Back when I was working on that DMin project (focusing on Online Community and the Church), I ran across this article in WIRED mag. Jennifer Cobb soon published a book entitled Cybergrace, which sits on my bookshelf. She alerted me to a then a somewhat obscure theologian named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I had run across some insights of his via a seminary professor of mine, Glenn Hinson, who described the "Theistic evolution" concept to a youth group under my charge back in 1980 (we were having a weekend retreat, and the subject was Prayer, so we had Dr. Hinson, who was a writer of books on Prayer and Contemplation. I don't recall the tie-in to theistic evolution, but I suppose it was something alomg the lines of how one, to be "in nature" in order to be more closely atuned to the physical IN ORDER to be most aware of CREATION, and thus be in a state of "proximity" to God via that "mental mechanism" (actually, to "sit in creation" as a means to "be creature" and thus dependent upon and "in" God, just as God is IN nature.)
Anyway, Teilhard has been "adopted" by those enthralled with Online Spaces, as a "forseer" of the "networked spirituality" that now is discussed in some in the theological community (who also happen to be "geekily-inclined"). Cybergrace (published in 1998 by Crown Publishers, is a book I have lifted off my shelf and onto the desk where I will be picking it up again, to review 5 years later and see what this study says to me today, and what new angles on this field of study have emerged in these 5 years since. What with all the tools produced to run on the TCPIP networks, and my "hands-on" experiences since that time, I see the chances of "new thoughts" as high. Stay tuned.
12:02:26 PM 
|
|
