While technology moves fast and the landscape of how we can connect online is changing rapidly, the longer view is that there has been a major shift towards digital technology for over 50 years. While the modern internet as we know it today was still in its infancy in the early 1990’s, there were movements towards technological connections much earlier.
The church has looked to this new technology to try and find a way to utilize this new way of connecting people since the early days of computing. While this site is primarily focused on the emerging ways that churches can leverage digital ministry, it is helpful sometimes to pause and reflect on where we have been and use that to inform the direction we might be headed in the future.
Heidi Campbell is Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University where she teaches in Telecommunications and Media Studies. She is one of the most prolific researches in the area of digital religion. Her work has been an invaluable source of inspiration for countless academics who seek to know more about how digital technology and the church intersect.
Much of her work is published in journals which require academic credentials to access, but there is at least one paper she has written that is publicly available for review. The article linked below is from 2016, so as you read the content remember that you are reading work done before the global pandemic and shift that many churches made to digital worship for the duration of the quarantine times.
Read “Assessing changes in the study of religious communities in digital religion studies” at the link below.
Heidi A. Campbell & Alessandra Vitullo (2016) Assessing changes in the study of religious communities in digital religion studies, Church, Communication and Culture, 1:1, 73-89,DOI: 10.1080/23753234.2016.1181301
