Page - 135 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Book Review: Religion Online | 135www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 135–138 Lisa Kienzl Book Review August E. Grant / Amanda F. C. Sturgill / Chiung Hwang Chen / Daniel A. Stout (eds.), Religion Online How Digital Technology Is Changing the Way We Worship and Pray 2 volumes, Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2019, 624 pages, ISBN: 978-1-4408-5372-2 The edited work Religion Online: How Digital Technology Is Changing the Way We Worship and Pray is a comprehensive collection of 35 chapters in two vol- umes addressing religion and (digital) media technologies. The first volume, Religion in Cyberspace, focuses on a variety of aspects of religion and (digital) media technology in general, while the second volume, Faith Groups and Digital Media, addresses religious communities and their relation to media. This division structures the books and allows the reader to navigate easily through the comprehensive and differently themed volumes. The extensive collection also allows a discussion of a wide variety of topics, showcases dis- ciplinary approaches, and presents numerous case studies, from thoughts on how religious institutions use social media (vol. 1, chapter 3) to questions of religious authority on specific media platforms (vol. 1, chapter 8) to an analysis of evangelical gamers as further development of the complex rela- tionship between American evangelicalism and popular (digital) culture (vol. 2, chapter 4). The chapters in volume one focus mainly on the ways religion has been influenced by and connected to (digital) media technologies in the last decades. In the introduction, August E. Grant and Daniel A. Stout provide in- sight into the multiple perspectives that have contributed to this volume and DOI: 10.25364/05.7:2021.2.7