The recently formed Religion and the Public Sphere research group at London School of Economics seeks to explore the place and role of religion in British public life today. Posts on the blog explore how religion does and doesn’t matter in British public life, and how it should and shouldn’t. “The point is to know religion a bit better, not simply as believers or disbelievers in specific tenets of faith, and not simply as insiders to one or another specific community of practice and meaning, but as members of the public.”
I was invited to provide expand on the piece that I wrote for The Conversation. The blog post is introduced as follows:
What impact is social and digital media having on religion? Here Bex Lewis explores its impact on the Church. She finds that as the Church starts engaging it’s followers online it has become a space to debate issues, connect to others and reach people and, in turn, humanise the Church. Church activities are being taken back out into the online world and Church leaders have taken to digital platforms to speak out on social and political debates from Brexit to international terrorism. Public conversations have always been key for public theology but the Information Age we’re living in means that many of these public conversations will today take place in the digital sphere.
Read the full blog post.