When Religion Meets New Media

The Medium Is the Danger: Discourse about Television among Amish and Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Women

“…Similar to other religious communities (Campbell, 2010;Hendershot, 2004), they deal with television content and see it as a bad influence. In contrast to other religious communities that negotiate the content but use the medium, however, the Amish and ultra-Orthodox have decided to reject the medium itself.…”

“…This is an important difference between the evangelistic Christian and ultra-Orthodox Habad communities who accept the medium and adapt the content to their purposes (Campbell, 2010;Hendershot, 2004) and the Amish and ultra-Orthodox who portray the medium itself as a tool of the devil and toss it outside their communities' fences. I would like to suggest three possible explanations for their use of this tool.…”

“…The women's answers help us understand that one of the most important and strong tools for separation of religious communities are the walls that the community creates between "We" and the "Other" (Douglas, 1966;Lepter & Lindlof, 2001;McGuire, 1997). The attitudes and beliefs toward technologies are an important part of the communities' self-definition and the creation of these walls (Campbell, 2010). If the primary requirement of technology is seen as the ability to accomplish a social task (Jackson, 1996), the communities' attitudes toward technology are rooted in "group-specific beliefs about how the world could be known, and how other groups than one's own imagined it to be" (Marvin, 1988, p. 6).…”

“…Campbell (2010) wrote about the values and priorities of religious communities as reflected in their discourse and decision making toward all new technologies: "The success, failure or redesign of a given technology by a specific group of users is based, not simply on the innate qualities of the technology, but also on the ability of users to socially construct the technology in line with the moral economy of the user community or context" (p. 59). When the technology has features with potential problematic influences on the community, and if it could open the community to the secular world, it will be rejected, especially if the technologies "encourage the cultivation of values and practices antithetical to the communities' prescribed religious life" (p. 122).…”

Tweeting #humanwaste: A practical theological tracing of #humanwaste as a trend on Twitter

“…As background to the interpretation of the reality of a digital world, various scholars (Campbell 2011;Campbell 2013a;Flew 2008;Hassan 2008;Wagner 2012;) 4 point to at least three driving factors currently leading towards further development and demarcation of the digital landscape, namely the:…”