Thursday, September 03, 2026
Ecclesial Futures special issue on Grassroots and Indigenous Digital Faith-based Activism
I’m delighted to share the publication of a special issue of Ecclesial Futures, focused on Grassroots and Indigenous Digital Faith-based Activism. Ecclesial Futures is an diamond open access academic journal, free for authors and readers, with the entire issue available online.
I wrote a proposal for a special issue to the Editorial Board of Ecclesial Futures in July 2025. It was accepted and a call for papers advertised. Submissions were gathered through until January 2026. The Co-editor, Nigel Rooms, then stepped in, to oversee the peer review process to ensure the entire issue was double blind.
With seven articles accepted, I picked up the editorial baton again, working with authors around readability, moving the articles through copy-editing and layout. I also wrote an editorial, which explains some of how the special issue developed and the future research questions that emerge when seven case studies of grassroots and indigenous faith-based activism are gathered together.
The further research questions I identify in the editorial include
- the challenge to Eurocentric approaches to technology and theology
- longitudinal research to understand whether digital movements toward solidarity are enduring and behaviour changing, or temporal, and the implications given how humans make meaning
- the role of emotions in digital activism and the theological and ethical implications of these affective engagements
- how theological understandings of Divine revelation made tangible in material bodies are complexified by categories of visibility and invisibility in digital cultures
- how ecclesial groups might recognise and share in the spiritual formation of digital activists and content creators
- what life to the full and human flourishing mean for minority communities in digital cultures of surveillance
- the methodological implications of case study approaches to digital ethnography
Among the seven articles is one I wrote, The Visual Grammar of Online Faith-linked Climate Activism Case studies of grassroots “moana” theologies in Oceania.
My article presents research on online grassroots digital activism by three faith-linked groupings in Tonga, Solomon Islands and Fiji. I argue that the visual identities of these digital activist organisations in the Pacific centre an ocean or “moana” eco-praxis that is immersive, communal and prayerful. This challenges existing Eurocentric theorisations of digital activism and climate justice. It also demonstrates how digital technologies contribute to new forms of Christian organising and the role of gender and lay leadership in the mission of God in a climate emergency.
The special issue has been a huge amount of pro-bono work. My thanks to AngelWings Ltd for approving the pro-bono time. My thanks to all the authors, reviewers and publishing team for their support and grace.
Finally, my thanks to IASH Edinburgh, one of the world’s premier Institutes for Advanced Study. The entire project began with an IASH Research Fellowship in June-July 2024. That gave me the intellectual space to think through methodologies and begin data gathering. IASH then agreed to funding to support an online colloquium as part of their 55th anniversary celebrations, out of which grew this special issue.
The special issue has been described as “cutting-edge” and advancing “scholarship in our field in several directions” and I’m relieved and thrilled to have been involved.
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