ABSTRACT

This book examines the current use of digital media in religious engagement and how new media can influence and alter faith and spirituality. As technologies are introduced and improved, they continue to raise pressing questions about the impact, both positive and negative, that they have on the lives of those that use them. The book also deals with some of the more futuristic and speculative topics related to transhumanism and digitalization.

Including an international group of contributors from a variety of disciplines, chapters address the intersection of religion and digital media from multiple perspectives. Divided into two sections, the chapters included in the first section of the book present case studies from five major religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism and their engagement with digitalization. The second section of the volume explores the moral, ideological but also ontological implications of our increasingly digital lives.

This book provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the development of religion and spirituality in the digital age. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Digital Religion, Religion and Media, Religion and Sociology, as well as Religious Studies and New Media more generally, but also for every student interested in the future of religion and spirituality in a completely digitalized world.

part I|86 pages

Religious practices in the age of digitalization

chapter 1|12 pages

Islam and new media

Islam has entered the chat

chapter 4|14 pages

Hinduism and new media

Identities being deconstructed and constructed

chapter 6|14 pages

Networked individuals

The virtual reality of the sabbath in twenty-first century American Judaism

chapter 7|11 pages

Robots, religion and communication

Rethinking piety, practices and pedagogy in the era of artificial intelligence

part II|84 pages

Religious and spiritual hopes in the digital turn

chapter 8|16 pages

Technology: the new God?

Techno-metaphysics and homo deus: contemporary attempts towards a radical perspective on the digital change of religion

chapter 10|16 pages

Is transhumanism a religion?

chapter 13|10 pages

Experience and information

Thoughts on spirituality in a time of information flooding

chapter |11 pages

Outlook

Digital religion and (dis-)embodiment