Networked Theology (Engaging Culture)

Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture

Heidi A. Campbell, Stephen Garner, Dyrness, William A., Johnston, Robert, William A. Dyrness, Robert Johnston

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780801049149
• eBook ISBN: 9781493404391
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

2018 Clifford G. Christians Ethics Research Award

This informed theology of communication and media analyzes how we consume new media and technologies and discusses the impact on our social and religious lives. Combining expertise in religion online, theology, and technology, the authors synthesize scholarly work on religion and the internet for a nonspecialist audience. They show that both media studies and theology offer important resources for helping Christians engage in a thoughtful and faith-based critical evaluation of the effect of new media technologies on society, our lives, and the church.

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theology of technology 101

Understanding the Relationship between Theology and Technology

We begin our exploration of networked theology by exploring the historical and contemporary dialogue between technology and theology within the context of the Christian church. We argue that if technology and new media are the environments in which we find ourselves, it is important to consider how we might faithfully engage with these areas and the ways they are shaping us. Theology of technology is an area of study that has sought to offer theological reflection on the history and development of technology. This chapter unpacks the relationship between technology and the Christian church in order to provide a theological context to discuss how the emergence of digital technologies can and should draw on a long tradition of ethical reflection. We begin this introduction to a theology of technology by looking at how technology has been defined, some different ways the church has negotiated with technology and media, and common Christian responses to technology. This, in turn, will lead to further discussion in later chapters as to what is an appropriate response to technology and media in network society, where we are increasingly wrapped in media.

Defining Technology

Searching for a single, concise definition of technology can prove problematic. Etymologically the term originates in the Indo-European stem tekhn-, which is connected to woodworking and seen in the Greek term technē, meaning “art,” “craft,” or “skill.” The latter goes beyond working with material things and includes manipulating concepts and language, such as forms of writing and speaking (like rhetoric) or particular intellectual disciplines or ways of thinking. In Latin, texere related first to weaving and later to construction or fabrication. By the eighteenth century the term had begun to narrow in definition; it excluded the broad range of artistic endeavors and instead focused on the application of science, particularly with respect to practical mechanics.1

This shift to focusing on mechanisms and mechanics has led to a common definition of technology as tools or machines. As David Hopper puts it, technology is concerned with the human community creating and inventing assorted tools, machines, and mechanisms to manipulate and exploit the natural world. Furthermore, technological application influences not only creation but also the human community, shaping the rhythms of everyday life.2 Such a definition of technology is consistent with the familiar understanding, which David Pullinger expresses, “that society develops the technology it needs and then uses it to produce goods and services for the creation of wealth and for human culture to flourish. Needs and wishes come first, and then technology simply fulfils them.”3 Thus, we need shelter, so we develop forms of clothing and housing; we need stable food sources, so we develop agriculture; and we desire to communicate over a longer distance than we can shout, so we develop semaphore, the telegraph, and radio. This way of looking at technology is linked with the augmentation of human abilities such as mobility, communication, and thinking.

This predominant view of technology as mechanism, mechanics, and applied practical knowledge reduces technology primarily to an instrument, seeing it simply as a tool to accomplish specific tasks. This parallels the way that media have typically been viewed. Peter Horsfield notes that this approach to media as tools or instruments started in the 1920s with the development of mass media, which aimed to address large, broad audiences through cinema, radio, and newspapers. Attempts to understand the power of media and how they shaped society led to ways of looking at media so that they (and their effects) might be measured in linear, cause-and-effect models.4 More recently, though, both technology and media have been seen to possess more than just an instrumental nature. Media technology is understood to include epistemological and sociological dimensions, which combine with the instrumental to create a view of technology that is complex and dynamic.

Looking at technology primarily as a tool to achieve some human goal, typically by transcending the natural abilities of human beings, is one of three interwoven perspectives that Susan White identifies in her examination of the interplay between technology and Christian worship.5 First, technology can be seen as artifacts produced by manufacturing processes, whether a computer, pen, fire, chemical compound, or software system. This is perhaps the most common way of thinking about technology. The second view sees technology as describing not so much the manufactured artifacts as the processes and structures needed to produce these things. Various kinds of human skills and techniques combine with the manufacturing infrastructure to comprise technology. The third way to look at technology is to see it as the cultural structures that provide the inclination and motivation to support the technological systems—becoming a pervasive “technoculture.” White argues that these three views interpenetrate each other to create a vision of technology as a “sociotechnical system in which hardware, technique, and a particular ideological frame of reference combine to aid in the pursuit of essentially pragmatic ends, generally associated with the augmentation of human capabilities.”6

This approach implies that technology is inherently connected to and embedded within human culture and values, with a particular emphasis on the achievement of pragmatic ends. Similar views to this are reflected in Ian Barbour’s definition of technology as “the application of organized knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems of people and machines”7 and Rudi Volti’s opinion that technology is “a system based on the application of knowledge, manifested in physical objects and organizational forms, for the attainment of specific goals.”8 However, while emphasis is often placed on practical, purposeful definitions of technology, such definitions are not exclusive. For example, technologist Kevin Kelly argues that while technology might start with the experience of the human condition and also with scientific method, it exists to allow human beings to pursue novelty and experience.9 Thus, technology becomes a way of understanding ourselves and the world and bringing something new into existence simply because it can and might be done, even as a spiritual exercise.

Similarly, the instrumental approach has tended to dominate definitions of media. As noted previously, this view of media as instruments or tools dates back to the rise of interest in mass media in the 1920s, when newspapers, film, and radio were engaging large audiences.10 Questions around how this affected populations, say, with respect to political or commercial interests, led to a desire to see media as something that could be controlled and targeted. Thus, media, and particularly mass media, were reduced to simple and mechanical communication processes or channels that functioned in predictable ways.

This limited way of understanding media was challenged toward the end of the twentieth century as questions were asked of media that the instrumental models could not fully answer. For example, what is the relationship between violence in media and violence in society? What other forms of mediated communication outside of mass media have societies used? And do media really possess a value-neutral character? The outcome of this line of questioning is that media may be seen not only as processes or tools but also in terms of how an entire society or culture exists in a space of constant mediation of information, ideas, behaviors, and values through a variety of media. According to Horsfield, this contextual view, with its attention to cultural processes, understands media “not as instruments carrying a fixed message but as sites where construction, negotiation, and reconstruction of cultural meaning takes place in an ongoing process of maintenance and change of cultural structures, relationships, meanings, and values.”11

Both the instrumental and cultural approaches to media benefit when they are used together. The instrumental approach is useful in posing questions about the effects of communicating a message, while the cultural approach shapes questions about the societal environment that the process is located within. As with technology, media are simultaneously tools and environments.

Bridging between Technology and Media Technologies

White’s and Horsfield’s definitions above alert us to the fact that technology and media are multifaceted entities involving, as Stephen Monsma notes, anthropological, sociological, and epistemological dimensions.12 For example, an anthropological approach might ask if certain facets of a technology can be seen as inherent parts, and thus defining marks, of human beings, individually and communally. Here human beings are first and foremost homo faber, makers or creators in their very nature. Sociologically, we might go beyond the concepts of technology and media as manufactured items, a human attribute, or a distinct body of knowledge to see technology as an all-encompassing force within modern society. We might also consider technology as a special form of knowledge, useful to those who want to investigate how knowledge is transferred within or between communities, or to compare different bodies of knowledge (such as methodologies) present in different communities.

Monsma picks up these three dimensions in his theological perspective on technology, where he sees technology as a key human cultural activity, born from human beings as culture creators.13 Human beings create “integrated patterns of human behavior,” and technology is integrated into a web of relationships that permeate human existence, including religious beliefs, customs, and institutions. As we shall see later in this chapter, one example of this is the written word or book, which moves beyond just being a technological artifact into shaping religious and cultural life in various historical contexts. On the other hand, limiting technology merely to one of many human cultural activities can obscure the role of technology in vertical relationships—that is, relationships between humanity and the divine. Technological activity might in fact be seen as a response to God’s call. Not only that, but by asserting that technology is the defining mark of humanity, other human distinctives may be obscured. For Monsma, “God calls his children as his image bearers to be formers of culture. As such we purposefully take what is given in God’s creation and creatively form it into art, language, laws, social mores, societal institutions—and technological tools and products.”14

Bringing all these strands together provides us with a definition of technology, and in particular media technology, which we will focus on in this book. Technology is, first and foremost, a human activity that is carried out within the context provided by God for human beings to exercise their creativity and agency. This definition possesses both the aspects of pragmatism, seen in problem solving and transforming the natural world, and the aspects of novelty and a human creative trajectory. It recognizes that technology has a significant sociocultural dimension—it is human technology—that wraps it in a network of relationships, values, and histories and makes technology dynamic, shaped by and shaping the various feedback loops that exist within that network. Technology includes the artifacts that are produced and the special knowledge and processes that produce those artifacts, as well as the people, practices, and values in a particular time and place. Technology in this way is the environment in which we live.

What this means for how we think about technology and media is that we cannot simply reflect theologically upon the most visible artifacts in the wider technology system. Rather, we must be concerned with the human elements, such as what human activities are served or prevented, what values are implicitly or explicitly present, how technology functions as part of the context of human existence, and the history of communities’ negotiation with human creativity, which has a strong pragmatic direction. With this in mind, we now turn to look at how Christianity has negotiated the place of technology in human history.

Historical Negotiation with Technology

Christianity is one of the three major world religions, along with Judaism and Islam, whose adherents are sometimes called the People of the Book. For the Christian church, identity and faith are shaped by interaction with the Christian Bible, which is composed of the Hebrew Scriptures and the later Christian writings known as the New or Second Testament. The Bible itself can be seen as a tangible expression of technology and media in that it is typically a human-created physical artifact (though other mediated representations are possible) that has been produced by special knowledge. The Bible’s form and content, as well as the form and shape of the Christian community, are influenced by distinct social and cultural environments.

While people may not consider Christianity and technology deeply connected in their everyday world, the Bible provides a useful example of how Christianity has been negotiating with technology and media throughout its history. This negotiation is interwoven with disputes over how technology and media should or should not interact with the faith and the ways that technology and media development in wider society have shaped Christianity. This constant negotiation is important to recognize because the way Christianity and other faiths respond to new technologies and media is often predicated on how they responded to technologies and media in the past. In the following section we will discuss specific negotiations with technology—from the oral and written media traditions to contemporary media—through the history of Christianity.

From Oral Traditions to Books and Codices

The early Christian church negotiated between the oral tradition of the day and the written literate traditions also present in that society. Jesus of Nazareth was a skilled and effective orator who, in the Gospels, displays a rabbinic model of teaching based on oral storytelling, discussion, and debate. He identified himself with the poor and the oppressed and used oral forms such as parables to communicate with them, yet he drew on a comprehensive knowledge and interpretation of Jewish sacred written t...

Table of contents

• cover
• series page
• title page
• copyright page
• dedication
• contents
• acknowledgments
• introduction
• 1. theology of technology 101
• 2. new media theory 101
• 3. networked religion
• 4. merging the network with theology
• 5. developing a faith-based community response to new media
• 6. engaging appropriately with technology and media
• bibliography
• notes
• index
• back cover