Exploring Christian religious practice, meaning-making, and dynamics of belonging in a “culture of digitality”

The research project is interested in how Christian religious practice, theology, and community building change in the context of an increasingly digitally networked society and what specific opportunities and risks lie in these developments.

We ask, for example, how prayer and meditation change through the use of an app and what impact it has on everyday life, how theology is done by pastors and “laypeople” on Instagram, or to what extent digital church networks might transform traditional church structures and images. We are also interested in the ethical-theological side of these developments: To what extent, for example, does digital practice lead to individual religious empowerment (according to the “general priesthood of all believers”)? How to deal with conflicts when Christian influencer as digital authorities challenges traditional religious authorities?

These questions are explored through participatory citizen science, which generates a concrete outcome for the involved individuals and communities that can be implemented back in their context.

To get a better idea of our research, we would like to present two subprojects that we carry out with our research partners:

EVERMORE – or the impact of meditation with an app on everyday life.

EVERMORE is a prayer and meditation app of the Landeskirche Hannover, which was launched at the end of October 2021: https://evermore-app.de. In the research project, we investigate in cooperation with app users whether and how EVERMORE impacts their everyday lives. In this way, we are closing a gap in research that has so far paid little attention to the impact of religious apps on daily life. In addition, the jointly gained insights will flow into the further development of EVERMORE.

YEET – or the transformation of the church into a modern movement?

YEET is a cross-national evangelical content network that supports Christian influencers (typically: pastors of the Landeskirchen) who share their faith through social media and engage in conversation with young, tendentially unchurched people: https://yeet.evangelisch.de. Together with the network’s influencers, we investigate the extent to which YEET contributes to the transformation of the understanding of the church as a modern, open, diversity-friendly movement and what opportunities and risks need to be considered in this process.

This project builds on insights from research on the church as network and movement and authority conflicts in transformation processes. Our research will bring insights into a pioneering project of the digital church in the German area and contribute to clarifying the future mission of YEET.