Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age
Overview
How the Habitat of Internet Technology Undermines Christian Wisdom
With ample advancement in internet technology, people can answer billions of questions instantly, connect with long-distance family and friends, and discover what is happening worldwide in real time. But can something that seems so good lead to corruption for those pursuing godly wisdom?
In Digital Liturgies, tech-realist Samuel D. James examines the connection between patterns in technology and human desires. Everyone longs for a glimpse of heaven; James argues they are just looking for it in the wrong place—the internet.
This accessible book exposes 5 “digital liturgies” that prohibit people from contemplating big truths, accepting the uncomfortable, and acknowledging God as their Creator. It then calls readers to live faithfully before Christ, finding wisdom through Scripture and rest in God’s perfect design.
A Biblical View of the Internet and Technology: Readers explore the connection between human desire, the internet, and wisdom through a Christian lens
Great for College Students, Parents, and Pastors: This book encourages readers to live faithfully for Christ
Offers a Tech-Realist Perspective: Samuel D. James highlights the inherent dangers of digital technologies, offering wisdom for navigating our internet-saturated world
This is a Logos Reader Edition. Learn more.
- Calls readers to live faithfully before Christ, finding wisdom through Scripture and rest in God’s perfect design
- Exposes 5 “digital liturgies” that prohibit people from contemplating big truths
- Examines the connection between patterns in technology and human desires
- Introduction: What the Web Means for Our Spiritual Lives
- Chapter 1: Embodied Wisdom in a Faceless Age
- Chapter 2: How Technology Shapes Us
- Chapter 3: Drowning in the Shallows
- Chapter 4: “My Story, My Truth”
- Chapter 5: The Abolition of Thought
- Chapter 6: Shame on You
- Chapter 7: Naked in the Dark
- Chapter 8: Death by Minutiae
- Chapter 9: Habits of Wisdom & Resistance
This accessible but penetrating book shows how our late-modern, secular culture provides litu rgies: soul-shaping practices and narratives that train us to turn from God to the sovereign self, from God-created nature to self-created reality, from living for truth and love to living for power. If you can’t see them, you can’t resist them, and the author gives you resources to do both. Samuel James has written an essential book. He is one of the small but growing number of young thinkers to whom the church must listen if it is to learn how to be effective in evangelism and formation in a post-Christendom world.
—Tim Keller, Founding Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City; Cofounder, Redeemer City to City
After the first few chapters, I decided my teenagers should read this book, and maybe their whole school as well. Such good sociological insights. A few chapters later I decided I wanted my church to read it. Such helpful spiritual and pastoral insights too. By the book’s end, however, I realized I needed this book. It applied the gospel to me and my online habits, and I need worthier ones. What that means, friend, is that I’m pretty sure you also need this book. It explains the digital water we’re all swimming in and how that digital water has reprogrammed us more than we realize.
—Jonathan Leeman, Editorial Director, 9Marks; Elder, Cheverly Baptist Church, Hyattsville, Maryland
Virtually everyone I know feels exhausted by or enslaved to some aspect of digital life. In this book, one of the sharpest Christian minds helps us discover what exactly we’re looking for in our screens. Digital Liturgies points a path beyond the outrage, anger, shame, and boredom that we accidentally download into our souls.
—Russell Moore, Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
- Title: Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age
- Author: Samuel James
- Publisher: Crossway
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Logos Release Date: 2023
- Pages: 191
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Technology › Religious aspects--Christianity; Social media › Religious aspects--Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781433587139, 9781433587160, 9781433587146, 1433587130, 1433587165, 1433587149
- Resource ID: LLS:DGTLLTRGSRDNLNG
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-09-11T19:25:01Z
Samuel James is the associate acquisitions editor at Crossway. He is the author of Digital Liturgies, a regular newsletter on Christianity, technology, and culture. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Emily, and their three children.