Faith and Technology

I spent part of last week at Yale Divinity School where I serve on the National Working Group of the Faith as a Way of Life, a Lilly Endowment-funded initiative of Yale’s Center for Faith and Culture. It’s a group of pastors, youth pastors, theologian, business persons, and artists who are meeting over the course of three years. Our task is to collectively reflect on faith, not as some ad hoc application to life’s issues and problems, but as a thoroughgoing enterprise. Chris Scharen, who directs the project, blogs here.

So we were talking about family life this time, and on Friday afternoon we had a conversation that caught the first real traction since we’ve started meeting. There was, it seemed to me, a growing consensus in the group (and catalyzed by the book we had read) that modern technology is, on the whole, bad for the practice of the Christian faith — that it keeps people from practicing our faith.

Well, there was also a minority (of which I was one) which claimed that it’s not that simple. Someone noted that pew Bibles in churches were once a new technology, and I suggested that microphones may have been the biggest technological change to the church (enabling congregations of more than a few hundred). Someone else said, no, it was electricity.

So why did the church allow these technological innovations, but we now decry cell phones and laptops as dictating our days? Probably because these earlier decisions — to use electricity, microphones, overhead projectors, etc. — were not made theologically. There were most likely made based on practical concerns. They slipped into our sanctuaries under the dark of night.

So our group tried to start thinking theologically about technology and the life of the family. However, what was a little surprising was how quickly we devolved into personal and pragmatic arguments for our positions. Turns out it’s really hard to think theologically, even for professionals.

So I’m starting to think that the key to developing “faith as a way of life” is to inculcate in people the ability to think theologically, and that this ability would become second nature for followers of Jesus.