Engaging Technology in Theological Education by Mary E. Hess

If I could synthesize Mary Hess’s (checkout her webpage) book, Engaging Technology in Theological Education, into one question it would be; “Can media culture help transform our religious communities?”. Through short essay format, Mary Hess takes a deep and crucial look at the interplay between media culture and theological studies. Hess defines media culture as “increasingly digitally created and mediated” and as the “water in which all of us swim” (Hess, 30). Integrating digital technologies with theological education is complex and challenging, yet if “God is revealing Godself within this medium” (Hess, 31) then the cost is worth the undertaking.

Therefore, possibly a more complete synthesizing question would be; “In what ways can God, revealing himself through media culture (digital technologies), transform our religious communities?”. As educators, we need to seriously “engage media culture – respecting it as a powerful source of our students’ meaning-making, and thus inviting it into our critical interrogation” (Hess, 60). As we come to the realization that learning happens all around us and at all times, the use of media technologies will naturally become more appealing and useful in our learning contexts. Because the people, purpose and context in which learning is occurring is dramatically changing (Hess, 44), we need to digest these changes and prepare ourselves for education in a new, “transitional community” (Hess, 60).

Classrooms of learning (cognitive, psychomotor and affective) are no longer restricted to four walls inside a building. Understanding this change in context will allow educators to take advantage of “emerging technologies to reshape and improve our more typical classrooms and other learning spaces” (Hess, 73). As a distributed learner myself, I have come to the realization that being in class no longer is limited to a time and place, but can happen anytime and anywhere thanks to new technologies and an educators willful attempt to think outside the box. This “adaptive change” (Hess, 75) by higher education has enriched the lives of people and religious communities around the world.

But, we are not there yet. As Mary Hess points out, challenges still exist and bridges still need to be built between media culture and theological education. Issues like institutionalized racism and sexism and copyright and infringement laws still exist and need to be broken down between media culture and theological learning. By overlooking these issues, we will overlook the opportunity to further explore channels in which God is revealing Godself to us all.

The one struggle I had with the book was placing myself within the narrative of its dialogue. The thought kept coming to my mind, am I the theological educator or the media submerged student. I especially struggled with this in chapter five, All That We Can’t Leave Behind: Learning from the Past in Engaging New Media. Mary Hess does provide a bridge between the two areas saying, “we all live in digital environments, even theological school faculty, and we all live in religious environments, even those of our students who had no prior experience of religious community or even religious emotions” (Hess, 90). And so we teach and learn together, as co-teachers and co-learners in the digital technology and religious community of today.