The Digital Evangelicals

The Digital Evangelicals
Author: Travis Warren Cooper
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0253062276

When it comes to evangelical Christianity, the internet is both a refuge and a threat. It hosts Zoom prayer groups and pornographic videos, religious revolutions and silly cat videos. Platforms such as social media, podcasts, blogs, and digital Bibles all constitute new arenas for debate about social and religious boundaries, theological and ecclesial orthodoxy, and the internet's inherent danger and value. In The Digital Evangelicals, Travis Warren Cooper locates evangelicalism as a media event rather than as a coherent religious tradition by focusing on the intertwined narratives of evangelical Christianity and emerging digital culture in the United States. He focuses on two dominant media traditions: media sincerity, immediate and direct interpersonal communication, and media promiscuity, communication with the primary goal of extending the Christian community regardless of physical distance. Cooper, whose work is informed by ethnographic fieldwork, traces these conflicting paradigms from the Protestant Reformation through the rise of the digital and argues that the tension is culminating in a crisis of evangelical authority. What counts as authentic interaction? Who has authority over the circulation of information? While many studies claim that technology influences religion, The Digital Evangelicals reveals how Protestant metaphors and discourses shaped the emergence of the internet and explores what this relationship with global new media means for evangelicalism.

Redeem All

Redeem All
Author: Corrina Laughlin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-12-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520379683

The church -- The start up -- Media missions -- The influencers -- Racial reckoning and repair.

The Electronic Church in the Digital Age

The Electronic Church in the Digital Age
Author: Mark Ward Sr.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 668
Release: 2015-11-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1440829918

This two-volume set investigates the evangelical presence in America as experienced through digital media, examining current evangelical ideologies regarding education, politics, family, and government. Evangelical broadcasting has greatly expanded its footprint in the digital age. This informative text acquaints readers with how the electronic church of today spreads its message through Internet podcasts, social networking, religious radio programs, and televised sermons; how mass media forms the institution's modern identity; and what the future of the industry holds as mobile church apps, Christian-based video games, and online worship become the norm. The work—split into two volumes—reveals the ways that the Christian broadcast community affects evangelical traditions and influences American society in general. Volume 1 explores how electronic media shapes today's Christian subculture, while the second volume describes how the electronic church impacts the wider American culture, analyzing what key figures in evangelical mass media are saying about today's religious, political, economic, and social issues. The set concludes by addressing criticism about religious media and the prospects of American public discourse to accomodate both secular and religious voices.

Evangelicals Incorporated

Evangelicals Incorporated
Author: Daniel Vaca
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0674243978

A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.

Understanding Evangelical Media

Understanding Evangelical Media
Author: Quentin J Sch Robert Herbert Woods Jr
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 734
Release: 2010-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1458755312

As long as there has been a church, there has been Christian communication - people of the book bearing the good news from one place to another, persuading, teaching and even delighting an ever-broadening audience with the message of the gospel. Amid ongoing advances in technology and an ever-more-multicultural context, however, the time...

The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World

The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World
Author: Deanna A. Thompson
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501815199

We live in a wired world where 24/7 digital connectivity is increasingly the norm. Christian megachurch communities often embrace this reality wholeheartedly while more traditional churches often seem hesitant and overwhelmed by the need for an interactive website, a Facebook page and a twitter feed. This book accepts digital connectivity as our reality, but presents a vision of how faith communities can utilize technology to better be the body of Christ to those who are hurting while also helping followers of Christ think critically about the limits of our digital attachments. This book begins with a conversion story of a non-cell phone owning, non-Facebook using religion professor judgmental of the ability of digital tools to enhance relationships. A stage IV cancer diagnosis later, in the midst of being held up by virtual communities of support, a conversion occurs: this religion professor benefits in embodied ways from virtual sources and wants to convert others to the reality that the body of Christ can and does exist virtually and makes embodied difference in the lives of those who are hurting. The book neither uncritically embraces nor rejects the constant digital connectivity present in our lives. Rather it calls on the church to a) recognize ways in which digital social networks already enact the virtual body of Christ; b) tap into and expand how Christ is being experienced virtually; c) embrace thoughtfully the material effects of our new augmented reality, and c) influence utilization of technology that minimizes distraction and maximizes attentiveness toward God and the world God loves.

Digital Religion, Social Media, and Culture

Digital Religion, Social Media, and Culture
Author: Pauline Hope Cheong
Publisher: Digital Formations
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2012
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

This anthology - the first of its kind in eight years - collects some of the best and most current research and reflection on the complex interactions between religion and computer-mediated communication (CMC). The contributions cohere around the central question: how will core religious understandings of identity, community and authority shape and be (re)shaped by the communicative possibilities of Web 2.0? The authors gathered here address these questions in three distinct ways: through contemporary empirical research on how diverse traditions across the globe seek to take up the technologies and affordances of contemporary CMC; through investigations that place these contemporary developments in larger historical and theological contexts; and through careful reflection on the theoretical dimensions of research on religion and CMC. In their introductory and concluding essays, the editors uncover and articulate the larger intersections and patterns suggested by individual chapters, including trajectories for future research.

Christian Influence

Christian Influence
Author: Zachary Sheldon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1040088252

Christian Influence examines how understudied evangelical media celebrities use Instagram to cultivate religious authority and to convey distinctive subcultural narratives about evangelical values and culture today. The book explores the way that discrete kinds of evangelical celebrities—Celebrity Pastors, Women’s Ministry Leaders, Christian-Media Celebrities, and Secular-Media Celebrity Christians—all used Instagram across 2020–2021 to perform specific subcultural narratives to their followers. Detailing these narratives gives unique insights into how the authority of celebrities and the affordances of social media are combining to challenge the strictures of authority within evangelicalism and raises questions about celebrity power in the contemporary shaping and reshaping of evangelical culture. Christian Influence is a useful and timely read for scholars with an interest in evangelicalism specifically, or religion and religious studies, media and cultural studies, sociology of religion, and communication more broadly.

Understanding Evangelical Media

Understanding Evangelical Media
Author: Quentin J. Schultze
Publisher: IVP Academic
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830828821

As long as there has been a church, there has been Christian communication--"people of the book" bearing "the good news" from one place to another, persuading, teaching and even delighting an ever-broadening audience with the message of the gospel. Amid ongoing advances in technology and an ever-more-multicultural context, however, the time has come for a broad appraisal of the state of evangelical communications. Quentin Schultze and Robert H. Woods Jr. have assembled scholars from across the country to analyze and assess a wide range of media including radio popular music worship music and media television film periodicals books Internet church drama comics gaming theme parks advertising public relations merchandising These shifting media, and the communications enterprise as a whole, are put in cultural and ethical perspective. Also addressed are Catholic and Jewish perspectives on the state of religious media. This project is ongoing. For additional resources and further conversation, visit understandingevangelicalmedia.com.