Religious Studies News

Within my context, the largest challenge I have with this teaching tool is that the students are left a bit overwhelmed, as you might imagine. How is it possible to think of every single piece of technology we use in this way on a daily basis? How is it possible to do anything about changing our technologies to be more conducive to a healthy planetary community when, in order to be successful students and later have successful careers, students are all but required to use these very technologies that are being problematized? These are valid questions and in future manifestations of the course I am going to try to extend the original project throughout the course and into a final project as well. In other words, I can imagine a group at the beginning of class choosing some form of technology that is used in daily life, identifying the positive and negative aspects of that technology, and then researching how these technologies can be improved in ways that make it less destructive to peoples and the rest of the natural world. Such follow-through will be important in terms of convincing students that the world will most likely not be saved or destroyed by some heroic or apocalyptic event, but that (as Nancy Bedford suggests) we can make “little moves” against destructiveness. Such “little moves” are already explored throughout the course in terms of the ways that technological shifts happen over long periods of time and that it takes many different participants and events to tip toward changes that, from a historical perspective, seem drastic. So, extending the project might also help students see their own role and responsibility in and toward the world in such a context. 

Another extension of this project also commands that future courses dealing with “religion and ecology” must also always deal with ethical ambiguity and ecological despair. As the common response to “getting into” ecological issues is one of overwhelming sadness and despair, we as educators need to be prepared to deal with this. Likewise, we also need to be prepared to teach how to live out of glass houses, as hypocrites and as imposters. What I mean is that most of us (and our students) do live in a world where our lives are made possible by the very technologies and habits that we critique. This is not lost on our students who, though often multitasking, are always ready to point out inconsistencies. I think it is important to own, name, and confess our own ecological sins as we teach these courses. None of us lives in the utopias we hope for, but if anything, religion is about maintaining hope amidst despair and working toward some vision of a “better” future. Thus, this ambiguity and despair can also provide a teaching moment for channeling religion, technologies, and the rest of the natural world in the classroom.   

Resources

Bedford, Nancy. “Little Moves against Destructiveness: Theology and the Practice of Discernment” in D. Bass and M. Volf, eds. Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001: 157–181.

Clark, Andy. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Herzfeld, Noreen. Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World. Philadelphia: Templeton, 2009.

Swedish, Margaret. “Spirituality and Ecological Hope.”

Tapscott, Don. Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009.

Tweed, Thomas. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Syllabus - Technology and Human Values - Bauman