Search Results (4)

We explore in this article how Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches (EPCCs) view Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how they use it, either intentionally or indirectly. Considering first the digital habitus in which EPCCs are immersed, we have documented and analyzed three sample cases showing how EPCCs use advanced AI tools to improve the sanctification process for believers; how the Bible can be translated, distributed, and its reading can be fostered around the world, using machine intelligence; and how a spiritual revival among EPCCs can spread rapidly through AI-mediated algorithms. We discuss the implications of these developments and conclude finally with some ideas about how EPCCs should engage AI applications in the future. Full article

In the framework of palaeography, the availability of both effective image analysis algorithms, and high-quality digital images has favored the development of new applications for the study of ancient manuscripts and has provided new tools for decision-making support systems. The quality of the results provided by such applications, however, is strongly influenced by the selection of effective features, which should be able to capture the distinctive aspects to which the paleography expert is interested in. This process is very difficult to generalize due to the enormous variability in the type of ancient documents, produced in different historical periods with different languages and styles. The effect is that it is very difficult to define standard techniques that are general enough to be effectively used in any case, and this is the reason why ad-hoc systems, generally designed according to paleographers’ suggestions, have been designed for the analysis of ancient manuscripts. In recent years, there has been a growing scientific interest in the use of techniques based on deep learning (DL) for the automatic processing of ancient documents. This interest is not only due to their capability of designing high-performance pattern recognition systems, but also to their ability of automatically extracting features from raw data, without using any a priori knowledge. Moving from these considerations, the aim of this study is to verify if DL-based approaches may actually represent a general methodology for automatically designing machine learning systems for palaeography applications. To this purpose, we compared the performance of a DL-based approach with that of a “classical” machine learning one, in a particularly unfavorable case for DL, namely that of highly standardized schools. The rationale of this choice is to compare the obtainable results even when context information is present and discriminating: this information is ignored by DL approaches, while it is used by machine learning methods, making the comparison more significant. The experimental results refer to the use of a large sets of digital images extracted from an entire 12th-century Bibles, the “Avila Bible”. This manuscript, produced by several scribes who worked in different periods and in different places, represents a severe test bed to evaluate the efficiency of scribe identification systems. Full article

Studies of digital religion frequently take democratic regime settings and developed economic contexts for granted, leaving regime and economic development levels as background factors (Campbell 2013). However, in China, the role of the authoritarian state, restrictions on religion, and rapid social change mean that online and offline religious practices will develop in distinct ways. This article analyzes the 2019 Bible handcopying movement promoted through China’s most popular social media WeChat as a way to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of China’s most widely used translation of the Bible. Drawing on interviews by and communication with the movement’s founder, the co-authors participated in and collected postings from a 500-member WeChat group from March to August 2019. We argue that while offline handcopying is an innovation in religious practice due to Chinese cultural and historical traditions, the online group constitutes a micro-scale “alter-public” (Chen 2015; Warner 2002), a site for religious discussion, prayer, and devotion that strengthens an “alternative” Protestant identity alongside that of Chinese citizen of the People’s Republic of China. Full article

This paper explores three themes: (i) a short, empirical research account of the linguistic realization of seventeenth-century Quaker prophecy using digital corpus-based tools; (ii) a practical description of how those tools can be used in interdisciplinary research such as the prophecy study; and (iii) a reflective section that considers the advantages, potential richness but also challenges of embarking on an integrated piece of research that straddles established academic disciplines. The ‘prophecy’ analysis comments on the nature of prophecy from a linguistic perspective. It includes positive and negative connotations observed in the data contrasted with non-Quaker texts (including the Bible), and also how Quaker prophetic style changed during the second half of the seventeenth century. The secondary purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the value of departing from traditional, well-established approaches in a discipline such as religion. Quaker studies scholars are familiar with the exercise of grappling with unfamiliar approaches, concepts and specialist vocabulary in order to learn about new insights that they might not otherwise encounter. The present quantitative-based study of Quaker prophesying is a fresh attempt to bring new life to this aspect of historical Quaker writings. Full article