Theology, Technology, and Digital Culture (Fall 2023 Course)

Are you using technology or is technology using you? What does the biblical story say about technology and human culture? Should we fear Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), and Transhumanism? What is the future of the global church? Is there a connection between technology, colonialism, and today’s racially biased algorithms? How can I stop checking my phone?

If you’re interested in any of these questions, I’d love to have you in a Fall 2023 course at Dallas Theological Seminary that I teach my colleague Dr. W. Hall Harris called Theology, Technology, and Digital Culture (MW5451).

Meeting: Tuesdays from 1:00-3:45pm Central starting August 29, 2023 In-person and via Zoom

Outline: The course is divided into three sections: Frames, Faithfulness, and Futures (although these will be mixed throughout the course)

Part 1: Frames

In the first part of the course, we develop four ways of looking at technology, media, and culture.

• Biblical Theology: We begin by looking at technology in the scriptures through the lens of human creativity and our status as image bearers who are called to embody the kingdom of God in a fallen world.
• Media Ecology: Postman, McLuhan, and others add a layer of technology criticism that gives us tools for seeing past the common assumption that technology is simply neutral.
• Philosophy of Technology: Heidegger, Borgmann, and others take us more deeply into the nature of technology and its role in human civilization.
• Sociology & Ethics: Technology criticism is great, but sociology moves us out of speculation and anecdotes into a more scientific and data-driven way of examining how technology operates, and ethical approaches to tech.

Part 2: Faithfulness

In the next part of the course, we apply the frames we developed in part 1 to the main spheres of our life.

• Technology and the Church: From advanced in the technology of the Bible to how microphones and cars led megachurches with reflections on pandemic expressions of faith online and digital sacraments.
• Technology and the Society: Considering how technology affects age, race, gender, including how technological advances enabled colonialism and whiteness and how sonograms deepened the the gendering of technology.
• Technology and Community: Understanding how our Secular Age came to be and how it affects our concepts of community, individualism, the nuclear family, and friendships.
• Technology and You: Understanding the forces at work behind our devices, including fake news, bots, and the everyday liturgies that shape our concepts of the good life.

Part 3: Futures

For the final part of the course, we look toward future ethical and spiritual concerns.

• Scifi and Imagination: Fiction offers us a different way of knowing than philosophy and we read Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti as an example of this and how race, gender, culture, and technology intersect.
• Artificial Intelligence: We apply what we’ve learned to analyze current and future trends in Artificial Intelligence, especially the new breed of generation tools at our disposal.
• Transhumanism: Finally, we consider how transhumanism can be seen as complimentary expression of human redemption and contradictory version of transcendence compared the biblical story.
• Student Presentations: The course closes with students presenting on a topic of choice. Past presentations included gaming and the gospel, the ethics of lab grown meat, technology addiction among elderly immigrants, and new media arts.

For Fall 2023, the course runs August 29–December 19, 2023 with two weeks off for Thanksgiving (November 14 and 21 are off).

DTS students can sign up for the class in during normal registration period (https://portal.dts.edu), DTS alumni can use the continuing education (https://alumni.dts.edu/resources/continuing-education/), and outside students can join for audit or credit using the registration button below.