Ecclesiology for a Digital Church: Theological Reflections on a New Normal

By SCM Press

What are the ecclesiological challenges and opportunities raised by technology? How have developments related to the COVID-19 global health crisis impacted churches, forcing a swift move to mediated and online worship? And how will this change the shape churches of theological and programmatic choices for years to come?

Drawing together a diverse group of theologians and media scholars, this volume considers the key theological question churches and religious leaders need to engage with as they look towards long term strategies involving church life and technology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Feb 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9780334061618

Book preview

Ecclesiology for a Digital Church

Ecclesiology for a Digital Church

Edited by

Heidi A. Campbell and John Dyer

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© Editor and Contributors 2021

Published in 2022 by SCM Press

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Contents

Contributors

Introduction: What does a Conversation on Digital Ecclesiology Look Like?

Heidi A. Campbell and John Dyer

Part 1: Theorizing the Digital Church

1. Exploring Mediated Ekklesia: How We Talk about Church in the Digital Age

John Dyer

2. The Church’s Online Presence and Ecclesial Communion: Virtual or Real?

Anthony Le Duc

3. A Practical Challenge to Ecclesiology and Self-Understanding of the Christian Churches

Paul A. Soukup SJ

4. A Few New Things Under the Sun: A Sacramental Approach to Digital Ecclesiology

Katherine G. Schmidt

Part 2: Learning from the Online Shift

5. Understandings of the Church as Revealed in Quarantine: Reimagining the People of God

Heidi A. Campbell

6. Digital Communication as Theological Productivity in a Participatory Church ‘For and With All’: Empirical Insights and Ecclesiological Reflection

Thomas Schlag and Sabrina Müller

7. Locked Down but Not Locked Out: An African Perspective on Pentecostalism and Media in a Pandemic Era

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu

8. Lockdown Ecclesiologies: The Limits and Possibilities of Enforced Online First Expressions

Steve Taylor

Part 3: New Digital Practices for the Future Church

9. Digital Technology and Mediating the Pneuma in Church Outreach

Bala A. Musa and Boye-Nelson Kiamu

10. Liturgy as Persuasive Technology: Exploring Liturgical Practices in Online Worship

Jonas Kurlberg

11. Ecclesiology of ‘Do Not Stop Them’: Children, Creativity and Connection

Kate Ott

12. Beyond the Live and Zoomiverse: Recognizing Opportunities for Spiritual Connection Outside Live Preaching/Church

Philip Butler

Conclusion: Themes of the Digitized Church

Heidi A. Campbell and John Dyer

Contributors

Anthony Le Duc, SVD, PhD is a Vietnamese American Catholic priest in the Society of the Divine Word. In addition to teaching at Lux Mundi National Seminary of Thailand, he is the executive director of the Asian Research Center for Religion and Social Communication, St John’s University, Thailand, and the editor-in-chief of its scholarly journal, Religion and Social Communication.

Bala A. Musa (PhD, Regent University) is Professor of Communication Studies at Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA; and Visiting Professor, Olusegun Obasanjo Center for African Studies (OOCAS), National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Abuja, Nigeria. He serves on the editorial boards of many academic journals. His research interests include media ethics, media and pop culture, digital media and religious communication, communication and national development, communication and conflict management, among others. He is editor of Nollywood in Glocal Perspective (Palgrave-Macmillan), among others.

Boye-Nelson Kiamu is a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary, Azusa, CA. His research interests include new media, social media and missiology, postmodern culture and theology, among others.

Heidi A. Campbell is Professor of Communication and Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University and director of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies (http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu). She is the author of over 100 articles on digital religion that involve studying the intersection between religious practices online and offline. She is also author of ten books, including When Religion Meets New Media (2010), Digital Religion (2013 and 2021), Networked Theology (2016) and Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority (2021).

John Dyer (PhD, Durham University) is a VP and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. After a 20-year career as a web developer, his research in digital religion has focused on digital Bibles and the role of programmers in shaping religious behaviours.

J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu is Baëta-Grau Professor of African Christianity and Pentecostal Theology and the President of Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Ghana.

Jonas Kurlberg is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Digital Theology, Durham University, the Programme Director of the MA in Digital Theology, Spurgeon’s College, and the convenor of the Global Network for Digital Theology. He is the author of Christian Modernism in an Age of Totalitarianism: T. S. Eliot, Karl Mannheim and the Moot (Bloomsbury, 2019) and has co-edited Missio Dei in a Digital Age (SCM Press, 2020).

Kate Ott is a feminist ethicist addressing the formation of moral communities. She is author of Christian Ethics for a Digital Society and Sex + Faith: Talking with Your Child from Birth to Adolescence. She lectures and leads workshops on technology and sexuality for teens, young adults, parents and religious educators.

Katherine G. Schmidt is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Molloy College, New York. She is the author of Virtual Communion: Theology of the Internet and the Catholic Sacramental Imagination.

Paul A. Soukup, SJ, has explored connections between communication and theology since 1982. He teaches in the Communication Department at Santa Clara University and serves as convener of the Theocom conferences, which bring theologians and communication scholars together to reflect on the challenges posed to the Church by new media.

Philip Butler is Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.

Sabrina Müller is the Managing Director of the University Research Priority Program ‘Digital Religion(s)’ and lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of Zurich. Her recent research is about religious experiences, digital theology and church development.

Steve Taylor is Director of AngelWings Ltd, New Zealand and Senior Lecturer at Flinders University, Australia. Born in Papua New Guinea, he is the author of First Expressions: Innovation and the Mission of God (2019), Built for Change (2016) and The Out of Bounds Church? (2005).

Thomas Schlag is Professor for Practical Theology at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Zurich. He is head of the Centre for Church Development (ZKE) and director of the University Research Priority Program ‘Digital Religion(s)’.

Introduction: What Does a Conversation on Digital Ecclesiology Look Like?

HEIDI A. CAMPBELL AND JOHN DYER

This book project started for both of us in March 2020. At the time, Heidi found herself in Germany as a visiting fellow at a research institute just as Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic. As a scholar who has studied the impact of the internet on religious communities for nearly 25 years, she was interested to watch how churches, whom just a few weeks previously could have been described as technologically resistant, quickly embraced the internet for religious worship. The same internet that was once viewed with suspicion became the answer to social-distancing policies and community lockdowns that resulted in bans on most church gatherings. John was still in Texas where even the many churches that had previously experimented with live streaming were nevertheless unprepared both technologically and theologically to move entirely online.

Due to our respective expertise in theology and technology, we both found ourselves quickly drawn into conversations with ministers and church leaders, online and offline. Many asked for our advice on the best practices for using technology for online worship and the potential implications of their media choices on their members. As more and more online worship services filled our Facebook feeds each Sunday, we began to wonder what the shift from face to face to online services might mean for the future of the Church. Could churches return to just offline forms of gathering after the pandemic? What would church look like if social distancing became the long-term ‘new normal’? Would expressions of faith increasingly become mediated or hybridized as part of these shifts?

It was in the midst of these circumstances and questions that this project emerged. The online innovations and experimentations that happened around the world starting in March and April 2020 were a unique moment for those of us passionate about bringing deeper theological reflection to church media technology use. As a media scholar with training in theology, Heidi felt it was vital to capture the questions being asked and technological responses emerging, and to provoke a conversation on the theological implications invoked by the decisions being made. As a technology expert turned theologian, John noticed that communities were using a variety of technologies without having the time to process the social and theological implications of each medium.

Over the first six months of the pandemic, we each had conversations with many of our colleagues working in the area of digital theology, an emerging area of discourse that explores multiple ethical and ecclesiological questions around the use of technology for the Church. A common thread surfacing out of these conversations were the potential theological implications of the technological decision-making that churches moving from offline to online had to make. Both of us began thinking out loud on these issues in tweets, Facebook comment and blog posts. An email conversation in May 2020 led to the realization that there was a need to gather these insights dealing with a theology of technology bubbling up online. We both saw an opportunity to collect these conversations and this wisdom in a central space in order to identify the common areas of concern, dominant technology strategies used and the missional justifications behind them.

While digital theology and digital ecclesiology are increasingly becoming areas of debate and conversation within theological contexts, such as the Society of Biblical Literature, and in academic journals such as the Journal of Practical Theology, to date there are no in-depth books that focus solely on either of these topics.

The theme of digital ecclesiology was first explored in depth, in academic terms, in a special issue of the journal Ecclesial Practices on digital ecclesiology, for which Heidi served as a guest editor. Prophetically, it appeared in print in April 2020. It showcased six ethnographic studies conducted by theologians and media scholars from the USA, Germany and the UK investigating how churches were using the internet and how media use raises questions about church denominational structures and theological identities. We draw on that research for our defining the term digital ecclesiology, and the specific themes such a conversation provokes and conveys.

Also, to date there is little in-depth reflection that focuses primarily on theological concerns related to church praxis and ecclesial identity in relation to issues raised by the global coronavirus pandemic. The exception to this is two ebooks released by Heidi in 2020. In April 2020, The Distanced Church: Reflections on Doing Church Online (2020b) presented essays from pastors and media scholars, including John, on their initial reactions to the opportunities and challenges of using the internet to move worship online in the early days of the pandemic. In August 2020, Heidi also published Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation (2020a) as a first step towards identifying the theological concerns that scholars have begun to identify and take note of, in relation to how newly adopted digital practice might inform church liturgy, practice and ecclesial identity. This volume highlights a number of key themes which are explored in great depth below.

What is Digital Ecclesiology?

Ecclesiology, as the study of the Church and theological discourse used to explore the nature and structure of the Christian Church, is a well-established field of study within theology. It has been careful to observe how cultural changes impact the work and structure of the Church. Yet while it has recognized that media technologies are increasingly playing a prominent role in church practices, and digital media can play a vital role in studying church work (that is, work of discussion within the emerging area of ‘Ecclesiology and Ethnography’ studies), very little systematic and concentrated attention has been given to how integration of digital technology in church ministry and worship may have broader theological implications. In the past few years, digital ecclesiology has become a trendy term used in conference talks and online discussions about church and technology. Yet for the most part it remains a vague concept. Campbell attempted to offer an explanation of this emerging area in the journal Ecclesial Practices, stating:

Taken together we can see some common themes surfacing through this inquiry. Digital Ecclesiology is a phrase used by individuals to reflect on the strategies used and motivations behind churches negotiation with digital media. It points to the need to unmask the cultural and theological conceptions that lie behind different definitions of church and assumptions about technology. The idea of a digital ecclesiology invites a robust conversation about what the theology of the church should look like in a digital age. Specifically it asks church leaders and theologians to consider what factors should inform choices related to technology use in liturgy, worship and mission, and also carefully reflect on how such decision-making might transform or support established church traditions. (Campbell 2020c, p. 2)

This emphasizes that digital ecclesiology creates a space to recognize how the environment of the Church is becoming increasingly embedded with digital technologies. Members’ engagement with and expectations of the Church are also being informed by their experiences of living in a highly technologized and mediated space. These social conditions are shaping congregations’ engagement and public understanding of church praxis in ways that raise significant theological challenges. Digital ecclesiology recognizes the need to take seriously the digital age we live in and the cultural values it cultivates that are filtering into church culture. It is in this understanding we further suggest here that digital ecclesiology is a concept which creates a space for identifying the key theological understanding of the nature and structure of the Christian Church as it engages with technologies and digital cultures. Various Christian institutions negotiate these questions differently based on their traditions, practices and history, but the pandemic created a levelling effect where every church had to engage in these questions at some level at the same time.

So, what is digital ecclesiology? Simply put, it is the study of the structure and practices of the Church in online or digitally enhanced contexts, and the theological implications of the online–offline or hybrid church experiences this creates. Or as Heidi states in her introduction to Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation, it is the recognition ‘that technology decision-making by religious groups cultivates distinctive theological models, which can inform or change the way people conceive of the Church’ (2020a, p. 4).

And yet, while every church had to make choices about how to move online, digital ecclesiology is focused on more than simply discussing current trends and practices of doing church online or the best practices in using digital platforms for worship. Digital ecclesiology is not a ‘how to’ for church online, nor is it about debates such as the authenticity of virtual communion or community in online religious platforms. Instead, we argue that attention needs to be given to how use of technology cultivates distinctive theological models that can inform or change the way people conceive of and engage as the Church.

Whereas most pastors and church leaders have been primarily focused on the pragmatic aspects of implementing technology for worship and creating mediated gatherings and hybrid worship events, there has been comparatively little reflection on the long-term implications of how their choices to use technology might shape or redirect their church’s religious identity.

The purpose of Ecclesiology for a Digital Church is to address the broader and deeper ecclesiological issues and questions that are emerging from churches’ digital experimentation with technologically-mediated worship during the pandemic lockdowns. This collection also presents theological thinking and resources that can help prepare churches to move into the ‘new normal’ that promises to be increasingly dependent on mediated spaces and technologies. This book seeks to highlight important insights and research on the theological and ecclesiological issues surrounding church use and response to digital technology and culture. The overall aim is to allow our authors to consider what the future of religion might look like in light of the social, cultural and religious changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic and the proliferation of online worship services during that time. Essays also address the potential challenges current trends may raise for church groups in how they live out their mission and community focus in the days and years ahead.

The way forward

This book brings together a collection of essays from 16 theologians and religious media scholars from around the world who have each been writing on issues of theology, ecclesiology and the Church in digital culture for five or more years. The authors were strategically chosen to spotlight theological work from Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States, and represent individuals from both Protestant and Catholic traditions. Conscious efforts have been made to incorporate a variety of theological voices including a mix of established theologians and emerging scholars, a balance of female and male authors, and making sure half of the contributors represent the Global South and/or minority voices from the West that are often excluded or overlooked in contemporary theological discourses. The result is a diverse collection of essays where scholars draw on their research on digital culture, ethics and theology and bring it into conversation with ecclesial developments and trends emerging due to the Covid-19 global pandemic.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part re-examines traditional vocabulary and understandings of digital church. The second section explores specific examples of ecclesiological shifts during the pandemic. The final section looks to the future of the Church in the digital age, offering insight and recommendations for a way forward.

In the first part, ‘Theorizing the Digital Church’, four of our authors reconsider the traditional categories of ecclesiology and explore how they are challenged and newly understood in the digital era. Early conversations about church online had centred around what was ‘real’ and debated what was possible or proper online, but this group of authors argue that all mediated interactions are ‘real’ and yet each medium creates new questions and opportunities for Christians to deepen their understanding of the meaning of church.

In Chapter 1, John Dyer explores the ways in which technology can function as a bridge between the traditional concepts of the local and the universal Church. He also develops a vocabulary for speaking clearly about different forms of mediated church such as one-way broadcasts, multi-way video conferencing, and spatially oriented virtual reality platforms, each of which expands the number of people whom the Church can reach, but also validates the need for in-person meetings when possible. From the other side of the world and a different ecclesiological context, Anthony Le Duc explores the concepts of communion and presence in the online world in Chapter 2, arguing that negative portrayals of ‘virtual’ presence are neither helpful nor accurate. Le Duc draws on examples of ‘missionary creativity’ in Thailand to show how online ministries can be an important form of presence especially in times of need. In Chapter 3, Paul Soukup draws together insights from his work in communication theory to explore how different church traditions interpreted the affordances offered by online technology. He argues that the model of Christ as ‘perfect communicator’ can function as a complement and correction to our ideals about digital technology. In Chapter 4, the final chapter of this section, Roman Catholic theologian Katherine Schmidt introduces readers to approaching questions of digital ecclesiology through a sacramental lens. She draws an analogy between the changes introduced in the Second Vatican Council as a response to cultural movements in the middle of the twentieth century, and the way the Church must respond to today’s digital culture.

In the second part of the book, ‘Learning from the Online Shift’, five of our authors offer deeper reflections on theology and practice during the pandemic. In Chapter 5, Heidi Campbell draws on nearly 25 years of studying the formation of online communities and the ways they tend to understand themselves and other communities. She compares the New Testament metaphor of