There's a real sense that they are using this technology to fulfill biblical prophecy and perhaps even hasten the return of Christ.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Karina Loughlin.

Karina is the author of Redeem All, How Digital Life is Changing Evangelical Culture,

and an instructor of media studies at Loyola Marymount University. I don't think we've looked at how religions have adapted to technologies, to new technologies on the show before.

And I found Kerenas book to be really fascinating in exploring how evangelical Christianity,

which is a pretty significant force in the United States, has adopted not only to

changes with digital technologies in the present, but with changes to technologies in the past as well,

whether it was radio, publishing, television, music, and things like that. And what we see is that

these evangelical churches are making use of apps and online platforms and, you know, even social media to spread their

message to reach more people. And this is seen as a positive thing because even if some of these

technologies have their own issues, so to speak, that they need to try to grapple with or get

around so as not to have some kind of negative influence on

them and their work, they still see that there is a benefit to using these technologies because

it will allow them to reach so many more people and obviously help to achieve their goal of

spreading the word of God and getting more people to follow their religion. So in this conversation, Karina explains how

these churches are adapting to the tech industry and all of these technologies that are being made

available, how they are making their own technologies, how there is even like a whole faith tech

sector that is developed that is looking at developing technologies to spread, you know, Christianity

and Christian teachings. And also how there's like a Christian influence or culture that not only

supports, you know, the status quo of kind of Christian Protestant evangelicalism, but also allows

voices that may not have otherwise received a platform to challenge some of those conservative

...