Channeling Realities: Religion, Ecology, and Technology in the Classroom Print

Whitney A. Bauman, Florida International University

Whitney A. Bauman is assistant professor of religion and science at Florida International University in Miami. His publications include Theology, Creation, and Environmental Ethics: From Creatio ex Nihilo to Terra Nullius (New York: Routledge, 2009) and, coedited with Richard Bohannon and Kevin O’Brien, Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2010). Bauman currently serves as co-Chair of the Religion and Ecology Group at the American Academy of Religion and as book review editor for Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. He teaches courses such as “Technology and Human Values,” “Religion, Nature, and Globalization,” and “Religion, Gender, and Nature.” Bauman’s current research is in the area of religion, nature, and queer theory.

Making It Personal

On the very first day of my course “Technology and Human Values,” after general introductions and syllabus review, I have students break out into small groups of no more than five students. Each group is required to choose one piece of “technology” from among its members. They then have to answer the three driving questions of the course, which are adapted from the Noreen Herzfeld work that describes the questions the Amish ask when deciding whether or not to adopt new technology:

  1. How does this technology change what it means to be human (for better/worse)?
  2. How does this technology change what it means to live in a community (for better/worse)?
  3. How does this technology change human/earth/other animal relations (for better/worse)?

These three questions are at the heart of what I understand to be “religion and ecology,” which deals with the intersection of anthropology, meaning, and our place within the larger context of the earth. Most of the groups choose something that is common to them all, such as an iPhone, corrective glasses, laptop, gaming device, etc. For the purpose of this short article, I will illustrate the iPhone example. The groups usually come up with creative and intelligent answers for the first question. For instance, one of the iPhone groups had heard that such devices that enable immediate communication twenty-four hours a day lead to feelings of fear and mistrust when someone doesn’t answer an e-mail, phone call, or text message. Thus, this device may challenge basic trust between people. The second question is often answered easily as well. For example, and on a positive note, smart phones such as the iPhone make it easier for communities to transcend geographical boundaries. If someone feels like a “freak” in his/her hometown, they are always only a few taps away from chatting, talking, or texting with someone “like them” in a different geographic location.

It is the third question that leads to the most problems and that is, I think, at the heart of the challenge of teaching “religion and ecology” to the “millennial” generation. Most students answer the third question with how technology improves in some way the planet (“greener” technology) or the lives of animals. Such an attitude fits right in with the overall idea of technology as salvific — which is a historical theme/attitude that gets taken up in the course. Some students suggest just the opposite — that technology only destroys our relationship to the rest of the natural world by taking us further and further from it. This attitude fits the Luddite mentality toward technology, which is another historical theme/attitude that gets taken up in the course. However, almost none of them see technology (or even themselves) as part of the rest of the natural world. For this reason, almost none of them answer the third question in the way that I had intended, which is: “How does your given piece of technology work, what resources are used in its production, and how does the production affect humans, other animals, and the earth?” 

As students of the “net generation” or “wired age” or “millennial generation,” as they are variously described, one might assume that they would know a bit more about the ways in which their worlds are mediated through technologies such as the iPhone. However, this is not the case. Most of them do not realize that silicon microchips are highly toxic, nor do they realize that the Internet “grid” takes an enormous amount of energy to maintain (so much so that there are new studies showing it is more environmentally friendly to use paper copies of things rather than e-copies). Further, they are often not aware of the unequal distribution of the availability of technology or the ecological waste that results from the production and use of technologies such as the iPhone. These technologies are touted as bringing about a wireless — and therefore green? — revolution that would not take up the resources that industrial age technologies use. This exercise has done a wonderful job of highlighting the ways in which religious values, ecological issues, and our very responsibility toward the earth community are tied up in everyday uses of technology.


Though I grew up to appreciate much about “rural life” and grew up hunting, fishing, etc., I am a lover of urban life…and an environmentalist. Perhaps because my primary understanding of nature as a child was through technological mediations (agriculture, hunting, fishing, and waterskiing), I understand technology as an important part of a concept of nature. Furthermore, because my formative “religious” experience as a youth was through Episcopal Church camps that were very much environmentally focused, I have long included the rest of the natural world in my understandings of religion. Not putting it all together until many student loans later, the design of the course stems ultimately from this idiosyncratic background. 

At a more reflective level, research on the millennial generation and all subsequent generations all but requires us as educators to begin to think and teach differently, given the “wireless” and connected generations that will fill our classrooms from now until retirement. Second, since I teach in a department of religious studies in an urban institution, Florida International University, in a city that only exists through technological transformations, Miami — it occurred to me that most of the students taking my courses have had little to no unmediated experience with “nature.” In other words, “wilderness” or “pure nature” makes little to no sense in their daily lives. As such, so I wondered, how could I help students embody their daily realities within the rest of the natural world? Whereas some exercises I use in other courses ask students to reflect on a place or a specific animal or tree, this one asks students to begin reflecting on how a constantly moving world connected through communication, transportation, and other technologies affects (for better and worse) their own understanding of “nature,” their own understanding of what it means to be human, and the viability of the future of the planetary community.

Thus, to a certain degree, I am asking students in this exercise to channel the various realities that are affected by their everyday use of something as taken for granted as a smart phone. Most of the “goods” resulting from such technologies (such as information at one’s fingertips, which leads me to call these new devices the modern-day oracles) are rattled off quite easily, but it takes a bit longer to come up with the more problematic aspects of these technologies. In any event, the exercise becomes a way of focusing attention on how ethical, philosophical, and religious ways of thinking relate to movement and change. Though place and the destruction thereof is important to the “religion and ecology” dialogue, movement and change — which is essential to all life, since equilibrium or staticity is death — is equally important. Such movement is not served well by an ethic of preservation or conservation of “nature.” Following theorists of a more dynamic understanding of religion, such as Thomas Tweed, throughout the course I try to tie this exercise in with “technological shifts” in the past and the subsequent shifts in meaning-making practices that occur along the way. 

As we progress through the course, the goal is that students will begin to see how “technology” is not just something that “is,” but rather is a part of humanity that drastically affects our meaning-making practices and thus our relationship to the rest of the natural world. If they can understand how an iPhone changes us in the same way that the telescope or the printing press radically revolutionized meaning and practices, then they can begin to ask the question of what future these technologies are transitioning us toward. In other words, rather than an iPhone being a mere given of everyday reality, the choice to use one becomes something for which an individual can take responsibility. It thus also becomes a daily point of reflection for how our own practices and technologies are affecting other people and the rest of the natural world around us. 


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