Listen to "Studying Religion and the Internet"

You can (if you really want to!) download an MP3 of my session, "Studying Religion and the Internet," at the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' study-day "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion," from the Birkbeck webpage here. I've done one other podcast - a reading of my chapter, "Theo(b)logy: The Technological Transformation of Theology," for Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolusion - and already knew that I hated the sound of my voice, so I was really not looking forward to listening to this. But it's not as bad as I remembered it being!


I had thought that it was the worst presentation I've ever done. Partly because we were waiting for another participant which meant that the time we had for discussion at the end was truncated; partly because I felt rushed anyway, getting everything in that I felt was valuable to know about studying religion and the Internet (which could have had a whole day to itself!); and partly because I felt I had written so many different things on religion and the Internet and in so many different formats that I got lulled into a false sense of security regarding my material: I felt that because I had already written particular points (and written them, of course, so well!) that I was loathe to change it; the result was that I felt I was reading my notes much more than I usually do when presenting. I should have had more confidence in my own abilities to make sense of sparse notes, rather than trying to convey that "already written perfectly" point, if that makes sense! Nevermind. It's there if you want it!

Research Methods: Religion and the Internet

My workshop, "Studying Religion and the Internet - Challenges and Opportunities: Theoretical, Practical and Ethical," at the HEA Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion" day at Birkbeck went okay. I definitely think that my topic could (should?!?) have been given an entire day in itself, which meant that I had a lot to get through in my presentation. They sprung on me that it was going to be recorded, so you should be able to download the mp3 soon... if you particularly want to listen to me nervously speaking! I usually speak using less notes and I think you can tell, as I felt rather beholden to using the phrases I'd written down rather than speaking more off the cuff. Oh well, lesson learnt!

But it was good to meet up with old and new colleagues, and I particularly enjoyed a presentation by Helen Purcell (Open University) on her position as a Pagan academic that also reflected on narrative. Another conference delegate mentioned an academic who decided to write a novel instead of a thesis because that seemed to better reflect the experiences of her participants and her time spent with them. It generated some more thoughts in relation to my own concerns about having to "represent" the "truth" about my participants, whose notions of "truth" are often neither "representational" nor "non-representational," but are of what I'm calling "undecidable representationality." This dilemma leads to interesting questions about the literary dimension of the academic presentation of research "findings." Anyway, enough of that...

It was ashame that I missed fellow Lancaster PhD student Janet Eccles' paper on the "pitfalls and possibilities" of conducting an interview-based study in her local community. But I was good to hear about some of the PhD students just starting out in internet-based studies, like Anna Rose Stewart (University of Sussex). It was also great to catch up with Gordon Lynch, whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. Susannah Rigg (Birkbeck), me and Sim's housemate when she was at Lancaster, was on hand in an organisational role and it was good to chat over coffee.

Anyway, here's the powerpoint presentation from my workshop. There's a very illustrative list of resources at the end of it.

Studying Religion And The Internet

View more OpenOffice presentations from Katharine Moody.

Religion and the Internet workshop

I just finished finalising my "Studying Religion and the Internet" workshop for the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical Religious Studies' postgraduate study day, Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion at Birkbeck. I'll post more about it, provide a link to the PowerPoint on Slideshare, and reflect on how it went after it, you know, goes (May 16th).

"Researching Theo(b)logy" Published

My copy of Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age came in the post this morning! Look out for Ellen Moore's really interesting chapter on American evangelical churches' responses to The Da Vinci Code. My chapter is called, "Researching Theo(b)logy: A Participatory Research Methodology for the Blogosphere."



I write about the use the emerging church milieu make of two Internet-based technological innovations (blogs and wikis). After documenting the difficulties in using these texts (see my chapter in Reading Spiritualities in relation to the nature of online text) as sources of data, I suggest the benefits for researchers of having a research-specific blog (particularly for researchers looking at the Internet) and reflect on the practical and ethical issues involved in such a participatory methodology.

By chance, there's an interesting article in this quarter's Network (the newsletter of the British Sociological Association) on "Blogology," by Rebecca Leach (Keele University). She writes, 'The blog is hugely underused by sociologists as a means of communication... This is a real shame because blogs can give the public a real flavour of our research and writing much quicker than any other published output... A rich stream of new and interesting thinking can be found in the blogs of the many PhD students who creatively link together their academic ideas with their personal, political and cultural lives' (p.18). Rebecca's article includes links to A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book, Global Sociologist and a Very Public Sociologist - all with cooler names than my blog. Hey ho.

Maybe Fieldwork in Religion (see post here) would be a good place to further reflect on how my research blog is going? Obviously, the posts here at OpenSourceResearch form a cumulative reflection on this methodology but (as I originally wrote the chapter that appears in Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age in April 2007 - with some revisions over the year) it is now much more common for academics (particularly PhD students) to have research-related blogs. It would be interesting to explore if and how these blogs have encouraged participation from their research subjects.

Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion

Details about the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies' postgraduate workshop, "Exploring New Challenges and Methods in the Study of Religion" are now available here. Hosted by Birkbeck's Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society on May 16th 2009, the day runs from 10.15 to 4.30pm and includes a plenary from Linda Woodhead, workshops and postgraduate papers. Andy Dawson, who is an editor of Fieldwork in Religion, told me to let him know if I thought of anything arising from the event to turn into an article. Here's the preliminary programme:



10.15am Registration


10.30am Welcome and plenary talk:

Prof. Linda Woodhead, "Current and future directions in the study of religion"

Lancaster University and Director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme.


11.30am Plenary workshops:

Katharine Moody, Lancaster Universty, "Studying religion and the Internet"

Serena Hussain, University of Oxford, "Accessing and using census data for research on religion"



12.50pm Lunch


1.30pm Panel sessions:

Doctoral student presentations on work in progress and methodological issues.

Papers will include:

Jane Cameron, University of Edinburgh: "Visualising Buddhism in India: contesting categories in the field"

Saleem Khan, London Metropolitan University: "Accommodation, competition, and conflict: sectarian identity in Pakistan, 1977-2002"

Lois Lee, Cambridge University: "How religious is non-religion? Non-believing and belonging in modernity"

Helen Purcell, Open University: "Balancing the narratives – a methodological approach to the emic and etic issues of being a Pagan academic"

Denise Ross, University of Birmingham: "A study of the impact of missionaries among the Chin tribe in Myanmar"

Anna Rose Stewart, University of Sussex: "Fieldwork and the network: Contextualising online religion"

Ingrid Storm, University of Manchester: "Using survey data to identify and construct scalar indices of religiosity"



3.00pm Tea and coffee


3.30pm Final plenary panel discussion


4.30pm End

Workshop on Internet and Study of Religion

Dr. Abby Day (University of Sussex), who did her PhD at Lancaster University on belief in belonging, and Prof. Gordon Lynch (Birkbeck College, University of London) who I met at last year's Religion, Media and Culture conference and whose recent publication, The New Spirituality, has been central to my thesis methodology, have asked me to run a workshop on the Internet and the Study of Religion at Birkbeck next year. The workshop will be part of a study day for students of religion on May 16, run by a postgraduate training network for London and the South-East which was funded by The Higher Education Academy's Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies.

The day will consist of a Plenary by Prof. Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University), who is the director of the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme, on current and future directions in the study of religion. Then there will be two one-hour sessions, the first run by me and the second focusing on how to access and use census data in the study of religion, by Dr. Serena Hussain (University of Leeds). After lunch, there will be a small number of papers presented by other students (presumably following a call for papers which will go out next year). The day closes with a panel discussion by Linda, me, and Serena.

Pretty excited to be asked to be a part of this. But I'm also glad that it's not until May, when (hope against hope) I may have already submitted by thesis. It also means that I won't have to think about it now and risk getting sidetracked back into Internet methodology stuff when I should be firmly ensconced in philosophy!!!

Researching Theo(b)logy

Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age is now available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk. It will be published at the end of February 2009, and contains chapters on a range of case studies from interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. Edited by Dr. Chris Deacy (University of Kent) and Dr. Elizabeth Arweck (University of Warwick), it collects essays that were presented at the 2007 conference on Religion, Media and Culture. My contribution is methodological, mainly due to the point at which I was at with my thesis, reflecting on the use the global emerging church milieu make of blogs and wikis and suggesting a participatory research methodology for research into the blogosphere. Here's the blurb from Amazon.co.uk:

"In recent years, there has been growing awareness across a range of academic disciplines of the value of exploring issues of religion and the sacred in relation to cultures of everyday life. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age offers inter-disciplinary perspectives drawing from theology, religious studies, media studies, cultural studies, film studies, sociology and anthropology. Combining theoretical frameworks for the analysis of religion, media and popular culture, with focused international case studies of particular texts, practices, communities and audiences, the authors examine topics such as media rituals, marketing strategies, empirical investigations of audience testimony, and the influence of religion on music, reality television and the internet. Both academically rigorous and of interest to a wider readership, this book offers a wide range of fascinating explorations at the cutting edge of many contemporary debates in sociology, religion and media, including chapters on the way evangelical groups in America have made use of The Da Vinci Code and on the influences of religion on British club culture and electronic dance music."

Reading Spiritualities Published

Stemming from a Lancaster University conference a couple of years back, my supervisor Dr. Deborah F. Sawyer and fellow PhD student Dawn Llewellyn have collected several papers together to form a publication entitled Reading Spiritualities: Constructing and Representing the Sacred.


Here's some blurb: "The phenomenon of 'sacred text' has undergone radical deconstruction in recent times, reflecting how religion has broken out of its traditional definitions and practices, and how current literary theories have influenced texts inside the religious domain and beyond. "Reading Spiritualities" presents both commentary and vivid examples of this evolution, engaging with a variety of reading practices that work with traditional texts and those that extend the notion of 'text' itself. The contributors... open up understandings of where and how 'sacred texts' are emerging and being reassessed within contemporary religious and spiritual contexts; and make room for readings where the spiritual resides not only in the textual, but in other unexpected places... [The book] offers a unique and well-focussed 'snapshot' of the textual constructions and representations of the sacred within the contemporary religious climate - accessible to the general reader, as well as more specialist interests of students and researchers working in the crossover fields of religious, theological, cultural and literary studies."


And the table of contents:

• "Introduction," Deborah F. Sawyer and Dawn Llewellyn
• "Getting a/cross god: An Interview with Michèle Roberts," Michèle Roberts, Dawn Llewellyn and Deborah F. Sawyer
• "The Sacred in Caribbean Literature: A Theological Conversation," Michael N. Jagessar
• "Dramatic Improvisation: A Jazz Inspired Approach to Undertaking Theology with the Marginalized," Anthony G. Reddie
• "‘Gendering the Spirit’: Reading Women’s Spiritualities with a Comparative Mirror," Ursula King
• "Our Sacred Texts: Literature, Theology and Feminism," Heather Walton
• "The Desire for Interactivity and the Emerging Texts of the Blogosphere," Katharine Sarah Moody
• "Spiritual Themes and Identities in Chicana Texts: The Virgin of Guadalupe as a Role Model for Womanhood," María Antonia Álvarez
• "Bihishti Zewar: A Text for Respectable Women?" Raana Bokhari
• "Forming Community in the Third Wave: Literary Texts and Women’s Spiritualities," Dawn Llewellyn
• "Solomon’s Narrative: Architecture, Text and the Sacred," Ozayr Saloojee
• "Reading Texts, Watching Texts: Mythopoesis on Neopagan Websites," Maria Beatrice Bittarello
• "Word and Image: Burgess, Zeffirelli, and Jesus the Man of Nazareth," Graham Holderness
• "Do Not Hide Your Face From Me: The Sacred and Profane Body in Art and Modern Literature," David Jasper

My chapter, "The Desire for Interactivity and the Emerging Texts of the Blogosphere," focuses upon the ways in which the UK emerging church milieu (when I wrote the paper I was using the language of "emerging Christian communities") use online texts, particularly blogs, from the perspective of recent literary theory. I've blogged about it before - here - but wanted to draw attention to it again now we've gone to print!

Paul T.

I went to London for the day yesterday to meet up with Paul Teusner from the School of Applied Communications at RMIT University, Melbourne, whose research into Australian emerging church blogs I've been following for the last couple of years. It was great to meet him in person and to spend a good number of hours chatting about our work and lives. Paul had a camera handy to "pap" me outside Buckingham Palace but I didn't - so I had to steal this one from his online CV. If you want to see me displaying my transcribing injuries follow this link.

Paul's research explores how emerging church bloggers in Australia are constructing individual religious identities, how the Australian blogosphere networks to collectively determine emerging church identity online, and how these online constructions impact the offline identity of the Australian emerging church. His research site is here.

Paul has just been to the Association of Internet Researchers' conference in Copenhagen, "Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place," and for the first time there were a good number of researchers working on religion. Among them a few people I met at the "Religion, Media and Culture: Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age" conference in Oxford last April: Heidi Campbell, Mia Lovheim, and Tim Hutchings. Heidi recently launched a research wiki called Studying Religion and New Media. You can find the PowerPoints for Paul's papers ("Web 2.0 Rhetoric and Realities: Authority, Technorati and Religious Bloggers" and "Religious Podcasting: In Between Religious Audiences and Podcasting Communities") here and here. The paper I wrote for the Oxford conference is scheduled to be published in a book Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age mid-January.

It was great to talk with Paul about the differences between the Australian emerging church and the UK emerging church milieu, and interesting to hear more about the conservative emphases of Christianity (and politics) in Australia. It seems like the OZ emerging church milieu is more theologically conservative and often prefers to articulate its identity in the language of mission and missional to distinguish it from the US emerging church milieu and particularly Emergent Village. Paul met Pete Rollins a while back in Melbourne and it was great to hear a bit about reactions to what Pete and ikon are about. Once we got bored of our theses and moaning about the inner workings of postgrad life, we chatted about Neighbours (of course), horror movies and zombies, Simon Pegg, Brighton, and the pains of not really knowing where we're going to fit when we've submitted. We'll see, eh?

Voices of the Virtual World released today!

Described as 'a far reaching exploration of spiritual journey within a culture of increasingly immersive technology,' the PDF version of Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution is available for download today. This collaborative project exploring how technology is transforming the church goes on sale today from Lulu.com and can be downloaded from here for $14.95. A tentative publication date for the paperback edition is being set for late August 2007, with all proceeds being donated to the Not For Sale campaign.

Researching Theo(b)logy

Modifying a phrase from Tony Jones, I gave a paper entitled "Researching Theo(b)logy" at a Conference in Oxford last month about my research with emerging Christian communities, reflecting on methodological issues for research in the blogosphere.

I'm exploring the on- and offline theorisings of individuals and communities involved in a critical conversation between Christianity and culture. Radical Orthodoxy maintains that all Christian theorisings should be 'theological' (Milbank 2006) and 'confessional' (Smith 2004); i.e. they should be grounded in the Christian narrative of creation, fall, redemption and consummation. Therefore, following the insights of RO, but alluding to the medium in which many of contemporary Christians' theorisings are being explored, I refer to this subject matter as “theo(b)logy.”

I reflect on the methodological difficulties of conducting research in the blogosphere, including: locating blogs, measuring blog validity, and measuring blog influence. However, I also argue for a participatory research methodology for the blogosphere which uses the opportunities provided by the Internet to increase the levels of participation open to research participants themselves.

This is the paper in which I suggest that a research-specific blog (a la Bryan Murley) is beneficial for research projects on the blogosphere. The responses to this suggestion gave me the confidence to start this research blog of my own.

It was a great conference, with fascinating papers from Lynn Schofield-Clark on Fashion Bibles like Revolve, Tom Beaudoin on fandom, and Nick Couldry on media rituals. I want to be a lecturer in Christianity and culture.

Wikiklesia Project

John La Grou and Len Hjalmarson are facilitating a project called Wikiklesia: Voices of the Virtual World, which will be an e-publication with chapters written by anyone wanting to explore how technologies are shaping the contemporary church.

Chapter proposals can be emailed to John at microclesia@gmail.com and Len at next1@nextreformation.com

Confirmed contributers include Andrew Jones, Andrew Perriman, Cynthia Ware, Heidi Campbell, Kester Brewin, Mike Riddell, Peter Rollins, Scot McKnight, Stephen Shields, and Thomas Hohstadt. Oh, and me. I have no idea what I'm even doing on a list with these people!