for students wanting to come to grips with how religion is changing and experienced through digital media.

Building from a range of essays representing multiple fields of expertise and traversing multiple religious traditions, this important text provides analytic rigor to a question now pressing the academic study of religion: what is the relationship between the material and the digital? Its chapters address a range of processes of mediation between the digital and the material from a variety of perspectives and sub-disciplines within the field of religion in order to theorize the implications of these two turns in scholarship, offer case studies in methodology, and reflect on various tools and processes. Authors attend to religious practices and the internet, digital archives of religion, decolonization, embodiment, digitization of religious artefacts and objects, and the ways in which varied relationships between the digital and the material shape religious life. Collectively, the volume demonstrates opportunities and challenges at the intersection of digital humanities and material religion. Rather than defining the bounds of a new field of inquiry, the essays make a compelling case, collectively and on their own, for the interpretive scrutiny required of the humanities in the digital age.

This concise volume offers an introduction to religion and the digital arts that is thematically organized around traditional religious categories such as ritual and myth paired with corresponding digital categories such as code and avatars.

The Handbook of Religion and Society is the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of a vital force in the world today. It is an indispensable resource for scholars, students, policy makers, and other professionals seeking to understand the role of religion in society. This includes both the social forces that shape religion and the social consequences of religion. This handbook captures the breadth and depth of contemporary work in the field, and shows readers important future directions for scholarship. Among the emerging topics covered in the handbook are biological functioning, organizational innovation, digital religion, spirituality, atheism, and transnationalism. The relationship of religion to other significant social institutions like work and entrepreneurship, science, and sport is also analyzed. Specific attention is paid, where appropriate, to international issues as well as to race, class, sexuality, and gender differences. This handbook includes 27 chapters by a distinguished, diverse, and international collection of experts, organized into 6 major sections: religion and social institutions; religious organization; family, life course, and individual change; difference and inequality; political and legal processes; and globalization and transnationalism.

This anthology - the first of its kind in eight years - collects some of the best and most current research and reflection on the complex interactions between religion and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The contributions cohere around the central question: how will core religious understandings of identity, community and authority shape and be (re)shaped by the communicative possibilities of Web 2.0? The authors gathered here address these questions in three distinct ways: through contemporary empirical research on how diverse traditions across the globe seek to take up the technologies and affordances of contemporary CMC; through investigations that place these contemporary developments in larger historical and theological contexts; and through careful reflection on the theoretical dimensions of research on religion and CMC. In their introductory and concluding essays, the editors uncover and articulate the larger intersections and patterns suggested by individual chapters, including trajectories for future research.