TY - JOUR T1 - “The Light of a Thousand Stories”: JF - Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet Y1 - 2019 A1 - Hutchings, Tim AB - Open access and free to read online: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/religions/article/view/23952 Understanding a videogame requires attention to the social dimensions of its production, its material form and its reception. Games are produced in communities of designers, played by communities of gamers, and accepted into families, households, and other communal settings. Christian games have often been designed with this wider community context in mind, advertised to families and churches as products that can help attract and retain new audiences. This article focuses on the children’s videogame Guardians of Ancora (GoA), produced by the Christian organization Scripture Union in 2015. We will use an interview with the product developer to explore the intent behind the game, and we will use an interview with a British volunteer at ‘St. George’s Church’ to discover how the game has been used within a Christian community. GoA incorporates a degree of procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) into its design, but St. George’s invites children to engage with the game’s story and world in the context of a week of crafts, songs and other volunteer-led activities. Scholars of digital religion have long been fascinated by the relationship between online and offline religion, and the study of the social context of religious gaming offers a new way to approach this classic theme. UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335293198_The_Light_of_a_Thousand_Stories_Design_Play_and_Community_in_the_Christian_Videogame_Guardians_of_Ancora ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Design and the digital Bible: persuasive technology and religious reading JF - Journal of Contemporary Religion Y1 - 2017 A1 - Hutchings, Tim AB - This article analyses two ‘digital Bibles’, products that allow the user to engage with the Bible through the screen and speakers of his/her mobile phone, tablet or computer. Both products, ‘YouVersion’ and ‘GloBible’, have been created by Evangelical Christian companies. I argue that both are designed to train the user in traditional Evangelical Christian understandings of the work of reading. Digital media offer new opportunities to guide and influence the user, and this article applies the concepts of ‘persuasive technologies’ and ‘procedural rhetoric’ to analyse the design intentions of the two digital Bibles. This approach helps us to appreciate the significance of the material form of a sacred text as a vehicle for religious socialisation and raises important questions about the potential for digital media to re-shape traditional relationships of power in Evangelical Christian communities. UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537903.2017.1298903 ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Creating Church Online: Ritual, Community and New Media Y1 - 2017 A1 - Hutchings, Tim AB - Online churches are internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytization, and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. Hundreds of thousands of people are now involved with online congregations, generating new kinds of ritual, leadership, and community and new networks of global influence. Creating Church Online constructs a rich ethnographic account of the diverse cultures of online churches, from virtual worlds to video streams. This book also outlines the history of online churchgoing, from its origins in the 1980s to the present day, and traces the major themes of academic and Christian debate around this topic. Applying some of the leading current theories in the study of religion, media and culture to this data, Tim Hutchings proposes a new model of religious design in contexts of mediatization, and draws attention to digital networks, transformative third spaces and terrains of existential vulnerability. Creating Church Online advances our understanding of the significance and impact of digital media in the religious and social lives of its users, in search of new theoretical frameworks for digital religion. PB - Routledge SN - 9780203111093 UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317777483_Creating_Church_Online_Ritual_Community_and_New_Media ER - TY - BOOK T1 - Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred Y1 - 2016 A1 - Hutchings, Tim A1 - McKenzie, Joanne AB - Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture. The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vásquez. PB - Routledge SN - 9781138599932 UR - https://www.routledge.com/Materiality-and-the-Study-of-Religion-The-Stuff-of-the-Sacred/Hutchings-McKenzie/p/book/9781138599932 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Global Perspectives on Religion, Media and Public Scholarship JF - Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture Y1 - 2020 A1 - Hutchings, Tim A1 - Asamoah-Gyadu, Kwabena A1 - Evolvi, Giulia A1 - Han, Sam AB - This article encourages researchers of religion, media and culture to develop new, global, comparative conversations about the meaning and purpose of public scholarship. Key terms like “religion”, “media”, “publicness” and “scholarship” can be understood and articulated differently in different social, cultural and geographical locations, and dialogue across our academic contexts is needed to help explore these parallels and divergences. This article shares three reflections from scholars who have lived and worked in west Africa, southern Europe and south-east Asia. Each contributor has been asked to address two questions: How do religious communities engage public audiences? And how can (or should) scholars communicate with the public? The conclusion to the article identifies some of the central themes of their responses: secularity, colonial legacies, globalization, power, vulnerability, and the intended audience of our public interventions. UR - https://brill.com/view/journals/rmdc/9/2/article-p148_148.xml ER -