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Pandemics, conflicts, and crises have increased suffering, death, and loss worldwide. The growing phenomenon of online interactions by the bereaved with the online presence of their deceased loved ones has recently come to the attention of caring professionals. Many questions emerge. How do we understand and respond to digital memorialization? What do we make of digital identities and continuing bonds? How can we engage with digital bereavement communities? What is the future of digital death and bereavement rituals and practices? How have forms of technospirituality and cybergnosticism emerged? How do counselors and carers respond to advances in the digital afterlife?
Graham Joseph Hill and Desiree Geldenhuys examine existing therapeutic responses to death and bereavement practices and evaluate the efficacy in meeting the needs of mourners in a digital context. Geldenhuys and Hill explore the rising interest in spirituality and the phenomenon of technospirituality, including interest in the afterlife. The authors outline new death and bereavement practices in the digital public sphere. Hill and Geldenhuys offer ways that therapeutic and care practitioners can meet these needs. Finally, the authors develop new proposals for counseling, pastoral, and spiritual carers to help them address the needs of the bereaved.
About the author
Graham Joseph Hill serves with the Uniting Church in Australia as Mission Catalyst--New and Renewing Communities. Previously, he was the principal and associate professor of world Christianity at Stirling College (University of Divinity) and vice principal of Morling College. Hill is a research associate at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of thirteen books, including Healing Our Broken Humanity (co-authored with Grace Ji Sun Kim). His author website is GrahamJosephHill.com.
