Religion and Digital Technology: Future Considerations

By some estimates, humanity is on the verge of a new cognitive revolution that would take human beings to a drastically different existential state from that which took place with the first cognitive revolution about 70,000 years ago.[1] That event in human history allowed Homo Sapiens to drastically change the way they communicated and associated with one another, and in the course of history would lead to great human developments in agriculture, industry, science and presently, digital technology. It is the latter two—science and digital technology—many believe, that will usher humanity into a new reality that will raise many new questions about human’s relationship to technology and even the very nature of what it means to be human. Until the present, the responsibility to interpret and evaluate human developments has usually been taken up by philosophy, religion and deep thinkers from various fields of study such as history, anthropology and psychology. This chapter considers the role of religion in this new milieu and asks the question whether religion can still maintain relevancy in the face of a new scientific and technocentric consciousness that seemingly contradicts traditional religious sensibility. Here, we specifically ask whether religion ought to have a voice in the face of the colossal scientific and social shifts brought about by digital technology. There seems to be a persistent, if not growing opposition against religions inserting their voices into matters of science and technology, maintaining that the religious perspective is not only unnecessary and irrelevant, but also counterproductive in the formation of the digital future.  

Chapter from the book: Religion and Society in the Digital Age (Moldova: Eliva Press, 2020).

For full article, email: leducsvd.arc@gmail.com

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[1] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harpers Collin Publishers, 2016), 260, epub version.

Religious Leaders and Social Media: The Coronavirus Pandemic Context

September 2020

         Good leadership is needed at all times in human society, and is even more so during times of calamity and crisis. The future of a country or an organization greatly depends on the quality of its leadership, and a serious crisis can make or break a leader. The coronavirus pandemic that began in China in late 2019 and spread to the entire world in 2020 presented opportunities and challenges for leaders of all types—political, religious, social, business—to demonstrate their ability to lead during one of the most devastating and widespread calamities in the last 100 years. One can see that many could not rise to the challenge as their wisdom, strength and other leadership skills were shown to be lacking, leading to tremendous tolls on their communities and countries.

Like many issues plaguing modern human society, the Covid-19 pandemic testified to the integrally interconnected and interdependent nature of human society, and artificial borders set up by national and international laws (even when not disputed among nations) could only go so far to prevent the novel coronavirus from traveling from one country to another, penetrating one population to another. Although the toll that it took on the different socio-economic and age groups varied, all fell victims to it regardless of ethnicity, gender, social status or religious background. As the world tried to overcome the pandemic, anyone with a cool head and a modicum of wisdom could easily realize that the only way that success in eliminating it could be achieved would be through a concerted interdisciplinary effort by all sectors of society—politics, science, public health, religion, economics, and so on. Those holding fast onto their ideological axes, insisting on exclusion rather than cooperation, factionalism instead of mutual collaboration could only serve to obfuscate progress made through the hard work of conscientious individuals and groups.

It is in context of this urgent need for mutual cooperation that religious leaders worldwide responded to the sign of the time by doing their part to combat the pandemic. This chapter examines one aspect of the contribution by religious leaders in the pandemic, namely, the use of social media to communicate spiritual messages, scientific information, and social exhortation to religious adherents in order to influence the thinking and behavior of their communities. We will look to see how religious leaders made use of social media and what kind of content was seen coming from their social media accounts. The examples cited in this chapter, however, are necessarily limited to only a number of prominent religious leaders from major religious traditions since it would not be possible to investigate content of religious leaders from all levels, traditions, languages and cultures. However, it is believed that the examples presented in this chapter are indicative of the kind of messages that most mainstream religious leaders around the world have attempted to communicate to the faithful.

Chapter from the book: Religion and Society in the Digital Age (Moldova: Eliva Press, 2020).

For full article, email: leducsvd.arc@gmail.com

The Effect of Digital Development on Church and Society in Southeast Asia: A Survey

 Religion and Social Communication 17, No. 1 (2019): 1-29

Abstract

Southeast Asia is a region of tremendous diversity in its religious, social, cultural, economic and political makeup. With a total population of over 657 million, it is the third most populous geographical region in the world, only behind South and East Asia. Technological development in the region is also as varied as all the other dimensions of Southeast Asian life. Despite the fact that urbanization across the region still falls short of the half-way mark by less than a percentage point, Internet penetration has already reached nearly 60 percent with double-digit growth in most segments and most countries of the region. With over half of Southeast Asians being monthly active users, the region presents itself as the third-largest market globally, and the Internet economy is expected to reach $200 billion by 2025.

Other statistics on Southeast Asian digital state are equally interesting. Southeast Asians top the world in terms of time spent on the Internet per day, overwhelmingly by way of the smartphone. According to GlobalWebIndex, users in Thailand spend more time on the Internet each day than any other country in the world, 9h38min. Philippines, another SEA country is only slightly behind with 9h29m. Indonesia and Malaysia rank 4th and 6th, respectively. Though slightly lower, Singapore and Vietnam, another one of SEA’s most populous countries, also make the top 15. As we can see, the majority of the SEA countries are listed in the top 15 list of time spent per day online.

No doubt a significant amount of online time is spent on social media, in which SEA has a 55 percent penetration. Brunei not only leads the region in Internet penetration, but also leads in social media penetration at 81 percent. Meanwhile, more than three quarters of Singaporeans are active monthly social media users. SE Asians use a variety of social media platforms depending on the country. While Facebook still maintains the lead in all 11 countries at the platform level, SE Asians also like to use mobile messengers. LINE is particularly popular in Thailand and Indonesia. Home-grown Zalo is widely used in Vietnam; and Viber was once so popular in the Philippines that Manila’s transport authorities used it for their contact hotlines. Although Facebook Messenger has taken the lead in countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, other platforms with considerable use in the region include BBM (mostly in Indonesia), Whatsapp and WeChat. In Malaysia and Singapore, WhatsApp is still the most popular mobile messenger on the market.

Digital development is not even throughout the region. Although Brunei and Singapore enjoy high digital connectivity, less than one-third of the people in the three countries of Myanmar, Laos and Timor-Leste have Internet access. Likewise, only about a quarter of the people in Myanmar and Laos are social media users. The whole story, however, is that digital growth is rapid in all these countries. Laos, for example, saw an impressive 83 percent growth in users from January 2016 to January 2017. When the ban on Facebook was lifted in Myanmar, Internet users flocked to sign up for the platform. By 2016, there were nearly 10 million Facebook users in the country. Today, the number has grown to over 14 million.

The highly complex picture of the digital landscape of Southeast Asia makes the study on the effect of the Internet on life in Southeast Asia not a simple task. Although certain broad strokes can be drawn about the region, closer examination reveals that the impact of Internet development on each country is unique to its particular context. This survey attempts to provide an overall picture of the effect of the Internet on Southeast Asian society with the caveat that observations made cannot be applied to each of the 11 countries in the region wholesale.

Keywords: Southeast Asia, Digital Development, Church, Society, Internet

Download full article: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3643837

Catholic Church Communication in the Post-Truth Era: Intra-Religious and Inter-Religious Dimensions

February 16, 2019. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3335641
Abstract

The digital era has presented the world with many things, among them fake news and a post-truth mindset. The tendency to disregard truth and the uncontrolled propagation of fake news about religion hold serious ramifications for the Catholic Church and the Church’s relationship with other religions. This essay explores the nature of the post-truth mindset and the negative impact that fake news present to the Church and interreligious relationship. It proposes that the way for the Church to respond to the present social milieu is by taking a proactive approach in its communication strategies. On the ad intra front, the Church needs to counter the post-truth mindset by upholding the authoritative and trustworthy position of the Church through the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. More than proclaiming with words, however, the Church must also reflect Jesus in these regards in the day-to-day life and activities of the Church. On the ad extra front, the Church must redouble its effort at interreligious dialogue, which in view of the modern context, must be seen as the way of being Church. Without this two-pronged communication approach, the Church risks having its voice being drowned out by the great plethora of voices both inside and outside of the Church, many of which aim to disrupt unity within the Church as well as with other religions.

Keyword: Post-truth, fake news, Catholic Church, interreligious dialogue

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1V1ZuJ1acznLCjvir8upB79ArGMDc-E-C

The Way, the Truth and the Life: Asian Religious Communication in the Post-Truth Climate

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iE6WF4MUTJzsY5otTDmxyip6a4keUvkb

Religion and Social Communication. Vol. 16, No. 1, 2018, 19-40.

Abstract

The term “post-truth” has in recent years been widely applied to the state of Western society, especially in Europe and the United States. Post-truth is an adjective describing circumstances where emotions and personal beliefs rather than objective facts play the dominant role in shaping public opinion. A consequence of this disregard for objective facts is the dissemination of misinformation and untruths in order to influence public perceptions, especially in political matters. Although the focus has been primarily on the United States and Europe, the reality of a globalized, hyper-interconnected world means that Asian society is also susceptible to post-truth dynamics. Because Asia is extremely diverse in terms of cultural and religious landscape, the post-truth mentality and practices can potentially bring great harm to interreligious relationships in the region. This paper proposes that Asian religions can address the challenges of the post-truth mindset by resorting to powerful images within their traditions to communicate within and across traditions in order to promote religious unity and harmony. It asserts that the images employed by Jesus to refer to himself, namely, the Way, the Truth, and the Life are images that hold not only rich spiritual significance for Christians but can also resonate deeply with the Asian religious and spiritual outlook. These images may be explored by religious traditions in their own particular contexts and communicated to adherents (intrareligious communication). These images can also serve as the foundation upon which Asian religions can enter into dialogue with one another to build mutual understanding and collaboration (interreligious communication). The thesis is when Asian religions are able to employ shared images to communicate within and across religious traditions, they are able to reaffirm the important role of religion/spirituality in the present social milieu, at the same time resist the negative impact brought about by trends of thought that seek to degrade and relativize religious and spiritual truths.

Keywords: Post-truth, interreligious dialogue, religious communication, Asian religions

A Framework for Buddhist Environmentalism: The Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions

International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture Vol. 28. No. 1 ( June 2018): 177–203

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pyFdT9WFPCZ2mjw2HpJXJucdXFa9-lIr

Abstract

Resorting to Buddhism to advance a form of religious environmentalism has been done by many scholars both from inside and outside the tradition because Buddhism holds a worldview and a number of teachings often perceived as environmentally friendly. This paper contributes to this effort by proposing a framework that is faithful to the Buddhist pedagogical approach. It asserts that this approach comprises two overarching and integral dimensions—a horizontal (relational)and a vertical (developmental) dimension. In  establishing Buddhist environmentalism, the horizontal dimension is employed to assess the root cause of the environmental crisis and the state of humannature relationship. The  horizontal dimension also helps to provide a corrective to the abnormalities in this relationship is proposing a vision of harmonious human-nature relationship characterized by solidarity, responsibility, accountability, service and gratitude. These relationships can be established by resorting to Buddhist cosmogony and fundamental teachings such as the Principle of Dependent Origination and the Three Characteristics of Existence. The vertical dimension constitutes the prescriptive aspect of Buddhist environmentalism, which insists that self-cultivation aimed at emancipation from mundane existence is part and parcel of the effort to promote self and environmental well-being. It asserts that human-nature relationship must be added to the total number of relationships in one’s life, and it must be held in view in the process of self-cultivation so that it becomes an indicator of a person’s spiritual progress. Virtues such as loving kindness, gentleness, moderation and generosity developed through the Noble Eightfold Path not only go towards promoting interpersonal relationship but also promote environmental well-being and flourishing. Consequently, this paper is critical of any Buddhist environmentalism that fails to give due attention to both dimensions, and it emphasizes that both the relational and developmental dimensions must be held in balance in order for a genuine Buddhist environmentalism to be possible.

Key words: Buddhism, Buddhist Environmentalism, Religious Environmentalism,  Environmental Crisis

Ecological Concerns in the Age of Globalization

in Missionary Discipleship in Glocal Contexts, Stanislaus, Lazar T. & Nguyen, vanThanh, Eds., (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Steyler Missionswissenschaftliches Institut, 2018): 91-117.

Abstract

Every age has its defining concerns that demand the attention of the deepest and brightest thinkers of the time. For the modern age, one of these preoccupations centers on the escalating global environmental crisis threatening to undermine human progress achieved thus far in economic and social development, and leave the next generation with a debilitated earth. The issue has grown into a dilemma that cannot be confined to a single or even a few sectors of society nor be adequately addressed simply by politicians or scientific experts. The global consensus is that an effective solution to ecological concerns requires an interdisciplinary, dialectical, and dialogical approach involving a diverse contingent of individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions. The tasks to be done include applying scientific and technological know-how to social, economic and legal policies, all of which must be undergirded by political will and religious and personal commitment to act on behalf of the environment. This essay examines the multi-dimensional environmental challenges in the context of a globalized world and the need for a collaborative framework in order to overcome these challenges for the benefit of future generations. The thesis here is that without a collaborative interdisciplinary approach, the efforts to address environmental woes will only be piecemeal and ultimately ineffective.

Keywords: Environmental crisis, Ecological concerns, Globalization

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326008965_Ecological_Concerns