Each of these will be described and developed in turn, but first, it is necessary to recapitulate the key ideas from Theology and New Materialism (Reader 2017) itself and to explain the background to its publication. To summarize, the new concepts that will be proposed in this article are the idea of disinhibition that of autoimmunity the programme for a modest ethics the dynamic between proximity and distance, and then from within theology itself, the potential contributions of ideas stemming from panentheism. In the book, I call this alternative approach relational Christian realism. The other discussion that has developed is that of the role of religion(s) in addressing or even providing antidotes to some of the difficulties identified in the fields of environment and digital technology, and some of those discussions will be reflected in this article. This article will be a drawing together of some of that work so far and is in some respects the result of this collective enterprise. As such, the original book and the meetings since attempt to continue the conversations and to explore other ideas and contributions. It also needs to be said that, following the launch of the book in June 2017, a group evolved from those present that has continued to meet Footnote 1, and which also pursues many of these themes. As much has already been written within theology about the environmental, the main emphasis in the book was on the digital, so establishing a conceptuality that spans both areas remains a concern.Īlthough this article will refer to some of the concepts used in the book, this is an opportunity to add to those concepts such as disinhibition, autoimmunity, a modest ethics and an interpretation of God as found in panentheism, that now seem of value in spanning that gap. There was, however, a particular area that remained underdeveloped, that of possible links between the environmental and the digital. In the book, I supplemented these with reference to the philosophical work of Bruno Latour ( 2007) and Stiegler ( 2015a, b) amongst others, and from within theology to the work of Catherine Keller ( 2015), John Caputo ( 2013), and Kearney and Zimmerman ( 2016). In order to do this, a major focus was on ideas emerging from New Materialism, but it was never the intention to restrict discussion to those or to adopt them uncritically.
Such is the case with Theology and New Materialism (Reader 2017) as it was written with a very specific objective in mind: that of beginning to scope a new conceptuality with which theology might begin to more effectively tackle the twin issues of environment and technology. It may be that finding our bearings in order to steer a new direction for both environmental and digital challenges require the ‘profound inner conversion’ of which Pope Francis speaks in his ( 2015) Laudato Si.Įvery author knows that whenever a book is completed, there are always loose ends or other strands of thought that remain to be developed or followed up when the occasion arises. Each links back to key ideas from New Materialism such as distributed agency and mini or local transcendences and the concept of God who is ‘beyond in the midst’. To counter these difficulties, the idea of a modest ethics and from within theology, the dynamic between proximity and distance and then panentheism are presented as solutions. It then addresses the question of why it remains difficult to operationalize appropriate responses and the concepts of disinhibition (Latour and for Stiegler) and autoimmunity (Derrida) offer possible explanations. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and Bernard Stiegler, it proposes they share a common concern to provide an ‘earthing’ or form of practical knowledge to shape the discourses in both fields. The article traces developments since the publication of John Reader’s Theology and New Materialism (2017) with the aim of establishing conceptual resources that link concerns for the environment with those for digital technology.
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