This book illustrates the research being carried out on the more practical aspects of the subject of religion and the digital, drawing on a wider range of disciplines and was created in memory of John Reader whose idea the text was, who died suddenly in 2023.
Postdigital Ethical Futures emerged from the work of the Ethical Futures Network hosted by the William Temple Foundation meeting both online and at Trinity College, Oxford. This book illustrates the research being carried out by some of the members of this network by examining the more practical aspects of the subject of religion and the digital, drawing on a wider range of disciplines and was created in memory of John Reader whose idea the text was, who died suddenly in 2023. This book examines issues of ethics as encountered in both the digital and environmental spheres, and seeks to cross the boundary between philosophy and theology.
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I - The nature of ethics
1. The Landscape of Postdigital Ethics
Maggi Savin-Baden
2. A New Materialist Approach to Postdigital Ethics
Adrian Evans and John Reader
3. Searching For the Good Life: Boundary Crossing, Co-Existence, and
Conviviality
Mark Coeckelbergh and John Reader
Part II - Practical theology and ethics
4. Postdigital Cloud Prayer
Eric Trozzo
5. The Postdigital Church: Implications of the Concept of Postdigitality for
Current Research on the Digital Church?
Sabrina Müller and Aline Knapp
6. Reclaiming the Position and Role of Muslim Women in a (post)-digital
World
Nuraan Davids
Part III - Theoretical debates
7. The Spiritual Commons: Enclosures and Thresholds
John Reader
8. On the Possibility of Artificial Sin: Sin, Sentience and Self
Paul Woods
9. Biological and Artificial Neural Networks and Postdigital Ethics
Peter Haslehurst and Andrew Bevan
Part IV - Endings
10. Enfolding or Unfolding the Face: A Digital Spirituality
John Reader
Postscript - Reflections on the Text
Maria Power
Maria Power is a Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. Her work focuses mainly on peacebuilding within divided communities in Northern Ireland. Her most recent publications include Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland: Cardinal Cahal Daly and the Pursuit of the Peaceable Kingdom, (Routledge, 2021) and Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts, (Palgrave, 2023). She is currently writing a monograph exploring the role of the bible in the conflict in Northern Ireland which will be published by Routledge in 2025.
Maggi Savin-Baden is a Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. She has authored, coauthored and edited 27 books in the areas of innovative learning, digital fluency, digital afterlife pedagogical agents, qualitative research methods, problem-based learning and the metaverse. She currently co-editor of the Metaverse book series. In her spare time, she runs, bakes, climbs, does triathlons and wild swimming.