ABSTRACT
In this book we have journeyed through a process which many religious communities undergo in their negotiation with new forms of technology. I have argued that in order to understand the complexities of this process it is important to go beyond a mere observation of religious communities’ media engagement or debates emerging around current technology. It starts with studying and reflecting upon the history and tradition of the community in order to identify what theological doctrines or social traditions have set the stage for their general position towards media technology. It also requires highlighting the community’s core values and beliefs which shape their contemporary engagement with technology. This provides vital background to contextualize the process of negotiation where community members and leaders must decide what aspects of the technology they will accept, reject, and if need be innovate or reconfigure. Finally, their response and possible reshaping of the technology generates a discourse used to frame the technology in light of community beliefs and practices. This method is described as the religioussocial shaping of technology, a tool for studying religious user communities’ active roles in shaping technology for community-specific needs and desires. In the previous four chapters we have focused in detail each of these four
stages of the religious-social shaping approach to technology. Here we bring these four stages together to consider what can be revealed by applying this method of investigation to a specific case study. Through looking at the history and tradition, core beliefs, negotiation process, and resulting discourse we see that this approach allows researchers to reflect in greater depth on the past, present, and future response of religious communities to new forms of media.
