This blogpost is focused on religions trying to reshape themselves within the digital community. The Religious Dispatches magazine released an article in December called the Five Social Media Trends that are Reshaping Religion. The article focuses on how certain media trends cause religions to change how religions communicate with their followers and prospectives. Elizabeth Drescher is a professor at Santa Clara University. She has a PhD in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union and an MA in Systematic Theology from Duquesne University as well as an MFA in writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a masters in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.  And she is also is the author of Tweet If You ♥ Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (Morehouse 2011).

It is interesting to see how religions are compromising traditions from the past to accommodate present trends. Fifteen years ago no one would have thought a priest or a minister would tweet prayers, stream live videos of sermons and provide a “jesus daily” page, but nowadays, it seems almost mandatory for a religion to survive in this digital society. Honestly I believe the only thing that is constant in our lives is change. And this is how it has always been, but now change arrives at an incredibly fast rate. Religions are struggling trying to keep up with the pace and in this article Drescher points out five trends that have formed from religious groups trying to adapt to the newest way we communicate with one another. One of the trends that Drescher mentioned that I thought was interesting was the O Holy App trend. This trend is focused on the amount of religious apps being created for digital devices like an iphone or an ipad. One of the apps in particular I learned about was the Confession: A Roman Catholic App. This app allows a penitent to confess his or her sins and provides a step-by-step guide to the sacrament.  While I am not sure where I stand morally with religious apps that seem to be replacing traditional ways of confession sins, I do appreciate religious groups trying new ways to reach out to their audiences. Below I have provided the excerpt from Drescher’s article on the Holy App section:

 3. O Holy App

With more than half a million apps now available for the iPhone or iPad, and maybe 232 for the Android, it’s clear that the number of religiously-themed apps is growing. Apps are available for adherents to just about any religious group you can think of (includingPastafarians), and have been developed for a large number of congregations, dioceses, and other religious organizations (though it’s hard to know what one is meant to do with most of them).

Prayer book apps, those for on-the-go spiritual practices, and other tools that integrate spirituality into everyday life have been most popular. Others, like the now notoriousConfession app, which kicked off the year with as much fanfare and as theological confusion over whether one can be absolved through an app-based confession (per il papa: ix-ney on the orgiveness-fey), highlight the importance of creating apps that support personal reflection and provide information that can be carried into face-to-face relationships.

If the folks at Nielsen are correct, smartphones will continue to overtake, uh, dumb phones, making app-based connection and information-sharing a continuing growth area. Religiously-themed apps are certain to be an important part of that, but unless they grasp the digital trinity of social engagement, spiritual meaning, and incarnational potential that makes such apps truly worthwhile for believers and seekers. They’ll likely find their apps among the thousands ignored each year.

I think religions need to step-up their significance in the internet world to maintain their presence in the modern world. But I also fear what could ultimately be the failure to all religions is if they make too many changes. Religions will continue to change certain foundations and structures that make them what they are when adapting to digital communication. Gone are the days of reading lessons from a book, instead lessons can be found in the form of tweets and facebook statuses. It will be interesting to see how religions stand out from the rest of the internet community. Where they will go next. And how significant they will be in an tech-savvy individual’s life.