Tim Hutchings

• Professor (Associate) at University of Nottingham

This special issue explores the power of games to shape worldviews, share perspectives, develop religious identities and provoke ethical reflection. Contributors bring together ideas from classrooms of philosophy and religious studies with case studies from religious communities and companies engaged in game design, and reflect on their own experie...

This paper calls for better integration between the fields of Theology and Religious Studies (TRS) and Religious Education (RE). Positive reform in RE requires integration between educational theory, policy, and practice, but we argue that the academic study of theology and religion is too often an overlooked partner in these conversations. The sep...

This article builds on Worldview – A Multidisciplinary Report (Benoit, Hutchings and Shillitoe, 2020), a publication commissioned by the RE Council of England and Wales to outline the academic history of the study of worldviews. We focus on three particularly significant questions for the future of Religious Education (RE) / Religion and Worldviews...

How did Quakers adapt their distinctive practice of silent worship or meeting ("stillness") to the conditions of online worship during the Covid-19 lockdown? How did this new interest in online meeting change the patterns of Quaker community on a local, national and global level?

This article encourages researchers of religion, media and culture to develop new, global, comparative conversations about the meaning and purpose of public scholarship. Key terms like “religion”, “media”, “publicness” and “scholarship” can be understood and articulated differently in different social, cultural and geographical locations, and dialo...

This multidisciplinary literature review provides clarity as to the historical and contemporary use of the term ‘worldview’. It offers a concise, yet detailed, overview of how the concept has been understood in core disciplines most relevant for Religious Education in England and Wales (i.e. Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, Religious Studies, C...

Drawing on a range of methodologies, editors George D. Chryssides and Stephen E. Gregg shift attention from normative textual and doctrinal matters to issues of materiality and everyday life in Christianity. This handbook is structured in four parts, which include coverage of the following aspects of Christianity: sacred space and objects, cyber-Ch...

This brief article aims to draw the attention of nonreligion researchers to a growing interdisciplinary research field: the study of death online. In digitally networked societies, the dead are remembered online, and their survivors can use digital resources to express grief, find support and construct memorials. New norms and languages of mourning...

Open access and free to read online: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/index.php/religions/article/view/23952 Understanding a videogame requires attention to the social dimensions of its production, its material form and its reception. Games are produced in communities of designers, played by communities of gamers, and accepted into familie...

This article analyses two ‘digital Bibles’, products that allow the user to engage with the Bible through the screen and speakers of his/her mobile phone, tablet or computer. Both products, ‘YouVersion’ and ‘GloBible’, have been created by Evangelical Christian companies. I argue that both are designed to train the user in traditional Evangelical C...

Online churches are internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytization, and other key religious goals through computer-mediated communication. Hundreds of thousands of people are now involved with online congregations, generating new kinds of ritual, leadership, and community and new networks of...

This article seeks to bring together the study of death, digital media, emotion and religion, using a Christian organization as a case study. The Swedish national church (Svenska kyrkan) has a large but declining membership and uses digital media extensively. We will analyze two of its attempts to respond to grief through media: a hybrid digital-ph...

This volume considers the implementation difficulties of researching religion online and reflects on the ethical dilemmas faced by sociologists of religion when using digital research methods. Bringing together established and emerging scholars, global case studies draw on the use of social media as a method for researching religious oppression, re...

The Christian Bible is now available in thousands of digital forms, re-imagined for electronic reading on mobile, tablet and desktop screens. This article introduces findings from an online survey of digital Bible users, analysing their demographics, reading practices, motivations and experiences. Survey responses are analysed in conversation with...

Scholars from a range of disciplines offer an expansive vision of the intersections between new information technologies and the humanities. Between Humanities and the Digital offers an expansive vision of how the humanities engage with digital and information technology, providing a range of perspectives on a quickly evolving, contested, and excit...

This study aims to construct a typology of the visual style of Christian spaces in the online virtual world of Second Life (SL). Virtual worlds offer diverse new possibilities for architectural style, unrestricted by gravity, weather or scarcity of materials. These new regions also operate largely beyond the control and indeed awareness of establis...

‘Online churches' are Internet-based Christian communities, seeking to pursue worship, discussion, friendship, support, proselytism and other key religious practices through computer-mediated communication. This article introduces findings of a four-year ethnographic study of five very different ‘online churches’, focusing on the fluid, multi-layer...

Online churches are Internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, proselytism and other ecclesial activities through digital media. This article is based on three case studies of online churches: i-church, the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, and LifeChurch.tv Church Online. Seven key themes emerge from these case studies and are used h...

The Internet is connecting people and organisations around the world in important new ways, changing the way we relate to one another, find resources, share information and form communities. These changes have very important implications for Christians and their churches. This article offers an overview of online activity, including websites, blogs...

“Online churches” are Internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, education, support, proselytisation and other religious goals through computer-mediated communication. This paper draws on three years of participant observation and 50 interviews to investigate reliance on the familiar in the aesthetics and sensory experience of online r...