Description

Through both the Luce Fund for Theological Education and an annual RFP for research universities, the Luce Foundation’s Theology Program has explicitly encouraged creative uses of digital technologies and new publication platforms. Projects supported by the program’s grants have sought to make use of such platforms in a wide variety of ways, and with multiple goals in view. Examples of recently funded projects include: the American Religious Sounds Project (a collaboration between Ohio State University and Michigan State University),  American Religion (a new publication to be launched in conjunction with a grant to Indiana University), and Lived Religion in a Digital Age (a project at Saint Louis University). 
 
Interest in the establishment and use of digital publishing platforms remains high, among both current and potential grantees. At the same time, and in part due to the rapid pace of change in digital publishing (broadly construed), innovators in this arena have not always been especially well-connected with one another, and a range of practical and strategic questions have only been partially addressed. Emerging through a series of conversations crystalized in the context of work supported by the Theology Program’s current grant to the University of California, Berkeley, the proposed project aims to forge new connections among would-be innovators, to expand shared understanding of current efforts to launch or expand digital platforms, and to stimulate fresh thinking about a range of challenges and opportunities associated with their use. The Foundation’s grant would support two gatherings of scholars, journalists, and publishers, including both digital innovators and individuals superintending more traditional forms of publication. 
 
The first gathering will be held at Yale University, in early 2019, and the second at the University of California, Berkeley, likely later that same year. These two consultations will include individuals drawn from several grant-funded projects currently supported by the Theology Program, as well as a range of others. Anticipated outcomes have deliberately been left somewhat open. One central goal of the gatherings will be the sharing of information and ideas among participants, with the expectation that a range of already established projects will benefit from the engagement and learning facilitated by the meetings. The project’s two co-conveners will seek to coalesce and critically restate some of the more compelling ideas that emerge, especially with a view to charting possibilities for future work. We hope that subsequent strategic thinking about the state of the art in religion and digital publishing might be enhanced by new relationships and ongoing exchanges prompted by these gatherings.