Is internet dependence sacrilegious?

Commenting on Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Religion Dispatches‘ Jonathan L. Walton cites an absent discussion: the relationship between texting, twittering, and tweening and religious worship. Walton’s concern for “the growing number of congregations that have embraced texting and twittering during worship” begs the questions:

What does this mean for deep theological reflection and nuanced notions of the sacred? If we can barely breathe without compulsively checking email and status updates 24/7, shouldn’t there be a time and space where we disengage and disconnect from our “networks”?

Read Walton’s article in full here.

Amanda Kaplan is a Masters student at the Draper Interdisciplinary Program in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University, a consultant for projects on religion and the public sphere at the SSRC and a regular contributor to here & there.

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