Spirituality and technology

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May 23, 2011 — Looking for a buddy to study Buddhism? There’s an app for that. Have a need to confess your sins? There’s an app for that too. So much that we care about in our lives is increasingly just a touch away – including spiritual inspiration and disciplines. There are electronic connections to rabbis, psalms, Islamic prayer times, and meditation. And while they may be useful to help us strengthen and develop our faith, traditionalists worry they may undermine commitment to spiritual communities and family. That they are NOT, as the old Bell Telephone ads once described, “the next best thing to being there.”

Dr. Dan Gottlieb explores spirituality and technology – how they integrate and how they erode or reject one another with guests Darlene Weaver, William Schweiker, and Jim Caccamo. Weaver is the director of Villanova Theology Institute and is an associate professor of Theology and Religious Studies. Schweiker is a distinguished professor of Theology and Ethics in the University of Chicago Divinity School and the director of the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion. Caccamo is an associate professor of Christian Social Ethics in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Saint Joseph’s University.