2013 Paddock Lectures

The Paddock Lectures, Nov. 6 and 7, 2013

Media, Meaning and Ministry in the Digital Reformation

The Paddock Lectures were founded in 1880 by General Seminary benefactor George A. Jarvis and named in honor of The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, Class of 1852. The Lectures have become a prestigious and highly anticipated feature of GTS’ annual Alumni/ae Gathering.

This year's lecturer is Dr. Elizabeth Drescher, a scholar, researcher, and writer. She is a faculty member in religious studies and pastoral ministries at Santa Clara University. Her recent research and writing has focused on the spiritual and pastoral implications of the increasing integration of digital social media in everyday life. Elizabeth is the author of Tweet If You ♥ Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (Morehouse, 2011) and, with Keith Anderson, Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible (Morehouse, 2012).

Dr. Drescher is a frequent contributor to the online magazine Religion Dispatches. Her work has been highlighted by the Atlantic Monthly, the Daily Beast, the Utne Reader, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Australian Radio National, the BBC, CNN, State of Belief Radio, and other national and international news outlets.

Dr. Drescher has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards for the study of spirituality in everyday life and teaching in religion and spirituality including, most recently, a journalism fellowship from the Templeton Foundation for the Social Science Research Council’s “New Directions in the Study of Prayer” initiative. Her research on the prayer practices of religious nones will find its way into her latest book project, Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones (Oxford University Press).

Elizabeth is a scholar-in-residence in the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Réal. She lives with her family in Northern California’s Silicon Valley.

Learn more about Elizabeth’s research, writing and speaking at www.elizabethdrescher.com and follow her on Twitter @edrescherphd.

From Tweet If You ♥ Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation:

“The Church is at a critical juncture as it attempts to respond to dramatic cultural changes related to new mobile, digital social media. Some of those changes are wonderfully liberating, inviting creative involvement in the practice of faith and the nurturing of community by believers and seekers of all stripes around the globe. Others, such as the restructuring of concepts of privacy, self-presentation, and relationship that seem to undermine notions of interpersonal, communal, and spiritual intimacy that are at the heart of much Christian practice, feel more troubling. Threatening, even.”

Learn more at www.elizabethdrescher.com here.