1 Introduction

Digital religion studies began at the end of the twentieth century amidst the rise and societal embrace of internet technology. This has led to three decades of varied experimentation with digital media for religious purposes by individuals and groups, as well as debates concerning the impact of how computer-mediated technologies may pose ethical and missional challenges to religious institutions. Digital religion studies is an approach to studying religion focused on how the religious perceptions, beliefs, and practices of established offline institutions and communities intersect with dynamic expressions of spirituality and religiosity found online or within other technologically mediated contexts. This aim of this contribution is to provide an overview of the development of digital religion studies and its relationship to the study of religion in the twenty-first century. Here, I draw on work presented by myself and Giulia Evolvi on how we can contextualize this growing field of digital religion studies.¹ This will be done by first providing an overview of the emergence of digital religion studies and how it has sought to contextualize itself in relation to religious studies. This begins by outlining the focus and assumptions about the relationship between religion and technology that underlie digital religion studies. From there we will proceed to a discussion of how digital religion research has been received by Religious Studies scholars and the academy in general. Next, a brief overview of digital religion research in terms of different, yet consecutive waves of research is presented to show how scholars have refined their investigations of the study of religion and the digital over time. This allows for the presentation of the most common narratives about how religion and technology are embraced by religious communities. Here four sets of assumptions about religious groups’ preferred relationship to digital technology are described. Finally, the future of digital religion studies is considered, as well as where the investigation of religious intersections with emerging technologies might lead.

2 Defining the Study of Digital Religion

Before we explore the terrain digital religion studies has covered, some definitional work is needed. Digital religion studies emerged in the mid-1990s, when scholars in both media and religious studies began to take note of the fact that the new technology of computer internetworking created a unique space for people to re-present the religious in a technological setting. Researchers noted that early technologies such as the World Wide Web, email, newsgroups, and discussion forums were becoming spaces facilitating religious conversations and experimentation with new manifestations of religious rituals. Over the next three decades, an emerging study of religion and internet technologies was born. This has been referred to by many names, including studies of e-religions (focused on the assumption that the internet would give birth to new forms of religion), religion online (focused on how traditional religious groups and their members sought to use and adapt to the internet), and virtual religion (focused on exploring ethical and moral concerns about doing religion in an ‘unreal’ or disembodied environment). In the past decade, the term ‘digital religion’ has emerged as the preferred description of studies of religion and digital media. However, digital religion is not just the new label used to describe how people practice religion online; it represents a particular approach to the study of digital media and religion and the perceived relationship between digital technologies and contemporary religion.

Digital religion studies began with scholars interested in the ways the internet was transforming, and potentially could transform, religious practice. These scholars began to take seriously the need for critical evaluation of the extent to which religion practiced online may encourage certain transformations or could be related to broader trends in how religious culture was performed and adapted within contemporary society. Digital religion as a term was first cohesively defined in the introduction to the edited volume Digital Religion, Understanding Religion in New Media Worlds.² The term was used to describe the understanding that contemporary religion is being practiced in both online and offline contexts, and these religious contexts intersect with one another in interesting and important ways worthy of further scrutiny. This means scholars engaged in digital religion studies recognize that religion, as practiced within our current social and cultural milieu, is increasingly influenced and informed by interactions with computer-mediated digital technologies. Religion in an era of digital media cannot avoid this engagement. This means religious individuals, institutions, and understandings are all impacted by the social-technical infrastructure and ethos of the network society. Religion has become embedded in and reliant on this environment that offers a diverse continuum of technological-religious engagement options. Digital religion recognizes the fact that the social-technical infrastructure of society has created a hybrid reality and a sphere of interaction that is online and in mediated contexts. This intersects now with traditional or embodied offline contexts. In other words, the online and offline environments and realities are becoming increasingly interconnected with, even interdependent on, one another to varying degrees.

As one of the founders of digital religion studies, I described it as a new area of research that explores how religious beliefs and practices are performed and understood online and offline within digital culture. Specifically, I described digital religion as a “framework for articulating and investigating the evolution of religious practices online which are linked to online and offline contexts simultaneously.”³ For me, digital religion studies is an area that “investigates the technological and cultural space that is evoked when we talk about how online and offline religious spheres have become blended and integrated.”⁴

Over the past two and a half decades, my research has explored a variety of intersections in relation to how new media technologies, different expressions of traditional and nontraditional religion, and our emerging digital cultures have interacted and come together. The majority of my work has focused on Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities’ technological decision-making processes and the social-cultural implications of their choices. My early scholarship sought to draw attention to what exploring manifestations of religion in internet technologies and environments could offer scholars in terms of insights on how distinctive user communities use technologies and seek to shape them in light of their core values and moral economies. Some twenty-five years later, I still maintain this argument that studying religious practice online offers scholars an important focal point for learning how people conceive of and position themselves in relation to postmodernity and the idea of a technological society.

From the very beginning, my work has been interdisciplinary – my PhD work on online Christian communities as new expressions of church brought together the fields of theology, ethics, media studies, and sociology of technology. I was eventually hired as a media studies scholar teaching courses in media history, theory, and technology, yet my research required me to regularly engage with work from the fields of religious studies and sociology of religion. Much of my early academic work focused on not just describing and analyzing the different manifestations of how religion and media technologies interact via the internet, but on creating an academic apologetic for this work. To my colleagues in communication and media studies, I had to explain why religious groups provided a fertile and valid context for studying people’s technological decision-making processes. This involved explaining how religious communities provided a rich and viable microcosm for studying the motivations behind people’s media choices. I had to argue that studying focused groups of religious technology users’ social and cultural adaptation processes provided concrete insights into people’s perceptions of new media environments. This apologetic work led me to strategically publish articles in top media journals such as New Media & Society and The Information Society, showing how this work echoed and extended current internet studies research on how people practice and frame community and identity online. By arguing that media scholars should “[Consider] spiritual dimensions within computer-mediated communication studies,”⁵ I sought to “make space for religion in internet studies.”⁶

Doing similar explanatory and apologetics work within the fields of religious studies and sociology of religion also proved necessary. Each time I presented my research in religious studies environments – whether work on how online groups functioned as religious community or on religious identity negotiation within Islamogaming – I had to spend half my presentation and much of the question-and-answer time justifying why focusing on a religious group’s engagement with media technology could provide strategic insights into how religion was performed in contemporary culture. By publishing studies in such journals as Studies in World Christianity, Reviews in Religion and Theology, and the Journal of Contemporary Religion, I sought to prove how studying religious negotiations with digital technology highlights important aspects of how religious people and institutions adapt and translate their beliefs to new environments and generations.

This apologetic work, I believe, not only helped me demonstrate the strategic importance of this kind of interdisciplinary work, it also helped create a platform from which digital religion studies could emerge. In 2020, students or junior scholars in media or religious studies rarely have to argue why studying religious digital media use is a valid way to investigate contemporary religiosity or explain why studying manifestations of religious groups’ practices in digital spaces might provide insights into current media technology practices. This means a new generation of scholars is able to approach studies of the digital with the assumption that there is a valuable and inherent connection between online and offline religious communities and culture. This is due to the efforts of scholars like me who have shown how patterns of religious belief and ritual tied to historically-grounded communities are transferred and still engaged, though often modified, within digital culture. Digital religion studies is an interdisciplinary area of inquiry that encourages scholars not only to look at how religion is practiced online, but at how online and offline spaces and discourses are being bridged, blended, and blurred by religious groups in an increasingly global, networked world.

In the past decade, I have continued to explore religious communities’ unique decision-making processes and how they enact socially and theologically informed strategies in relation to the features of new media they accept, reject, and/or innovate. Here, my work has focused on identifying the patterns used by religious communities, especially within Judaism and Christianity, to leverage the internet to communicate in ways not possible within their offline communities. Such work demonstrates the fact that digital religion studies helps us understand new ethical and moral challenges technology poses to these communities.

3 Digital Religion in the Context of Religious Studies

Over the last two decades, the interest in religious practices online and how these influence offline perceptions of religion has grown in leaps and bounds within the field of religious studies. This is especially seen in the rising attention given to American Academy of Religion (AAR) studies of religion and the internet. This new phenomenon of religion being transported onto the internet first came to the attention of the AAR in 1996 via a special issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion on “Religion and American Popular Culture.” In one article, Stephen O’Leary described how the then-new technology of the internet was helping to establish a new form of sacred space, as both traditional religious groups and new forms of religion engaged online, and cyberspace gave rise to both Christian discussion groups and the creation of technopagan rituals.⁷ In another article, Brenda Brasher wrote about the cyborg as a religious concept helpful to religious studies scholars, enabling them talk about the nature of humanity in an increasingly technologized society. Together, these articles raised awareness of how the internet and emerging technologies might potentially impact religious practices in the twenty-first century. Yet over the next ten years, only a handful of scholars noted in passing in various JAAR articles the fact that the internet created new possibilities for religious discourse and heightened public awareness of various aspects of religion that could potentially have cultural and institutional impact. Also, during this same period, very few papers at the annual meeting of the AAR focused on trends related to religion and the internet. Those that did appear were typically found in the Science and Technology or Religion and Popular Culture divisions, or the newly formed Media, Religion, and Culture subsection. In 2005, the first year I attended the AAR convention, my paper “Studying Religious Community, Identity, & Online Rituals”⁸ was one of five papers taking seriously the rise of religion on the internet and its broader implications.

However, from 2006 onwards, a steady increase could be noted in the number of scholars paying attention to what Christopher Helland had described as “religion online,” the importing of traditional religious practices and discourse online, and “online religion,” which highlighted new forms of religiosity emerging from spiritual experimentation in cyberspace.⁹ In 2007, the Religion and Media group hosted an entire Preconference on Religion and New Media in San Diego, where scholars reported on their current research on religious representation in video games, websites as new sources of religious teaching, and religious debates in online discussion forums. My own keynote at this preconference focused on how bloggers were emerging as new forms of religious authority online.¹⁰ This marked an attempt by media-focused religion scholars to draw attention to how the study of religious digital media rituals has far-reaching implications for helping scholars understand religious practice in the twenty-first century.

By 2010, AAR convention papers and discussions about the internet, digital technologies, and religion began to move beyond the Religion and Media and Religion and Popular Culture divisions to be included in a number of areas and religion-specific divisions including Islam, Buddhism, and Ritual Studies. Articles in JAAR such as Robert Geraci’s (2008) study of religious and apocalyptic imagery in AI technologies and sci-fi movies, and several reviews of books focused on digital Islam, Hinduism online, and religious discourse on the web helped further raise the profile of the study of religion and the internet within the discipline.

For me, 2012 marked a key moment within the American Academy of Religion, not only in the number of conference papers and panels focused on religion and the internet, but in what seemed to be a general recognition that studying contemporary religion required paying serious attention to the role digital media played in the performance and publicizing of religion. A number of panels in 2012 also raised attention to how digital media were shaping public discourse about religion. This included the panel I organized to celebrate the launch of the book Digital Religion, Understanding Religion in New Media Worlds. The session, held in a room that could seat seventy-five, was standing room only as key scholars featured in the collection described how the concepts of religious ritual, community, and identity were being transformed, understood, and studied within an age of internet.

It was here where I also publicly introduced and defined for the first time the idea of “digital religion studies” as illustrative of the case studies and critical literature review chapters in the book. Digital religion studies, I suggested, offered a new framework for understanding research that not only sought to document, define, and analyze the variety of religious practices taking place online or being facilitated by various new technologies such as mobile phones, gaming platforms, or augmented reality. Digital religion studies also recognizes the fact that religious groups and communities in traditional or offline contexts are also being impacted by the pervasiveness of the internet and the social-technical structures that undergird contemporary society.

After this panel, a number of the attendees and panel members commented that this panel was an important moment for the field of religious studies. It demonstrated scholarly recognition of the importance of investigating religion as it is communicated and transformed in digital media spaces and how broader religious and cultural structures were also being impacted. For me, the positive reception of this panel by scholars from a dozen or more divisions also felt like a marker of the validity and legitimacy of digital religion studies as an area of inquiry that has something to contribute to religious studies scholars’ understanding of religiosity in the contemporary moment.

This perception has seemed to prove true over time, especially in relation to my own work and its audience within religious studies. In 2012, I also published the article “Understanding the Relationship between Religious Practice Online and Offline in a Networked Society” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, taking stock of fifteen years of interdisciplinary scholarship on religion and digital media and the common findings scholars noted about how the digital reflected and encouraged certain distinctive notions about the nature religion in the twenty-first century.¹¹ This became one of the most cited and most read articles in JAAR over the next three years. Also, at the 2013 convention, I organized a panel on “Reflections on Playing with Religion in Digital Gaming” that led to a heated, yet enthusiastic discussion about what studying religion in digital and video games could teach religious studies scholars about popular perceptions of religion. This led to a published roundtable article, “Gaming Religionworlds: Why Religious Studies Should Pay Attention to Religion in Gaming,” in JAAR and helped launch the exploratory study of the formation of a new division on Religion and Gaming in the AAE.¹²

Now, some twenty-three years after the first journal articles were published in JAAR and fourteen years since the first presentation on digital religion at AAR, the studies of digital media and religion have become pervasive throughout the AAR-SBL convention program. Discussions of digital religion studies at the 2019 convention could be found in a variety of units and divisions, including Contemporary Islam, Ethics, African Religions, Yoga in Theory and Practice, Jain Studies, Tantric Studies, Religion and Cities, and others. Over the last ten years, many new units and seminars have been introduced at AAR-SBL focusing on new and innovative themes of religion and emerging technology such as Religion and Human Enhancement, and Transhumanism, Digital Theology, Video Gaming and Religion, and Digital Humanities and the Bible. The prevalence of such diverse themes shows a growing recognition of how digital media studies has come to inform religious practice and discourse and gained the attention of religious studies scholars. Digital religion studies itself has evolved from being seen as a specialist topic to now being referred to as a distinct area of interdisciplinary research, or even, by some, as a subfield within religious studies. Several senior scholars at this past AAR also admitted to me that digital religion has become a central conversation area for religious studies, and a space all scholars need to consider in order to fully understand and communicate the role and perception of religion in a global society.

In an exploratory session on digital theology at the 2019 convention, Stephen Garner reflected upon digital religion studies – what it has contributed to scholars’ understanding of religion and technology and how it might be used by scholars studying religion for other perspectives. He stated:

Digital religion is primarily concerned with how religion in its various forms engages with, is shaped by, and is located in digital culture and media. As such, its primary modes of study tend to be shaped by anthropology, sociology and communications and media studies, as well as religious studies. While those involved in digital religion may have particular faith commitments, the primary location for studying religion in digital spaces is from the outside looking in. That said, the insights brought by this area of inquiry can inform and shape other forms of reflection, such as theological engagement with digital cultures from those on the inside of a particular religious community or tradition. Digital religion provides groups such as theologians and their communities with helpful tools for self-reflection on the use of digital and media culture in those communities.¹³

Thus, digital religion studies has gained a growing and diverse audience of scholars and notable attention within various field of religious studies and theology.

4 Four (or Five?) Waves of Digital Religion Research: Where We Have Been

The past three decades of research on digital religion have been referred to as different waves of scholarly inquiry, each bringing a unique focus, approach, and set of questions.

Morten Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg were the first scholars to identify these waves of scholarly inquiry, beginning with the first wave as one focused on identifying and documenting trends in religious use of the internet.¹⁴ Early work focused on examining the new manifestation of religious community and discourse on email discussion forums and message boards and asking questions about how and why religious individuals sought to use the internet for specific spiritual practices. In this wave, scholars were also prone to over-celebratory proclamations of how the internet would promote religion or how digitally mediated communication would destroy religious groups as an offline reality.

In the second wave of scholarship, researchers recognized the fact that expressions of religion on the internet were growing, rather than diminishing. Therefore, focus was turned to identifying key trends and typologies of religious practice online. This work offered a more realistic assessment of how religion was being transformed by technology and religious users’ ability to shape digital media by their presence online. Here, we see questions about religious identity, community, and authenticity taking center stage in research inquiry. Mia Lövheim and I described the third wave of research as the theoretical turn.¹⁵ Here scholars saw the importance of applying previous knowledge about the workings of media, as well as the application of theories from sociology and religious studies to investigate what was really new in the various manifestations of religion online. It was in this wave that ‘digital religion studies’ began to firmly take shape, as increased attention was given to the interconnectedness of online and offline settings and the theoretical implications of these intersections. While waves one and two mostly focused on internet-based religions and religious activities, third-wave scholarship recognized the embeddedness of the internet in everyday life and sought to consider the impact of the digital on non-digital religious venues.

In fourth-wave scholarship, scholars have turned their attention to how digital media practices have become a seamless part of religious groups’ and individuals’ everyday lives. This wave continues to emphasize the connections between online and offline aspects of life and practice, considering how this new era of hypermediation, where there is no distinction between mediated and non-mediated spaces, shapes our outlook and humanity. The online-offline context is no longer described in a terms of space distinction, but as a continuum of experience which all humans, even the religious, must engage. Increased attention is given in digital religion studies to existential, ethical, and political aspects and questions, as well as issues of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality.¹⁶ In this fourth wave, the book Digital Religion, Understanding Religion in New Media Worlds appeared highlighting the work of established researchers, as well as up-and-coming scholars in the field of digital religion studies.¹⁷ This has become the foundational text in the field of digital religion studies, defining the area and serving as a core introductory guide for scholars interested in this area of study. Due to the text’s popularity, the publisher, Routledge, commissioned a second, updated version: Digital Religion 2.0 will be out in 2021. My co-editor Ruth Tsuria and I have brought together new essays that look how the recognized themes of religious ritual, identity, community, authority, and authenticity are being addressed in studies of religion in digital gaming worlds, social media, app culture and emerging internet platforms in a variety of religious contexts.

From these four waves of digital religion studies we can see a progressive development of the study of religion and technology that has growing in its sophistication in considering the complex intersections that have emerged and technology users have brought their spiritual passion online with them. Research has moved from a simplistic focus on utopian and dystopian assessments of these interrelationships, to recognizing their increasing embeddedness and dependence on mainstream and religious cultures on a global social-technical infrastructure. Increasingly scholars have drawn toward the development of theoretical models and more nuanced frameworks to explain how religion and religious groups adapt and respond to our technological environment.

5 Current Views on Religion and the Digital: Bounding, Bridging, Blending, and Blurring

From these four waves of scholarship within digital religion studies, a distinct range of relationships can be identified as to how religious groups engage with technology and describe their connection to it. This continuum was first described in detail in my book on Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority,¹⁸ which provides an overview of the dominant perceptions of religious individuals and communities towards digital technology. Religious groups and individuals typically take one of four approaches towards digital media and their integration into their systems of belief and ways of life. I also describe this as a negotiation between conceptions of the online and offline, referring to how offline-based religious institutions and leaders relate to or understand their relationship with digital or online media and platforms. I have come to refer to this as the bounding, blending, bridging, or blurring of church and digital media contexts.

In my research studying religious groups’ choices and responses to digital media, I have observed groups typically taking one of these four stances toward media. Some religious communities see themselves as BOUNDED, in that media technologies represent a culture foreign to their way of life, one from which they seek to distance themselves. They see digital or online contexts as separate from their own offline reality. This is because they perceive online spaces as driven by divergent values or creating patterns that challenge or are in competition with their beliefs. Therefore, they draw strong boundaries between religious, offline and the internet, or online contexts, in attempts to separate themselves from the influence of digital culture. While this perspective was not expressed by any of the religious digital creatives in this study, it is mentioned as one point on a continuum of responses to digital media. This response highlights the fact that there are still some religious groups that are strongly resistant to and critical of digital media and seek to distance themselves from them and their influences.

Other religious communities see their relationship to digital media as one of BRIDGING. Here, the internet and the church are described as distinct contexts, each with its own set of values and priorities. Some of the online aspects are seen as contradictory to the religious communities’ patterns. Yet other features and affordances of digital media are seen as useful to religious groups’ work and aims. So religious groups see that a bridge can be established between their predominately offline institutional culture and the online culture of the internet. This involves building tangible and rhetorical connections between religious and digital culture to highlight specific purposes and aims they share. Such groups emphasize the idea that digital media offer religious groups new opportunities for communication, which are critical for them engage in order for their message to be heard and appear relevant to digitally mediated culture. Digital media are framed as a conduit for relaying religious beliefs in current cultural discourse. Framing digital media as useful for internal and public communication and helping religious organizations maintain a presence in the twenty-four seven news cycle creates a bridge, thus highlighting the embrace of technology for focused purposes to build the reputation and visibility of their religious community.

Increasingly, many religious groups are recognizing their dependence on digital media and online platforms to conduct their ministry work and communication. This means that while they may find some aspects of the internet problematic, they acknowledge the fact that they are interconnected with online culture due to their members’ engagement with and investment in the internet. Therefore, these religious communities see online and offline contexts as BLENDED. This enables them to develop resources that utilize digital tools and adapt established religious practices to this new communication environment, in order to create a seamless flow of interactions and shared experiences between the two. In this context, religious groups’ aim is to cultivate patterns of use that complement their mission and religious outlook. Such groups contend the church should see the internet as a helpmate and asset, rather than as a competitor or distraction to religious mission. This emphasis on seeing technology as blending well with religious instructional aims enables religious groups to experiment with forms of religious engagement online and offline.

Finally, some religious groups see their relationship with digital media as hypermediated, a relationship in which religious culture and structures are highly mediated and embedded within the social-technical infrastructure of global society. I describe this as seeing the online and offline contexts BLURRING into one another. In this way, a hybrid context is created, informed both by traits of traditional religious structures and patterns of life that have become infused and shaped by digital techniques and affordances. This blurred context is not always seen in a positive light. Some religious groups argue the church has been co-opted or seduced by the bells and whistles of digital culture, which is modifying the work and identity of Christianity in significant ways. Other groups present this blending as a unique opportunity to experiment and reimagine the life, work, and calling of the church as this new context takes shape.

6 A Fifth Wave: Where Are We Going and Emerging Conversations

Recently, some scholars argue that digital religion studies is on the cusp of a fifth wave¹⁹ informed by ethical tensions surrounding the humanity-machine question brought on by the robotic turn and an increasing movement towards the mainstreaming of augmented and virtual reality, as well as a purported movement in the western world from a culture of religiosity to more secular outlooks. Giulia Evolvi and I spotlight these three important issues in a recent critical analysis of current digital religion research.²⁰ In this work, we point out the ethical and cultural challenges posed by the rise of a posthuman ideal of the human-machine relationship, debates concerning the emergence of a post-secular society, and technology being framed as an implicit form of religion as issues that capture the attention of both religious studies and digital media scholars.

The rise of nanotechnologies, immersive technologies, and augmented reality, which blur the boundaries between the human and technological spheres, have captured the imagination of many scholars. What once was science fiction – the world of cyborgs, sentient artificial intelligence, and virtual reality – is becoming the new reality, with the emergence of many new integrated and implanted networked technologies. These developments raise important questions central to religious studies scholars about the nature of life, death, and time, as well as how our increasingly technology-infused twenty-first century is informing popular and philosophical notions of human being-ness. Scholars such as Amanda Lagerkvist explore the idea of human existential existence in a digital age, when our notions and lived realities of gender, race, and personhood are being reframed through our technology.²¹ Others, such as Charles Ess,²² question how our moral frameworks might have to shift to accommodate the emergence of the enhanced posthuman, the technological other that is more than human due to self-imposed machine enhancements, and the religious implications of such robotic others living amongst us. Questions of what religion will look like and what role it will play when the blurring of human and technology become the norm also need to be asked. Posthuman discourse raises interesting debates about the nature of humanity in a technological world that can provide both exciting and threatening narratives for religious communities.^23,24

Also, in the past two decades, the movement towards a more globalized and technologically driven society also raises questions about whether hotly debated secularization theses might become a lived reality in the western world. For example, recent Pew religion studies show that the fastest growing religious groups in America are the ‘nones,’ individuals who ascribe to no religious category or affiliation, and the ‘dones,’ individuals who consider themselves religious but are done with being part of specific religious institutions and official communities. The move towards secularization or a post-secular society is an area of keen interest to many religious studies scholars, and there is a growing recognition that technology developments and cultural dominance may have important links to this phenomenon. Many scholars of digital religion have highlighted the tendency of religion online to be more personally driven and less institutionally associated in many of its expressions,²⁵ which some suggest may be precursors of the move toward secularity.²⁶ Yet alongside this, the scholars of religion and digital religion suggest post-secular discourses that highlight the moral failings of modern society and science have also led to a resurgence of religion in the public sphere in new forms. Post-secularity empowers certain religious groups to assert their influence alongside new postmodern spiritual sensibilities, with digital media playing an important role in the promotion of these views. This is echoed by work such as Guilia Evolvi’s study of religious bloggers in Europe, which found religious internet engagement plays an important role in influencing political and social discourses about religion and how it is framed within competing publics.²⁷

Also, as technology has come to play such a central part within contemporary society, scholars have noted how technology functions as a religion for many – from tech-prophets describing the internet as a religion to the Silicon Valley Wisdom 2.0 movement that has remixed and branded Buddhist-inspired mindfulness practices as key to spiritual and technological development. Implicit religion is a category coming out of religious studies that suggests some forms of contemporary practice or meaning making can take on religious-like qualities, to the extent that certain beliefs and practices can be defined as exhibiting a family resemblance to religion. Many digital religion scholars have begun to explore the ways this is lived out by individuals within digital spaces and practices, whether by studying technological fandom as religious-like behavior,²⁸ or by describing how our devotion to these devices could be seen as creating a new sense of spiritual self.²⁹ Another area of exploration is the extent to which technology use encourages religious-like practice that changes individuals’ understanding not only of the technology, but of themselves. For example, Wendi Bellar’s research on Catholic and Muslim prayer apps showed that even when technologies enable people to reshape their religious practice through certain technological features, religious users often rely on traditional notions of religiosity and beliefs to inform their technology use.³⁰

Furthermore, my own work on the idea of “networked religion” suggests digital media increasingly inform our understandings of religion in a global, media-focused culture.³¹ I assert that religious internet use not only encourages innovations in religious culture, but it also correlates to broader cultural shifts, based on how religion is perceived in contemporary society. I show that these online trends, such as the loosening of traditional religious affiliations and a tendency towards individualized religious practice, are also observed offline by many sociologists of religion. This shows digital religion uses religious symbols and technological narratives as tools for reconstructing spiritual meaning in everyday life. Considering the religious-like role technologies play in individuals’ and groups’ lives, transcendent meaning making is an important area for religious studies and digital religion scholars to consider, as technological artifacts take on increasingly spiritual meaning in contemporary discourses and experiences.

The current and emerging generation of technology will continue to raise interesting and crucial issues for scholars of religion, as technological and religious spheres of modern life continue to increasingly intersect. Continuing to look not only at how religious groups have responded to digital media, but considering how these integrations shape offline religious practices in religious institutions, is crucial. Also, attention needs to be paid to new trends towards secularity post-secularity, the posthuman world view, and the religious impulse of technology and how they will inform the perceived and actual relationship between religion and technology in the public sphere.

Overall, this chapter has sought to define digital religion, highlight key research exploring the study of religion online/offline, and their integration in the first three waves of research, and the current fourth and potential fifth waves of research on religious engagement with developing digital media technologies. As a young interdisciplinary area of inquiry, digital religion studies continues to grow and develop with each new form and generation of digital technology that is introduced. Questions about how our immersion in increasingly digitally mediated realities will further shape people’s search for the spiritual in everyday lifeworlds remains to be seen. Yet, even as religion is now pursued via increasingly technologized forms – such as via virtual and augmented reality and with the help of robotic priests – age old questions of what it means to be human, to seek out the transcendent in this world and engage the spiritual side of life still remain at the core of these inquiries.