Speakers:

Dr Beth Singler, Homerton College, University of Cambridge

Rev'd Dr Eric Trozzo, Evangelical Lutheran Church & University of Divinity

The recent US Presidential election witnessed the deployment of digital platforms to disseminate fake news about the democratic outcomes of that election. The majority of the 70 million Republicans who voted for Donald Trump now appear to believe that the election was ‘stolen’ from them. A large part of the disinformation fuelling this belief involved the willing complicity of religious groups in the evangelical right to fuel conspiracy theories such as QAnon, and to interpret the attack on Capitol Hill on 6th January as a sign of divine approval for a holy crusade against the forces of ‘wokeness’ and the ‘left’.

The William Temple Foundation is hosting two webinars reflecting further on this nexus between disinformation, democracy and religion, paying particular attention to the role of the digital. Can religion, as well as acting like a conductor for these disturbing trends, also act as a conduit by which to confound them? The first webinar features two regular contributors to the Foundation’s Ethical Futures group. Dr Beth Singler from a UK perspective, and Dr Eric Trozzo from a US perspective will both outline the positive and negative ways in which religion contributes to this highly pressing issue.

The second webinar, organised in partnership with the Diocese of Gloucester, will reflect on these issues from a more grassroots perspective, exploring the role local faith communities can play in curating public space. In particular it will use the varied experiences of churches moving much of their ministry and engagement online during the pandemic to examine the opportunities and limitations of enabling community participation in the digital space. To what extent has the revolution in the church’s online presence increased access and liberated civic participation, and in what ways has it set up new forms of social exclusion and separation? What might this have to teach us about the wider role of religion in creating a society which is genuinely a community of communities?