Public Bulletins

Public Bulletins: Introduction and Contribution

Public Bulletins are news items, informational content, and public debates intended for dissemination and exchange by an authoritative source. They focus on public theology, engaging with the dialogue between science and religion, as well as with technology—exploring how technology thinks, acts, and organizes society and culture, particularly through developments in artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and cybersecurity.

Public theology of science helps bridge the gap between science and faith, addressing moral and ethical considerations in the use of technology for the sake of human dignity, justice, and the common good. It acknowledges the role of technology in spiritual formation, growth, education, and worship, and considers the significance of discourse and technoparadigms as essential components of public theology. Technological development is a key aspect of the science and religion dialogue, in which a public theology of technology explores the relationship between technology, faith, and the emerging field of technoanthropology along with the post-biological intelligence.

Public theology of science examines how technology shapes human life, society, and spirituality, and how theological frameworks can provide ethical guidance for navigating the implications of technological advancements in light of God’s redemptive work in the world, society, and culture. It also critiques the regime of danger and risk inherent in the technological character of commodity fetishism, power dynamics, systemic bias, and the ideological structures of knowledge (episteme), particularly within the context of political discourse, climate change, and resource depletion in the evolution of a species of nonhuman intelligence —factors that increasingly substitute for faith and authentic human connection, threatening homo sapiens with extinction.

Through our engagement in Public Bulletins, we seek to promote a more just, sustainable, and spiritually enriching relationship between humanity, technology, and the lifeworld.

“If there ever was a topic or domain highly influential to religion, science and its ever-new critically tested insights about our world and about ourselves qualifies as such. But not only that: if there ever was a domain of culture and society that any critical science, whether studying nature and its workings or human beings and her nature, should not forget, it is religion! These two domains of human inquiry are inextricably joined–and they need each other.” – Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

Editorial

Submissions are encouraged that contribute to the dialogue between religion, science, and technology through the lens of public theology—whether from Christian or non-Christian perspectives. Such contributions should engage both context and intercontext in the pursuit of an ecumenical whole and a broader spectrum of understanding, offering responsible critique, fostering emancipation, and advocating for those on the margins of society, particularly within stratified social and cultural spheres.

Ted Peters (Emeritus Professor, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley)

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and Docent of Ecumenics at the University of Helsinki, Finland)

Paul S. Chung, Editor-in-Chief

Nick Huseby, Assistant Editor