Connected Faith: A Digital Black Religion Project

FAIN: HAA-287582-22

Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)
Erika Gault (Project Director: January 2022 to September 2022)
Karen Seat (Project Director: September 2022 to present)

The research and planning for a new digital resource focusing on historical intersections of Black religious practices and technology.

The Digital Black Religion Project seeks to bridge the public’s understanding of earlier Black networks as both similar to and foundational in later digital-religious networks through a website with tools, approaches, and resources for the study of digital Black religion. This project is significant to Black religious publics given the past years physical to digital migration of many religious communities. The way humanities scholars’ study and understand such publics is undergoing deep transformation. At present, digital humanities scholars of religion and Black religious publics hold a shared interest in locating tools and resources to better understand Black religion in the digital context. Yet, research regarding Black religious adherents largely centers statistical data on physically located religious institutions. This project fills a significant gap in the humanities and in social scientific data.