The Very Rev Albert Bogle reflects on the future challenge of technology for the Church.

THE digital environment is firmly part of the world in which we live. Everywhere you go, be it in a remote African village or a shopping centre in Glasgow, you will find people totally engrossed in a continuum that moves from a digital environment to a face to face encounter.

It all happens in a seamless manner. We are now living through a digitalised revolution that is having a profound effect and impact on how we understand, what is meant by face to face, time and space and indeed how we define personal identity and sustain relationships with others. It is now possible to be in two places at the same time. Technology is giving a new meaning to presence and location. If this massive identity challenge is not apparent to you as yet it will be in the next two or three years.

Local congregations need to understand and accept that the internet and social networks are opportunities for dialogue and encounter with many who are estranged from formal church, as well as offering opportunities to regular church attenders, access to information and knowledge. However digitalisation is about much more than the church creating a noticeboard on the internet.

It is interesting to note that the European Community has recognised the importance of the digital world for socio-political engagement, and as an effective way to stimulate active citizenship. It was in Brussels 2013 that the “Onlife Manifesto” was launched – more about this later in the article.

It is imperative that the Church of Scotland begins to deal with the digital revolution and finds a strategy that will enable us to harness this new technological world to best effect for the glory of God and the honour of the gospel. In doing so it will call for a radical rethink about how we understand training for ministry and how we value the creatives and the technicians in our midst. Above all we need to recover a passion for our core calling which is to make disciples. Many of the new disciples will be nurtured through digital means.

This radical approach will require the church to begin to think theologically about digitalisation in order to recognise the challenges it presents to our humanity at different levels, including a socioanthropological and ethical perspective.

While Sanctuary First is beginning to build partnerships in this area. Our resources are minimal compared with what is required. However we require to be more intentional as a national church if we are to take this kind of engagement seriously.

The Christian community has a duty to help shape the new technology. It will be important that we begin to think about ecclesial action and reflection in this area. We need to be researching and developing new ways to be effective communicators in the digital environment.

We can no longer simply talk about being on or offline as church communities. This terminology no longer describes the reality of living in 2019. Digital is part of real life.

Professor Luciano Floridi, of the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, suggests to talk about being offline or online is so 1990s. He believes we need to recognise that new tools are being used now to define reality. In 2013 he along with around thirteen academics published ‘The Onlife Manifesto’. It has been used by many organisations in the corporate and political and educational worlds to begin to stimulate a discussion about the effect the new digital technologies are having on the following areas of life:

• Our self-conception (who we are);

• Mutual interactions (how we socialise);

• Our conceptions of reality (our metaphysics);

• Our interactions with reality (our agency).

The ‘Onlife Manifesto’, seeks to highlight that society is just waking up to the huge legal, ethical and political significance ICT, (Information Communication Technology), is having on our lives. The following quote from the introduction to the book suggests the nub of the problem we face: “This has happened because of the blurring of the distinctions between reality and virtuality. The blurring of the distinctions between human machine and nature. The reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks.”

Professor Floridi suggests it is the above examples that are testing the foundations of philosophy. It would seem to me that we need to be engaging with a theology that enables us to understand and communicate with a society that is in l ux. This means we as a church need to be equipping our future leaders to understand the significance of church in an “onlife” world.

The Very Rev Albert Bogle is a Pioneer Minister of Sanctuary First Church Online at www.sanctuaryirst.org.uk