Research Statement

From the promotion portfolio

On Wednesday I submitted my portfolio to apply for promotion to Full Professor (hooray!). The dossier has a couple hundred pieces of evidence in it, from teaching, research, and service, and finalizing it has meant a lot of late nights in the last few weeks. But it’s exciting to be at the stage in my career that I might be considered for full professor, and I think I have a pretty good shot of receiving the promotion.

Through this process, one thing I had to articulate more deliberately was my “research statement.” I had last sat down to write one of these when I was on the job market, so what I had was pretty dusty and represented some projects completed and some abandoned. It was helpful for me to put it together and think about what I want to work on in the coming year, and hopefully articulating it will push me along in the process.

So I thought I would share it here. Maybe you, dear readers, will find it interesting. But even if not, it gives me some feeling of public accountability to work on these things.

Research Statement - Stephen Okey, PhD

My research focuses on the intersection of theology and digital technology and proceeds in two main tracks. The first looks at public theology and how technological change both impacts the public role for theology and further reveals the theological dimensions of public spaces. The second is how resources from the Catholic theological tradition can aid in thinking about and responding to popular claims about artificial intelligence.

The focus on public theology grew out of my ongoing work on David Tracy. My first book, A Theology of Conversation: An Introduction to David Tracy (Liturgical Press Academic, 2018), presents the key areas of Tracy’s thought and looks at how they have developed throughout his career. Tracy fundamentally sees theology as a public conversation between the Christian tradition and the contemporary context. He describes conversation as an ongoing project that requires placing one’s authentic self-understanding at risk of change through the encounter with the other. By tracking Tracy’s ongoing conversations with a variety of figures and traditions, the book shows how his central concerns (public theology, method, classics, pluralism, Christology, and God) evolved over the course of his career.

Since that book was published, I have used Tracy and his focus on public conversation as the theological frame for thinking about digital communications technologies. Such technologies have created wider opportunities for participation in theological conversation and facilitated the formation of niche theological and religious communities. At the same time, they have contributed to the further fragmentation of communities and traditions, undermined the value and perception of expertise, and contributed to current forms of extremism and polarization. In my 2023 article, “Reconsidering David Tracy’s Public Theology in a Digital Age,” I evaluated various ways of reckoning Tracy’s three publics with the digital world. I ultimately argued that within his framework, it is best to treat the digital as a particular context for theology and see digital theology as akin to liberation, feminist, or political theologies. Reckoning with the digital context as a pervasive part of contemporary life is essential to any kind of theological response.

The second track of my work, on theology and artificial intelligence, grows out of this need to take the contemporary digital context seriously. While discourse about artificial intelligence has waxed and waned over the previous decades, the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 accelerated concerns about the ramifications of a hypothetical “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) that could match human capacities. I believe the technical and social possibilities of AGI are greatly overblown, but I also think the discourse about them reveals innumerable opportunities for theological engagement.

In my 2021 book chapter “The Image of God and the Technological Person: Artificial Intelligence in Theological Anthropology,” I consider the speculative question of whether an AGI could be considered human. I argue that the way people respond to this question is often more instructive about their understanding of what it means to be human than their understanding of the technology. I ultimately reject the idea of a human AGI, asserting instead that if in AGI were to be a person, it would be a distinct type of person from humans, and moreover the very possibility of such personhood would depend upon divine intervention, not only human ingenuity. More recently, in an essay to be published later this year, I consider public discourse around the idea of artificial intelligence as “existential risk” to look at competing eschatological visions. I argue that both those who fear AI development and those who think it must be accelerated are presuming an inherently “technocratic” eschatology, focused on issues of human control of technology. Drawing on a distinction used by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’, I propose instead an “integral” eschatology that focuses on a more holistic conception of the human person, reasserts the role of divine agency in eschatology, and that cultivates the virtue of hope.

Moving forward, I am bringing these two tracks together into my next book project, tentatively titled Public Theology in a Digital Age. The book is organized into three parts: frameworks, cases, and responses. Frameworks consists of three chapters, focused on what is public theology, key features of the digital age, and the technocratic paradigm. The second part looks at four case studies of the challenges in the digital age that invite theological analysis: big data and surveillance culture, the role of social media in social cohesion/fragmentation, misinformation and disinformation, and artificial intelligence in education. Finally, the section on responses suggests how resources from the Christian tradition can aid in formation for living a more authentically gracious life in the digital age. These resources look at spiritual disciplines (especially the works of mercy), the cardinal virtues, and finally the virtues of solidarity and charity. I have completed significant work on the frameworks part and the big data, misinformation, and AI chapters of the case studies. I intend to complete the manuscript of the book by the end of 2027.

Through my research, I look at how theology can contribute a constructive, informed engagement with modern technology. Too often such developments are examined uncritically, leading to wholesale acceptance or rejection. My work continues the Christian tradition’s long history of wrestling with its cultural contexts through conversation with and in this digital milieu.

So we’ll see how these projects go. In the above I’m mostly thinking of the peer-reviewed scholarly output, but I’m sure pieces that I post on here will also link back to these interests. And of course I’m always happy for feedback.