| This dissertation investigates the interrelation of religion, particularly American evangelical Christianity, and digital technologies. In showing both the religious use of technology and the religiosity of technological practice, it aims to contribute to recent discussions on modernity and secularism that have taken place in sociology as well as philosophy and anthropology. Specifically, it troubles the assumed link between secularization and modernization, which, in effect, views technology as largely a proxy of science, and therefore an instrument of "disenchantment." Contrary to this, my research suggests that the relation of new media and religion bears a more complicated picture than secularization theories would allow. Drawing from a variety of methods, including content and discourse analysis, ethnography and media studies, I examine the technological mode of worship and ministry increasingly favored by today's Christian churches, including the highly technologized contemporary worship spaces, which feature multiple projection screens and theater-grade audio and lighting systems, and online churches (i.e., churches that meet strictly online through web sites and social media such as Facebook). Additionally, I offer an analysis of the ways in which new media technologies have produced a certain religious, God-like mode of subjectivity especially evidenced in popular mapping software such as Google Maps. In this way, contemporary religion, specifically Christianity, and digital technologies, I suggest, hold an intrinsic and interimplicated relationship. |
