Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture

by Corrina Laughlin

Overview

Redeem All examines the surprising intersection of American evangelicalism and tech innovation. Corrina Laughlin looks at the evangelical Christians who are invested in imagining, using, hacking, adapting, and creating new media technologies for religious purposes. She finds that entrepreneurs, pastors, missionaries, and social media celebrities interpret the promises born in Silicon Valley through the framework of evangelical culture and believe that digital media can help them (to paraphrase Steve Jobs) put their own dent in the universe. Laughlin introduces readers to “startup churches” hoping to reach a global population, entrepreneurs coding for a deeper purpose, digital missionaries networking with mobile phones, and Christian influencers and podcasters seeking new forms of community engagement. Redeem All reveals how evangelicalism has changed as it eagerly adopts the norms of the digital age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520976856
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/21/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Corrina Laughlin teaches media studies at Loyola Marymount University and holds a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction 

1. The Church: From the Megachurch to the Start-up
   Church
2. The Start-up: The Culture of Faith-Tech and the
   Promise of Redemptive Entrepreneurship
3. Media Missions: Proselytizing on the Electronic
   Frontier
4. The Influencers: The Rise of Evangelical Influencers
   and the Potency of Popular Parochial Feminism on
   Social Media
5. Racial Reckoning and Repair: The Urgent
   Conversation about Race on the Black Christian
   Podcast Circuit
   
Conclusion

Glossary
Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"[A] wonderful, contributive scholarship that will lead to better understandings of the virtual and physical lives of American evangelicals today."

California History

"Redeem All will be particularly valuable for those interested in the faith-tech scene and for scholars who focus on race and gender in contemporary evangelicalism."

Media and Digital Culture Journal of Religion

"Laughlin’s deft navigation of diverse scholarly literatures makes this volume a useful and appealing one for a variety of uses and audiences. . . .Redeem All is an important profile that arrives at a key moment in the negotiation of evangelical identity."

Reading Religion