Digital Religion in Aotearoa: Minority Theologies of Flourishing

This work sits at the intersection of digital religion, critical theory, and minority studies. The project traces the discourses of digital theologies and everyday ethics by minority Christians in Aotearoa New Zealand. The digital world both extends and enacts new technological forms of hegemony, exerting tendrils of control, oppression, and power in diffuse and diverse ways contingent on social, cultural, and relational configurations. By exploring the experiences of minority populations, one gains a clearer image of the structures of power inherent in digitality. I employ Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘becoming minor’ to frame the relationship between the hegemonic, normative major and the ‘minor’ theologies that emerge in response to conditions of digitality. This thesis narrates the ways that three groups of minority Christians—queer, Indigenous Māori, and migrant Samoans—speak back to majority formations in an ongoing negotiation. These minor theologies are formed in reaction, subversion, and conciliation to the promises and perils of digitality. I argue that the themes and stories that emerged in response to questions of navigating the digital world form what I call minoritarian theologies of flourishing. These articulations do not call for retreat; nor do they aim to become the normative, new major. Rather, these theologies attend to visions of human flourishing in the here and now that are diverse and dynamic. My notion of minoritarian theologies of flourishing affords new understandings in contextual theology, enriching the field of digital religion and the wide umbrella of minority studies, adding new dimensions of analysis to the academic conversation.