The Digital Age: A Crossroad for Religious Education

Dear Colleagues,

In the digital age, religious education (RE) faces profound challenges and opportunities that extend beyond a simple choice between tradition and technology. These arise from the convergence of three interrelated transformations: (a) shifts in sociocultural and religious life, (b) evolving human–technology relations and (c) the changing conditions of religious teaching and learning.

The first transformation concerns the sociocultural and religious contexts in which education takes place. Stalder’s (2016) notion of a culture of digitality, characterised by referentiality, communality and algorithmicity, illuminates how meaning is produced, circulated and authorised. Within this broader cultural transformation, research on digital religion shows how digital environments shape religious practices, identities, communities and forms of authority (Campbell and Tsuria 2022). Digitality therefore changes not only how religion is taught and learnt but also the religious realities that learners seek to understand and interpret.

Against this background, advances in artificial intelligence bring human–technology relationships into sharper focus, raising further epistemological, theological and anthropological questions (Singler 2025). AI-generated texts, images and audiovisual narratives may reproduce, recombine or reinterpret religious traditions, with implications for scriptural interpretation, symbolic representation and religious imagination (Arriaga 2025; Belmonte and Rymarz 2025). Chatbots, religious avatars and social robots can unsettle established distinctions between information and guidance, simulation and relationship, and technical functionality and religious authority (Simmerlein and Tretter 2024; Tretter et al. 2026; Chrostowski and Heger 2026). Their educational use therefore calls for critical reflection on theological discernment, relational formation and ethical responsibility (Papakostas 2025).

These developments also reshape the conditions, practices and relationships of religious teaching and learning across formal, non-formal and informal educational contexts. They affect how religious knowledge is accessed, interpreted and communicated, as well as how religious learning and formation are facilitated. This raises questions about the roles and responsibilities of educators, particularly RE teachers. Assessing AI-generated theological interpretations, mediating religious plurality and cultivating learners’ independent judgement require more than technical competence. Frameworks for digital and AI literacy must therefore be integrated with subject-specific pedagogical, theological, hermeneutical and ethical expertise (Redecker 2017; Long and Magerko 2020; Miao and Cukurova 2024). Comparative research among RE teachers further highlights the importance of professional attitudes and educational contexts in shaping responses to generative AI (Mąkosa and Chrostowski 2026).

The convergence of these three transformations provides the conceptual point of departure for this Special Issue. It seeks to examine how digital culture and emerging technologies reshape religious knowledge, educational practices, relationships and formation, while also exploring the distinctive contribution of RE to critical reflection on digitality. The focus is therefore not merely on the use of digital technologies in religious education, but on their implications for the aims, contents, methods and relationships that constitute religious teaching and learning. For the purposes of this Special Issue, RE is understood both in a narrower, institutionally organised sense and more broadly, encompassing formal, non-formal and informal processes of religious learning, socialisation and formation across diverse religious traditions and educational settings, including schools, faith communities and digital environments.

We welcome original research articles and reviews addressing, among other themes, the following:

• Religious learning, identity, community and ritual in digital environments;
• Religious knowledge and authority, theological interpretation, pluralism and algorithmic bias;
• AI-generated religious content, narrative, representation and imagination;
• Chatbots, avatars and social robots in religious communication and educational relationships;
• RE didactics, teaching and learning methods, instructional design, assessment practices and empirical evaluation of digital and AI-supported learning;
• Teachers’ professional judgement, digital and AI literacy, upskilling, deskilling and reskilling;
• Religious formation, human agency and the ethics of technology-mediated learning.

By addressing the empirical and methodological gaps identified in recent scholarship (Chrostowski 2026), this Special Issue seeks to strengthen the foundations of research on RE in digital contexts. Particular emphasis is placed on developing and validating subject-specific research instruments and didactic models, thereby providing a stronger basis for curriculum development, teacher education and future comparative research.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References:

Arriaga, Kristina. 2025. Robot sAInts: Questioning the Evolving Boundaries of AI-Generated Religious Images. The Review of Faith & International Affairs 23 (3): 48–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2025.2531633.

Belmonte, Angelo, and Richard Rymarz. 2025. Shaped by the Story: Narrative Theology, Storytelling and Christian Religious Education. British Journal of Religious Education 47 (4): 494–502. https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2025.2461071.

Campbell, Heidi A., and Ruth Tsuria, eds. 2022. Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in Digital Media. 2nd ed. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429295683.

Chrostowski, Mariusz, and Johannes Heger, eds. 2026. Religiöse Bildung angesichts Künstlicher Intelligenz: Grundlegungen und Konkretionen. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

Chrostowski, Mariusz. 2026. Artificial Intelligence in Christian Religious Education: A Scoping Review. Religions 17 (8): 991. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel17080991.

Long, Duri, and Brian Magerko. 2020. What Is AI Literacy? Competencies and Design Considerations. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: ACM, pp. 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376727.

Mąkosa, Paweł, and Mariusz Chrostowski. 2026. Attitudes of Religious Education Teachers in Poland and Germany towards Generative Artificial Intelligence. British Journal of Religious Education. Published online 14 April. https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2026.2655253.

Miao, Fengchun, and Mutlu Cukurova. 2024. AI Competency Framework for Teachers. Paris: UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000391104.

Papakostas, Christos. 2025. Artificial Intelligence in Religious Education: Ethical, Pedagogical, and Theological Perspectives. Religions 16 (5): 563. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16050563.

Redecker, Christine. 2017. European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu. Edited by Yves Punie. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2760/159770.

Simmerlein, Jonas, and Max Tretter. 2024. Robots in Religious Practices: A Review. Theology and Science 22 (2): 255–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2024.2351639.

Singler, Beth. 2025. Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Stalder, Felix. 2016. Kultur der Digitalität. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Tretter, Max, Marcel Scholz, Anna Puzio, and Jonas Simmerlein, eds. 2026. Artificial Intelligence in Religious Practice: Bots, Robots, and Generative AI. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-23721-7.

Manuscript Submission Information

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, or to the Assistant Editor Ms. Chelsey Chen (chelsey.chen@mdpi.com) of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Mariusz Chrostowski
Prof. Dr. Paweł Mąkosa
Dr. Christos Papakostas
Guest Editors

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