Digital Theology

The Church in the Digital AgeEM1 Summer School

The Windermere Centre

1. The digital landscape

Interrelated questions

• How do we evaluate the digital landscape theologically?

• How does the digital landscape shape the content of theology?

• How does the digital landscape enable us to engage more effectively with the key theological issues facing us?

2. The theological conversation

The first two theological questions

1. Who is the God we are to love with heart, soul, mind and strength?

2. Who is our neighbour we are to love as we do ourselves?

God-talk

‘The God of Israel, belatedly bodied in Jesus of Nazareth, is our Subject. Such utterance is unsettling, open, freeing, demanding. Such utterance in our time, as in all the times of our mothers and fathers, generates possibilities – public and personal – that are not otherwise doable or thinkable.

‘When this God is uttered, the closed world of a-theism is shattered; those who hear dream dreams and see visions, sense power and receive courage, take up energy for newness where none is offered. It is a lot to expect from an utterance … But it is what our mothers and fathers have long counted on. It is, moreover, more or less what people hope for, even in our great fear that it might come to pass.’

Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope, pp4-5

THEOLOGY AND SUB-VERSION

(Walter Brueggemann, ‘Preaching as Sub-Version’, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope chapter 1)

Sub-Version• vs the Dominant Version• An alternative version of reality that says

another way of life is possible, ‘peculiarly mandated and peculiarly valid’

• Flies low, stays under the radar• Subverts the Dominant Version• Empowers a ‘community of subversives’

to practise their lives according to a different way of imagining

The narrative of violence

‘I suspect that underlying all of these modes of violence is the economic violence embedded in free-market ideology, which denies an obligation of openness to the neighbour who is in truth a deep inconvenience and a drain upon resources’

3 DIMENSIONS OF VIOLENCE

1. Material deprivation

• Fostered by a myth of scarcity• Countered by the practice of sharing

that is rooted in an affirmation of abundance

• Abundance rooted in the generosity of God (cf Mark 6: 30-44)

• Subverts the deep social myth of scarcity

2. Breakdown of connections• Severing of elemental social

relationships• People driven into isolation and then

‘made desperate and frantic’• Covenant: binds the ‘haves’ and

‘have-nots’ into one shared community (Deut 10: 17-19)

• Subverts the ideology of opportunity to live at the expense of others

3. Silencing

• Being vetoed and nullified, with no say in the future of the community or of our own lives

• “He lived alone, kept to himself and never talked to anyone”

• Speech that breaks the silence of violence and the violence of silence (Exodus 2: 23-5/Mark 10: 46-9)

• Psalms of lament, rage, hatred, protest

The Dominant Version

• Thinks that bread must be guarded, and not shared

• Thinks it is everyone for themselves, with no ground for community

• Thinks silence can authenticate the status quo

3. The digital conversation space

1. Generosity and abundance

• It’s there and it’s free• Democratising the web• Open Source• Adding value• Authenticity and vulnerability

2. Connection and community • From a marketplace to a ‘connection

economy’• No boundaries• Voluntary connections• Integration – all aspects of life• Activists use social media – eg

Occupy • Conversation – the name of the

game

3. A space to speak

• Empowering – ‘a voice for the voiceless’

• The power of numbers – everyone counts

• Conversation vs coercion• Connection, community,

conversation

Places to go

• http://www.jrdkirk.com/• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/petere

nns/posts

• http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christianpiatt/posts/

• http://llanvaches.urc.org.uk/kevs-sermons/

• http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/690