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Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

By Rachel Wagner

…lves as shaping their real lives in meaningful ways. In this respect, virtual environments produce the possibility of what Polish artist and game theorist Miroslaw Filiciak calls “liquid identity.” One of the problems of virtual identity became apparent last spring in a course I taught entitled “Religion, Ritual and Virtual Reality.” I wanted to show my students the new virtual hajj experience sponsored by Islamicity.com in the online world of Sec…

Damn You Auto-Correct: Creationist Edition

By Lauri Lebo

…ationism battles. Over the past several years, recommendations that supplemental materials be introduced in public school science classrooms have been part of anti-evolution bills in states across the country as a way to sneak creationist literature into the curriculum. Because they are not subject to the same formal adoption process as official textbooks, supplemental materials used in local school districts could rely on some seriously dubious s…

Personhood USA says Romney would Permit “Death Penalty” for “Babies Conceived in Rape”

By Katie Toth

Today Personhood USA accused Mitt Romney’s campaign allowing the “death penalty” for “babies conceived in rape.” We’ve written before about the far-right anti-abortion group’s willingness to bend the truth for attention. Just this year, the home of Personhood USA’s Keith Mason and his family was vandalized. The organization put out a press release blaming “abortion fanatics,” who had forced the Masons into hiding. But when asked about the inciden…

Trump’s ‘God Bless the USA Bible’ is No Joke

By Cavan Concannon

…Bible” (GBUSA) also includes: the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and The Pledge of Allegiance. Of course, the GBUSA isn’t the first to make an explicit connection between the Bible and the founding documents of the US. The American Patriot’s Bible (2009) features the New King James translation paired with inserts on Christian theology, American history, American “patriots,” and texts, poems, and hymns from US…

Coming Out Twice: Sexuality and Gender in Islam

By Susan Henking

…university inquiry. Islamic Studies used to happen under the rubric of “Orientalist Studies” which was mainly philological and text-based, and was carefully sealed off from wider currents of cultural criticism. But in the 1980s, scholars began to take Islamic Studies out of this narrow field and merge it more with Religious Studies, connected to wider intellectual trends like feminism, interfaith dialogue, and progressive political analysis. In t…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…milar to the Wailing Wall’s email service. Worshipers email a prayer to Jerusalem, where it is printed out by a courier and inserted into the wall on their behalf. If they still wish to pray “at” the wall via computer, 24-hour webcams record what is happening on location. But is it really the same thing to email a message to someone who inserts it in the wall on your behalf as to go there yourself? Is God “closer” if you visit the physical wall th…

If the Girl Scouts Investigated the Bishops…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…r Harvard president Lawrence Summers was excoriated for suggesting that women tend to have less aptitude for science and math. “Why,” asked Cordileone, “didn’t he have a right to say something which is a perfectly legitimate observation?” (An aside: Is there anyone who seriously thinks Lawrence Summers had no legal right to say what he said? Isn’t the issue that a whole lot of people thought he was, you know, wrong; and, further, that being that g…

Gingrich Signs Personhood USA Pledge

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…t the slightly-less-blunt one he had previously espoused? Did he miss the salient difference between the two definitions? (That seems unlikely.) Or might it have something to do with the fact that Romney hasn’t signed the pledge, that neither Gingrich nor Romney (albeit for different reasons) are viewed without suspicion by evangelical Protestant Christians or conservative Catholics, and that Gingrich has made a shrewd calculation that this will e…

Saipov Wasn’t a “Member” of ISIS, But That Misses the Point

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…lamation of the movement’s endurance. This is precisely what seems to be challenged by recent events. Given the military collapse of ISIS in Syria and Iraq in recent months, the movement does not seem to have much endurance left. After a long siege and a horrific house-to-house battle, the largest city controlled by ISIS, Mosul, was retaken by a combination of Iraq and Kurdish forces along with U.S. military air power. More recently the capital of…

Will God-Gaming Alter the Bible?

By Rachel Wagner

…lical play and can be both enjoyable and theologically profound. But fundamentalists of all monotheist stripes are much less enamored of interactivity with the text, particularly if it invites a constructivist hermeneutics, allowing people to see their own perspectives as able to effectively shape the Bible’s meaning. Some questions to ask as The Bible Online rolls out, gleaned from an awareness of the ordinary features of game-play, and enhanced…