This research derives from a growing awareness in the knowledge management community of three factors: the value of language to knowledge management, the value of knowledge in all economic sectors and all aspects of human endeavour, and the “knowledge-richness” of belief systems and religion. Three research questions are addressed: What is the nature of language found in sermons? Is the use of semantic analysis technologies a feasible method for increasing our understanding of language patterns and characteristics? And, finally, Are there different approaches to the use of language in sermons across Christian religious communities? The research leverages semantic criteria defined by the early work of Raymond McLaughlin on the use of intentional and extensional language. McLaughlin’s research was necessarily limited in scale and scope and performed manually in 1940. In 2011, this research leverages semantic technologies to apply his well-formed semantic criteria to a larger scale (300 sermons) and broader scope (nine religious denominations). The research results suggest that McLaughlin’s criteria retain their value to language analysis today, that semantic technologies are a practical approach to applying these criteria to the use of language in religious communities, but that there are variations in the conclusion drawn by McLaughlin 70 years ago. The primary result suggests a high degree of balance of intentional and extensional language in modern day sermons.

Conventional wisdom holds that primal cultures transmitted their religious beliefs and practices orally rather than by writing. While this was true of some cultures, it has not been the case with all. The Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are all “word-based” faiths, having always emphasized written language. Indeed, both Christianity and Islam share the idea of “The Word” as a concept transcending mere linguistics.

Both the Scriptures and the attendant writings of these faiths (i.e., the Talmud, creeds, catechisms, theological treatises and other such works) are all word-based documents which in many cases took centuries to forge. This is not to say that the Abrahamic faiths have never had oral traditions. The Hebrew religion, for instance, consisted of two streams: the written Torah and the oral Torah, or Midrash. Muslims developed their ahadith—traditions regarding the Prophet Muhammad’s life. But since the Hebrew and the Muslim oral traditions were eventually reduced to writing, our chief contention is further supported: in these religions, writing has always been preferred to orality.

This paper examines the relationship between the characteristics of the religious community in an area served by a public library in the United States and the level of development of that public library. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that as the degree of religious orthodoxy increases in a community the level of public library development in that community decreases. To test this hypothesis, two indexes are constructed: (1) the index of “religious orthodoxy,” and (2) the public library development index. Data for the index of religious orthodoxy comes from a 2000 study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. The public library development index is based on 1974 and 2008 data collected by the U.S. federal government on all public libraries. Both data sets cover the entire U.S. The findings from this 2011 study are compared to the findings from a 1978 study by Williams (1978) that used similar measures. Tentative results from both studies indicate that while there is a definite negative relationship between the index of public library development in the most orthodox communities that relationship is not uniform for all levels of community orthodoxy and that changes do take place over time.

Forbearance is the endurance of negativity from others or the world without responding in kind. Unfortunately, the transmission of negativity is ubiquitous among people at every level of social organization. Consequently, religion and the humanistic sciences view forbearance as critical to the well-being of persons and society. This paper introduces a scientific approach to the analysis of forbearance. First, it provides an understanding of the dynamic, yet information-based, context within which forbearance is relevant. Second, it presents a model of forbearance as one aspect of a spectrum of responses to negativity and, ultimately, as an ensemble of energy-modulating, information-based operators.

With an increasing number of social activities taking place online, an emotionally fraught and culturally complex question has surfaced regarding what happens to someone’s online content and identity after death. Social media sites are increasingly sophisticated in the development of tools and applications available for users to interact with each other online, but when it comes to virtual versions of bereavement, both the technical and cultural protocols for processing grief are still very much in the process of developing. This paper examines Facebook’s policy on the pages of site members who have died as a means of addressing online grief as a social phenomenon, as well as a point of access to tensions surrounding questions of online identity and computer-mediated communication. The background for this analysis is established with a brief discussion of traditional funerary practices in the United States1, before moving to a review of scholarship that addresses grief, and online grief specifically. Methodology for analysis of online discussions of Facebook’s policy is outlined, taking into account issues of how online identities are theorized and why blogs are specifically appropriate as a source of interpretation for examining online grief. Themes from these online discussions are identified in order to analyze how social media users understand practices of virtual bereavement, and more generally conceive of constructing online identities, relationships and communities. Analysis of online grief creates a space for understanding a social phenomenon as it is being formed, but also for consideration of what it means to construct, maintain and lose relationships and identities that are formed online.

The 19th Century shines brightly upon the 21st Century’s call for research of information and religion to gain spiritual knowledge. American author Henry David Thoreau (1854/1992) observed that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (7), and he sought to “awaken” his neighbors. Across the Atlantic, English Cardinal John Henry Newman (1868) asserted, “Many… refuse to be awakened, and think their happiness consists in continuing as they are” (58). T.S. Eliot heralded the perennial questions we find persistent each day: “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (5). Such observations reveal what is true of modern humanity: we face an information need for solution or awakening to fulfill potential, to encounter information essential to well-being, and to identify and achieve our dreams.

The traditional Christian belief in the Trinity states that God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit, and that people were created in “the image of God.” This is understood to mean that humans reflect the nature of God and His ability to communicate. This ancient Christian concept has implications not only for theology, but also for communication within Christian communities. The goal of this paper is to explore the ability of a modern information theory to shed light on this doctrine and improve communication within the Church. This paper seeks to bridge the gap between ancient theology and modern theory by asking the following question: “Can Gordon Pask’s conversation theory serve as a framework for information transfer within the Trinity and within Christian religious communities?” The author’s perspective is that conversation theory can be used as a framework for exploring knowledge creation and sharing within the Trinity and subsequently within the Christian community. These new insights are based on Pask’s conceptualization of psychological and mechanical individuals, entailment meshes, and consciousness. As these concepts create new perspectives, they have significance for communities who model their communicating on Trinitarian theology. This discussion will be based on theoretical, theological, and biblical evidence which demonstrates that conversation theory can be applied to Trinitarian theology. Conclusions include implications for the process of creating and sharing religious knowledge from the individual and the corporate perspective.

Keywords: Trinity, Gordon Pask, conversation theory, conversing, theology, community

Information studies, from the discipline’s origins in the field of documentation, has long been concerned with the question, What Is a Document? (See, for instance, the work of Paul Otlet, Suzanne Briet,Michael K. Buckland, Ronald E. Day, and Bernd Frohmann). The purpose of this paper is to examine Christian icons—typically paintings, usually in tempera, on wooden panels—as information objects, as documents: documents that obtain meaning through a formula of tradition and standardization, documents around which a sophisticated scaffolding of classification and categorization has developed, documents that highlight their own materiality. Theological arguments that associate the icon with Incarnation are compared and contrasted with theories on the materiality of the document and “information as thing.” Icons are also examined as exemplars of visual and multimedia information objects—all icons are graphic and pictorial, many also incorporate textual information. Through this examination emerges an understanding of the icon as a complex information resource, a resource with origins in the earliest years of Christianity and evolved over centuries with accompanying systems of standardization and classification, a resource at the center of theological and political differences that shook empires, a primarily visual resource within a theological system that places the visual on an equal footing with the textual, a resource with continuing relevance to hundreds of millions of Christians, a resource that continues to evolve as ancient and modern icons take on new material forms made possible through digital technologies.

Keywords: Information, documentation, religion, icons, images.

Scholarly sustainability is a useful term for the vital issues faced by theological educators today who are responsible for creating and providing resources for discovery and study. Developing lifelong learners among our students is an important aim; however, we still need to ask how we can aid these lifelong learners once they leave our institutions for an environment of constant change. The values of sustainable scholarship, what sustainability means, funding issues for sustainable projects particularly as they apply to those in religious education, theories of lifelong learning drawn from education, neuroscience, and theology, and intersection of the concepts of scholarly sustainability and lifelong learning are engaged in this paper.