Abstract:
The objective of this doctoral research is to understand how (i) new information and communication technologies have influenced and continue to influence the communicative task of churches of Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal Protestantism in the execution of their missiological nature and (ii) how they have been appropriated throughout the time in the institutional task of organizing the missionary task. Preliminarily, it is argued that communication is a fundamentally human phenomenon and that the mechanisms of its reproduction can be varied and implemented based on the intense modern industrial process, engendering the very sphere of sociability of recognition of the human being as a holder of rights. Next, the importance of a theological curriculum is postulated that enables Christian leaders to be competent in always learning to learn and capable of moving in the scenario of liquid modernity, understanding this era in terms of its potentialities and limits. Due to this aspect, we analyze the ways in which churches have dealt with new information technologies over time and, more specifically, how Pentecostals and neo- Pentecostals have historically moved within the scope of the press, radio and TV, consequently , attention is paid to the virtual environment of the Internet and its communicational apparatuses: formats and extensions, applications and platforms, increasing the offers of interactive communicational practices that dialogue with the needs of a post-Covid-19 society, resizing ecclesiastical formats and distinguishing symbolic interactions which now come into force after social distancing – due to the pandemic – left the globe in a form of isolation never seen before. In this aspect, patterns of sociability are destabilized in times of liquid modernity and solid values end up falling apart in the face of the superficiality of the speed with which forms of human sociability are consumed, increasing the asymmetry, at times, of non-virtual relationships, and decreasing the benefits arising from concrete existential sociability. The motivation for the research is the persistent absence of an analysis in Brazil about postmodernity taken as a historical period based on irreversible processes and which seems to better dialogue with the emergence of a new subject, existence in the metaverse. In this context, the production of this research on new information technologies and their effects on the formation of a curriculum aimed at Christian leaders who know how to learn to always learn is justified, allowing a critical understanding of postmodernity, considering its positive consequences as well as the negative ones for the task of proclaiming God's self-proclaimed act, the Gospel of Jesus. Bibliographical research was used, approaching the concepts through the theory of cultural studies regarding postmodernity, or liquid modernity.
