Network for New Media, Religion & Digital Culture Studies publishes third eBook, Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation
Digital Religions Publications, an imprint of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies, announces the publication of its third eBook, Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation. This eBook is the second of three planned books to explores questions raised for churches by the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers a set of 11 essay where authors from 7 countries reflect on the culture of the church revealed through moving from offline to online worship, and the nature of religious community that unfolded during the pandemic.
Since March of this year, people have had to adapt to a new socially distanced version of our world. This move also forced a shift for churches to increasingly engage and be dependent on technology due to limits placed on face- to- face gathering. This created unique challenges for churches across the world, as many need to use the internet as central to their mission the first time ever. The events have given rise to an interdisciplinary conversation on the long-term theological implications of this digital shift.
This project is compiled by Dr. Heidi A Campbell, professor of communication at Texas A&M University and director of the Network for New Media, Religion, and Digital Culture Studies. Her first eBook, The Distanced Church, offered testimonials and advice from pastors and researcher who study digital religion on how to deal with the practical and theological challenged were churches were being faced with as they moved online.  Dr. Campbell saw a need for a follow-up book from this initial project, which addressed in greater depth the ecclesiological questions raised by churches embrace of digital media and culture. As she argues in her previous, a church’s technological choices have often unforeseen theological implications for faith communities. This book asks each contributor to identify core questions and issues about the nature to the Church raised by digital media negotiations.
Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation offers insights from seminary teachers, media scholars and experts on the church from around the world including Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. Each essays discusses from the author’s unique cultural contexts, and how technology use requires churches to re-imagine the purpose and future of the Church. They offer theological response from both Catholic and Protestant viewpoints, in order to consider broadly to what this period of online worship has and will mean for the Church as a whole.
This edited collection is offered as a free eBook available in PDF form and ePub and versions as of August 13, 2020 online at: https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/inserthandle. All versions can be downloaded freely via the OakTrust Repository, hosted by Texas A&M University Libraries.
Heidi A Campbell is available for interviews related to this book and her research on Digital Religion studies. She can be contacted via email at heidic@tamu.edu or through her research assistant at sophie.osteen@tamu.edu.