Is digital technology ushering in the apocalypse? The mere fact that one can ask this question without being accused of hyperbole or sensationalism says much about our current cultural moment. Has a third world war already begun? This is no longer merely a provocative question posed by conspiracy theorists. It is a question taking up ever more real estate in mainstream media. And what of the economy? Are we heading toward recession, depression, collapse? What about the climate? How many years remain before parts of the Earth become uninhabitable?
To scroll through social media or follow the news is to encounter an endless stream of anxiety-provoking headlines and dread-generating commentary. Democracy? Unstable. The economy? Fragile. Technology? Dangerous. Sports? Your team is terrible, and its ineptitude is somehow an affront to your wellbeing.
I don’t intend to make light of significant and worrisome issues. We should be concerned about climate change, the erosion of democratic values, the rising price of basic necessities, and the unchecked power concentrated in the hands of a few technology billionaires. We should not stop paying attention. It is healthy and important to follow the news of the day and to shape our responses with thoughtfulness, discernment, and prayer.
But as you follow these developments, notice your reaction.
When you see a headline about economic disruption, notice the sinking feeling in your gut. When you hear about the latest climate-induced disaster, pay attention to your elevated pulse. Our culture seems increasingly interested not only in the story itself, but also in the emotional reaction attached to it.
That sensation is worth paying attention to because it is so debilitating. It is the nefarious result of a fear-industrial complex that pervades our ambient culture. More troubling still, that sensation likely isn’t confined to the moments when you’re connected to the web or watching the news. Rather, it is increasingly what it feels like simply to navigate the cultural whitewater of everyday life.
Could this be a moment when Christianity has something to say?
Six years ago, I wrote a book called Grace and Gigabytes. Fundamentally, it was about what it means to be the church in a tech-shaped culture. Taking the perspective of a cautious techno-optimist, I identified four cultural values emerging from the ubiquity of digital resources: questions, connections, collaboration, and creativity.
The basic premise of the book was that the church’s witness depends, at least in part, on the willingness of faith leaders to be thoughtful about the manifold ways technology is changing how we think, learn, and come to faith.
I still believe that premise holds up. But six years later, I wonder if the book’s subtitle ought to be revised.
Is it still our vocation to be the church in a tech-shaped culture?
To answer in the affirmative is to suggest that technology is the central force influencing how we make meaning. But even as technology advances at a dizzying pace, I wonder whether the force primarily molding our minds today has less to do with bits and bytes than we might think.
Because technology is not really the explanation, even if we would like it to be. That would be too simple.
There is another force shaping how we think, how we show up, and how we relate to one another.
That force is dread.
Fear and loathing have become leading actors in today’s great cultural drama. Technology is often merely the stage. Many thoughtful church leaders and theologians have written about the ways artificial intelligence is influencing what it means to be a Christian today. And they should. AI will continue to shape our institutions, our work, and our imaginations in profound ways.
But I wonder if our fixation on technology sometimes obscures something more fundamental. AI is one of many forces contributing to our cultural anxiety. It is not the anxiety itself. Some of us have started using artificial intelligence more in recent months. But likely all of us have experienced more dread.
Six years ago, we might have spent more energy considering how the faith and practice of the church ought to respond to the emergent values of a tech-shaped culture. Today, perhaps we ought to spend more energy prayerfully and carefully discerning how to respond to the dread tsunami crashing onto our shores.
And let’s be blunt: moping is not a response. While we may be tempted to use our communal life together to bemoan the ambient anxiety inherent to these days of dread, Christ calls us to something more than shared despair. Christ calls us to a faithful response.
So where do we begin?
First, take note of where dread is seeping into the pews and parish halls. Read the comments. Observe the actions. Glance at the postings and conversations of your community. Listen carefully to what people fear, what they grieve, and what they believe they have lost. Christian witness in an age of cultural dread begins with intentional listening. Or, to paraphrase Dr. Scott Cormode and his work on church innovation, pay close attention to the longings and losses among your congregation. This work of listening and attentive observation is not just the task of pastors. It is a healthy practice for all of God’s faithful because it helps us discern the degree to which dread is disrupting our lives and communities.
Second, reintroduce the language and practices of discernment and formation.
Rev. Christopher Benek, who has written extensively about Christian witness in an AI-mediated world, writes about the particular value of human discernment:
“Pastors already inhabit situations where metrics say one thing while lived experience says another. They sit with people whose lived experience cannot be fully expressed by current data points. They recognize when a person needs presence rather than efficiency, patience rather than optimization. Artificial intelligence does not eliminate that skill; it increases the need for it. In an AI-mediated world, human discernment becomes more valuable, not less.”
Dread moves quickly, and learned helplessness can soon follow.
Christian witness isn’t about outpacing or shouting above the dread. It is about entering a different plane altogether, one where the faithful can pause and consider who God has created us to be, how Christ meets us amid doubt and fear, and how the Spirit sends and equips us to be salt and light in a darkening world.
The church in an age of dread may need to become a church that moves more slowly.
It may need to cultivate deeper introspection. It may need to recover practices that fuse prayer, Scripture, conversation, silence, and community. These practices do not make fear disappear. But they can reveal that fear has less hold over us than we imagine.
If listening and discernment are the first two pillars of Christian witness in an age of dread, then the third is a renewed engagement with the foundations of the faith. In a culture that constantly asks us to react before we have had time to reflect, the church has an opportunity to help people remember who they are and whose they are. This is where catechism, study, and theological education matter, not as intellectual exercises or theology for theology’s sake, but as practices of formation. We need to know the story we inhabit. We need language for naming what is broken and what is beautiful. We need to understand what Christians mean when we speak of creation, sin, grace, incarnation, resurrection, and hope. We need to be reminded who is truly sovereign and what is actually salvific. Without this grounding, it becomes remarkably easy to confuse the urgent with the ultimate, the alarming with the important, and the powerful with the sovereign.
Discernment and formation give us a way of paying attention. Biblical, theological, and confessional education anchor that attention in a tradition far vaster and more durable than the ambient sense of dread pervading our day-to-day discourse.
Ironically, the church’s most powerful counterweight to much of the malaise we experience may not be anything novel.
In an age of ambient anxiety, the church can become the faithful coach, the wise counselor, and the steady presence that we need more than ever. Not because the church possesses easy answers to every question, but because it knows how to help us live faithfully amid questions that have no easy answers.
A wise mentor does not deny danger. A wise mentor does not tell us that everything will be fine. A wise mentor helps us see clearly, breathe deeply, remember what matters, and take the next faithful step.
Perhaps that is what Christian witness looks like in a dread-shaped culture.
Ages of dread come and go. This one will, too.
May the Spirit guide us into this form of witness, which, as it turns out, is remarkably old, deeply practiced, and faithfully proven.
