Networked religion meets digital geographies: Pedagogical principles for exploring new spaces and roles in the seminary classroom

Abstract

This article presents a pedagogical approach to training seminarians for faith leadership in the era of what Heidi Campbell has called “networked religion.” It argues that the increasing digital mediation of religious practice, expression, and community represents an opportunity for students to explore and inhabit ministry sites and roles from “within” the seminary classroom. Using education scholars' discussions of new digital geographies, gaming scholars' conception of game space, and reflection on classroom‐tested “quick challenges,” the author presents pedagogical principles for designing authentic new media learning experiences. Such activities bridge teaching spaces and ministry spaces to promote active learning through observation and immersion, simulation and role‐playing.

Faith Leaders Developing Digital Literacies: Demands and Resources across Career Stages According to Theological Educators

“…The perspective represented in this previous work understands literacy as a highly contextual social practice for participating in distinct cultures and communities. It also recognizes the "spatial turn" in scholarly conceptions of literacy (see Oliver, 2019;following Leander & Vasudevan, 2009;Vasudevan, 2010). In a sense, the insight of that turn is at the core of why theological educators are interested in digital literacy: if people of faith are "doing" religious community and expression both in person and online (Campbell, 2012), then leaders need to recognize how both kinds of context are "an ongoing process and practice deeply tied up with the word" (Sheehy & Leander, 2004, p. 3).…”

“…We did not originally conceive of our Digital Media for Ministry course as a venue for research. Thus, as one of us had done previously when engaging in now-published reflective instructor research about this innovative course (Oliver, 2019), when preparing this manuscript we first reviewed past course rosters as a way to jog our memory about the 67 students we have taught in the four past sections of this course. We then wrote to the three students we identified in this prompted recall activity as having experiences that were illustrative of the findings of our interview data analysis (see below).…”