iGods

iGods
Author: Craig Detweiler
Publisher: Brazos Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441244816

Today the world is literally at our fingertips. We can call, text, email, or post our status to friends and family on the go. We can carry countless games, music, and apps in our pocket. Yet it's easy to feel overwhelmed by access to so much information and exhausted from managing our online relationships and selves. Craig Detweiler, a nationally known writer and speaker on media issues, provides needed Christian perspective on navigating today's social media culture. He interacts with major symbols, or "iGods," of our distracted age--Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Pixar, YouTube, and Twitter--to investigate the impact of the technologies and cultural phenomena that drive us. Detweiler offers a historic look at where we've been and a prophetic look at where we're headed, helping us sort out the immediate from the eternal, the digital from the divine.

Videogames Studies: Concepts, Cultures, and Communication

Videogames Studies: Concepts, Cultures, and Communication
Author: Monica Evans
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848880596

This volume reflects the discussions that occurred during the 2nd Global Conference on Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment in July 2010. The chapters in this volume cover four primary topics: new frameworks for game studies and analysis, the various cultures surrounding gaming, questions of ethics and controversial...

Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World

Political Religions in the Greco-Roman World
Author: Charlotte Dunn
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527535401

Until the 1980s, historical treatments of ancient religion focused mainly on myth, cult and ritual as a way to interpret the mental structures or primary emotions of ancient peoples, but, in the last few decades, a “political turn” in the study of religion has taken hold. This volume serves to diversify our understanding of the political conceptualizations and implementations of religious practice in the ancient Mediterranean region from the 7th Century BCE to the 4th Century CE, in both Greek and Roman contexts. The underlying question taken up here is: in what situations was Greco-Roman religious practice articulated, communicated, and perceived in political contexts, both real and imagined? Written by experts in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, art history, historiography, political science and religion, the chapters of this volume engage the plurality and the diversity of the Greco-Roman religious experience as it receives and negotiates power relations.

Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life

Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life
Author: Stephen Minister
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2017-09-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0253029481

Collected critical essays analyzing Kierkegaard’s work in regards to theology and social-moral thought. Kierkegaard’s God and the Good Life focuses on faith and love, two central topics in Kierkegaard’s writings, to grapple with complex questions at the intersection of religion and ethics. Here, leading scholars reflect on Kierkegaard’s understanding of God, the religious life, and what it means to exist ethically. The contributors then shift to psychology, hope, knowledge, and the emotions as they offer critical and constructive readings for contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology. Together, they show how Kierkegaard continues to be an important resource for understandings of religious existence, public discourse, social life, and how to live virtuously. “All in all, the editors of this volume have put together a thoughtful and sometimes provocative collection of essays by a number of Kierkegaard scholars and philosophers for the reader’s consideration. . . . The volume undoubtedly makes a contribution to contemporary philosophical debates in the philosophy of religion, moral philosophy, and epistemology, especially with regard to the importance of faith and love for leading a good and meaningful human life.” —International Journal for Philosophy of Religion “Invites the reader to think anew about what Kierkegaard was saying and what we can learn from him in the context of our time, particularly what it means to become a Christian in terms of the moral task of love and living a life worthy of a human being.” —Sylvia Walsh, translator of Kierkegaard’s Discourses at the Communion on Fridays

Virtual Communion

Virtual Communion
Author: Katherine G. Schmidt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2020-05-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1978701632

Virtual Communion: Theology of the Internet and the Catholic Sacramental Imagination provides a theological account of the internet from a Catholic perspective. It engages digital culture by providing a context for media and mediation within the Catholic tradition, specifically focusing on the ecclesiology and sacramentality of the church. Katherine G. Schmidt argues that the Catholic imagination is inherently consonant with the idea of the “virtual,” understood as the creative space between presence and absence, bringing the fields of media studies, internet studies, sociology, history, and theology together in order to give a theological account of the social realities of American Catholicism in light of digital culture. Overall, Schmidt argues that the social possibilities of the internet afford the church great opportunity for building a social context that allows the living out of Eucharistic logic learned in properly liturgical moments.

A Matrix of Meanings

A Matrix of Meanings
Author: Craig Detweiler
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2003-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 080102417X

A candid, often humorous look at how to find truth in music, movies, television, and other aspects of pop culture. Includes photos, artwork, and sidebars.

More Than A Pretty Face

More Than A Pretty Face
Author: Joel Oesch
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2017-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532613695

The online social network phenomenon has forever changed the way we think about ourselves in relation to our neighbors. But do these massively popular networks actually build community? More Than a Pretty Face invites us to consider the present and future challenges of the Digital Age and offers resources from Lutheran theology, notably from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that call into question many of the assumptions that support a disembodied understanding of community. What remains is a genuine call for a vibrant theology of embodiment. By recognizing the distinctive features of physical communities, Christians can discern which digital social technologies embrace a view of humanity that necessarily includes the body. There is no need for either the polar extremes of neo-Luddism or the uncritical embrace of all things digital. Rather, Christians are called to respond to needs of the community with empathy, intimacy, and physicality.

The Resurgent Church

The Resurgent Church
Author: Mike McDaniel
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2016-05-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0718078837

For the first time in centuries, the Church no longer has a primary place in the cultural dialogue. Christian leaders living off old assumptions are struggling, while missional churches are discovering new ways to reinvent themselves, arrest the general decline, and become catalysts for new strategies for reaching non-believers. These new voices are are following the lead of the early church, shifting their focus to a missional model. The Resurgent Church will help church leaders who are struggling to find and incorporate this new paradigm into their local church body.

The HTML of Cruciform Love

The HTML of Cruciform Love
Author: John Frederick
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0227177304

Despite an increasing portion of our lives being conducted online, the topic of the internet is vastly underrepresented in the current literature on technology and theology. The HTML of Cruciform Love challenges outdated misconceptions about internet theology and asserts that there is no topic more pertinent to our daily walk as contemporary followers of Jesus Christ than the theological implications of the internet age. These twelve essays investigate the themes of community and character formation in the digital realm. A host of interrelated sub-themes are represented, including the application of patristic theology to contemporary internet praxis, a demonology of the internet, and virtue ethics in cyberspace, while other studies consider the influence of internet technology on aesthetics, personhood, and the self. Together, the essays work towards a collaborative, constructive, cruciform theology of the internet as something more than a supplementary component to our personal lives; rather, it is a vital medium for the digital communion of the saints through the HTML of cruciform love.