Abstract
In 1984, the original publication of Theology and Technology was unique in its time for its range of authors and direct address of theological questions related to technology. In an expression of gratitude for and claim about the importance of the original Theology and Technology volume, Levi Checketts revives and adds to this work. He is joined by one of its original editors, Carl Mitcham, in this endeavour (the other original editor, Jim Grote, passed away in 2013). Theology and Technology was originally printed as one volume with three parts: Basic Approaches, Exegeses of the Christian Tradition, and Select Bibliography. In the revised reprint, the text is broken up into two volumes, reflecting the two parts of the original work respectively and dividing the bibliography between the volumes. All original essays remain as they were in the first edition. Grote's and Mitcham's introductory essays to the original work are moved to accompany the division of part one and two into two volumes. In volume one, Checketts adds a new reflective essay, ‘Christ and Technology in Dialogical Relation: Some Reflections on Technological Augmentation of the Sacred’, updating the reader on the status of the field and adding his own voice and method to the discussion. This is followed by a new reflective essay by editor Carl Mitcham and a conclusion by Checketts. Volume two has no new additions, though the essays are grouped into different sections without changing their order.
Checketts in the new ‘Forward’, which is found in both volumes, admits the original essays are works of their time period. They reflect biases related to language, preference of sources, and more significantly the almost monolithic white, male, Euro-American, Christian worldview of all the authors. As a reprint with few new additions, Checketts must make the case for its importance, despite these biases. He describes his primary motivation for the reprint as trying to remedy the many false starts he perceives in the field of theological studies of technology. Checketts wonders if ‘[t]he present moment, however, offers an important opportunity to try once again’ (p. xv). Moreover, he hopes the renewed accessibility of this text might allow for these essays to serve as foundational conversation partners in the on-going growth and development of theological studies of technology. Checketts expresses his desire for the volumes to serve as a ‘shared basis from which theologians studying technology might dialogue’; that the essays would be ‘starting points’ (p. xvii).
My initial reaction to this claim was one of scepticism. Too many fields of theological studies require a deference to a biased and exclusivist ‘foundation’ that then exerts implicit and explicit parameters on the development of the field and restricts who joins or counts as a rigorous, knowledgeable contributor. To some extent, this would be the case if works like this were enforced as shared starting points for the development of a field. And yet, despite the biases readers will find present in specific essays, the collection is true to its original and now renewed intent to present conversational and competing, not exhaustive or stereotypically representative, considerations of the intersection of Christian theology and technology (p. 132).
In his reflective essay at the end of volume one, Carl Mitcham notes the necessity of the original text to engage the ‘theo-political problem of technology’ (p. 118). Essays in the first part/volume one of the work use H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture framework to ensure attention to theological and political or social dimensions of technology. As a reminder, Mitcham describes the typology for the reader as Christ in opposition, support/agreement, transcendence (Christ above culture), paradox, or transformation (Christ as transformer) to culture (pp. 3, 119). He argues for an understanding of theology and technology as best understood within the Christ as oppositional to technology (culture) and Christ as paradoxical to technology (culture) frames. Many of the essays lean toward these two typologies and could be read through the frame of Mitcham's essay. However, it is the authors’ diversity of arguments that is a strength as they engage the relationship of Christian theologies and faith practices to technology both historically and in its modern developments. One of the starker examples of this arises in volume one between ‘Essay 2: Faith Outside Technique’ by George Blair which argues that theology should be rooted in God's immutability and impassibility and thus God is disinterested in what happens to the world, contrasted with Wilhelm E. Fudpucker's argument in ‘Essay 3: Through Christian Technology to Technological Christianity’ which suggests that technology and Christianity have the same purpose.
I will not repeat the thorough summaries of each essay provided in the new Forward or Mitcham's introductory essay. Suffice it to say that the essays in volume one share the Niebuhrian framing, but provide different theoretical and theological approaches to major questions including: Can Christians use technology for theological purposes? Is the teleology of technology contrary or aligned with Christianity? How should technology be defined and does the definition obscure or clarify theology in relation to technology? These are current questions as well as historical ones and readers can learn from the different theological perspectives that arise in these essays.
While many of the technologies discussed in this volume are different from those readily addressed today, the reader can observe how the questions are asked (method) and how certain Christian approaches (theologies) yield differing conclusions. Using the essays as resources for methodological consideration is exemplified in Levi Checketts’s additional essay to volume one which connects these historic conversations and the field today. Even while I resist (many other readers may not) Checketts’s desire for the field to ‘coalesce around agreed upon authors, methods, and texts’ (p. 91), I appreciate his elucidation of how the original essays, even in their shared framework, evidence diverse conclusions. Checketts also provides a much-needed critique of the use of the Niebuhrian typology in the sense that culture is not monolithic and that methods change over time as he guides the reader to take an empirical turn with his essay. I appreciate how Checketts’s assessment of the original essays and authorial methodological forthrightness model a ‘field-making attempt’ to name these authors, methods, and texts as formative conversation partners rather than camps. To ensure such an approach, I recommend reading Mitcham's first essay in tandem with his new concluding essay that questions his own approach and the viability of the Niebuhrian typology and Christianity more broadly. This allows the reader to experience perhaps what Checketts himself recognised when labouring over the reprint: the value of returning to historical texts is the perspective they provide on their own time period as well as highlighting differences with the contemporary reader's context.
Volume two focuses on questions of Christianity and technology in conversation with scriptural exegesis or biblical studies, historical or classical theologies, and contemporary (in 1984) questions of hermeneutics and theological virtues. Each of the three sections explore shared questions but, much like volume one, they maintain diverse (even contradictory) responses. For example, in section three on Theology and Technological Culture, Thomas Berry argues for technology as part of the history of creation; George W. Shields and Frederick Sontag disagree with Berry as well as each other, proposing two alternative understandings of the relationship between God, technology, and humans. Because volume two does not include a framework like Niebuhr's Christ and Culture typology, the essays offer wider methodological engagement often influenced by practices of biblical exegesis, shaped by particular theological traditions from natural law to process theology, and take on specific questions related to Christian practices and technological change.
‘Essay 14: Prospects for the Theology of Technology’ by Albert Borgmann concludes volume two. In the original work, it appears to have served as an epilogue to the entire project as Borgmann integrates insights from essays across the current two-volume edition. This concluding essay offers a well-rounded overview, even as the author argues for his own approach. Borgmann calls for a theology of technology that beckons Christians to move through technology rather than be led astray by the possibility of rejecting technology or giving in to technological thinking, which he argues—recall, he is writing in 1984!—is ‘the common rule of life’ (p. 232). He suggests restraint on the part of the Christian as evidenced by counter-practices, much like P. Hans Sun's essay, which he hopes will be articulated in future practical theologies. Given the many new, practical theological digital theologies and sociological media studies publications since the original publication, this volume could have benefited from a new essay, in conversation with essays in volume two and Borgmann's piece, like the one Levi Checketts contributed to volume one.
Such an addition could have been an opportunity to include at least one new voice that was not male, not white, or perhaps not European or American. Of course, some readers might critique that as tokenism (which it is). Yet, as I read, I longed for more diverse representation beyond references. I commend Checketts for repeatedly noting, when his voice is heard, the volumes’ lack of diversity. The authors are all male, white (with the exception of Sun), and Christian (with a large number of Catholics), and they share Euro-American scholarly orientations and training. Interestingly, essay ten in volume two entitled ‘Toward an Indigenous Theology of the Cross’ is a critique of the central role of European theology in the academy. However, Douglas John Hall's use of ‘indigenous’ today (and probably then) rings hollow and is better described as white, North American theology or Christian settler theology. This is made starkly clear given his reference to (what becomes known as) Black theology as opposed to his own task (p. 166). This essay, like others in the volume, can be approached by readers with ‘critique, response, and reflection’ as they ‘grapple critically with the essays’ (p. xviii). I agree with Checketts that when most of the original authors are dead and their intent cannot be revisited one hopes a reader will be ‘able to see the shortcomings and give us room to reflect on how the conversation surrounding theology and technology has remained myopic’ (p. xix).
The reprint of Theology and Technology offers the field of theological studies of technology, broadly conceived, an opportunity to discern Checketts’ desire that these texts serve as a foundation or starting points for the next stages of theological studies of technology. For those of us actively engaged in the development of this field, we might ask: What preference or power is given to a text deemed to be a starting point and what consequences might this have for new, diverse scholars and scholarship? How do disciplines discipline in a way that might not be helpful when thinking theologically or technologically? What does academic field making accomplish? Checketts wonders, ‘How different would the experience or perspectives of theology and its fit with technology be from a person who does not occupy a hegemonic place in Christianity?’ (p. 136). Thankfully, publications in the field of digital theology, Christian ethics of technology, and religion and media studies have those perspectives and there are more to come. Those texts should be assigned side-by-side with the essays from this two-volume set if taught in the classroom. Hopefully, the expanded and growing bibliography containing references to these new resources and more, which Checketts proposes be housed on the Jacques Ellul Society website, becomes a reality (p. xix).