Abstract
This article explores the relationship between communication technology and religion. While previous research has focused on how religious institutions and individuals use digital media, this article emphasizes the religious feelings digital media seem to invoke, with examples like the Jesus Phone or Kopimism. This is explained using theories from Religious Studies. Borrowing from Durkheim, digital media are examined as “sacred” and as “profane”. It is suggested that digital media can be both sacred and profane because hypermodern societies have sanctified the profane. More specifically, hypermodern societies have “killed” god and replaced it with the human, with everybody. It is then digital media—a tool that is meant to be owned by everybody and represent everybody—that take the place of the divine. This tool then, because it connects and communicates human needs and everyday thoughts (and not despite that), inspires feelings of awe and sanctity, even as we use it for the most profane activities.
Highlights
From Apes to AppsA viral video of a crow using a tool to slide on a roof for fun inspires curiosity and fear: after all, using tools has allowed humans to achieve more than what our bodies allowed us.Unlike other predators, we did not survive using our fangs or claws: we survived using spears and writings
Individuals and social institutions such as the school, the family, the government, and the church.Religion: The field study that focused on digital media and religious ideas and AnofOverview institution is conceptualized as “Digital Religion”, and it explores the “evolution of religious
The study of religion is engaged with many questions, which mainly stem from the question, “what is religion?” For the purposes of this investigation, it is helpful to understand what religion is if we claim that digital media invoke religious feelings
Summary
A viral video of a crow using a tool to slide on a roof for fun inspires curiosity and fear: after all, using tools has allowed humans to achieve more than what our bodies allowed us. Writing about the telegraph, Carey notes that: This new technology entered American discussions not as a mundane fact but as divinely inspired for the purposes of spreading the Christian message farther and faster, eclipsing time and transcending space, saving the heathen, bringing closer and making more probable the day of salvation. In these cases, either explicitly or implicitly, the technology itself is revered and sancIt This seems easy to understand why religious institutions and communities will sanctify tified. Is especially imporIt seems easy to understand why religious institutions and It communities will sanctify tant when we consider potential ethical consequences of such relationships The rest of this a technology in order to spread their messages. Fore, the section focuses first on reviewing previous research on digital technology and religion overall; followed by a review of religious theories that might help to explain
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