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The Problem with AMC’s Sci-Fi Hit Humans

By Andrew Aghapour

…chines. Critics have praised Humans for going beyond sci-fi’s typical doomsday portrayal of artificial intelligence. If the Terminator and Matrix franchises reflected our fear of one day being dominated by machines, Humans taps into a subtler anxiety about being replaced by them. In this parallel world, synths don’t just take jobs, they also excel at the subtleties of domestic labor: preparing home cooked meals, massaging a tired spouse, reading t…

Forty Years Ago, the Worst Mass Murder of LGBT People in the U.S.

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ed by a disgruntled patron who had been tossed from the bar earlier in the day, left 32 people dead—including a pastor for the Metropolitan Community Church that had been meeting in the bar Sunday mornings. As Diane Anderson-Mishnall explains, in a great article for the Advocate, the MCC was only at the bar because their former building had been set on fire three times. The article includes a heartbreaking picture of pastor Bill Larson—his charred…

Of Gods and Men Resurrects Martyrdom

By Nathan Schneider

…trying to change the world, really, but only bear witness to it normally, day by day. This, too, is typically Trappist; a vow all monks take is to bind themselves to a place. It’s also, in the etymological sense, martyrdom. The presence of French monks in Algeria in the first place isn’t unproblematic. Cistercians first arrived in 1843, and they were very much a part of the colonial system. Father Christian may have had this partly in mind when h…

Hajj Journal:
This Cultural Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…no noisy AC it is actually more open and breezy. Anyway we only spend the day there. Once all the busloads were there and midday came along, we managed to open the tents between the women’s section and the men’s section to listen to a sermon (in English). Then we combined and shortened the Zuhr and Asr prayers. This is so striking to me—the normal five times daily prayer is reconfigured in such a way that meditation and asking for forgiveness is…

Religion Round-Up: What’s Going on in Religion Around the World

By Diane Winston

…08:08:08 p.m,. the summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in Beijing. The day and hour for the start of the Olympics was chosen for its good fortune—a widely held belief in Confucianism and Chinese folk religions.” By American standards (which are unusually high among developed nations), religion is not a significant factor among the Chinese: only 31% deem it very or somewhat important in their lives. However, given six decades of a repressive po…

Trump’s Lawsuit Amounts to ‘a Tweet With a Filing Fee,’ But That’s Not the Whole Strategy

By Andrew L. Seidel

…e recount. Jill Stein paid $3.5 million for the 2016 recount. Trump has 45 days to pay if the recount doesn’t change the outcome, but given Trump’s penchant for stiffing his contractors, Wisconsin would be wise to ask for payment up front.) The legal arguments seem to be imbued with the spirit of Trumpism: they’re loud, hyperbolic, and don’t make a whole lot of sense. They’re nakedly partisan, as one would expect in an election lawsuit, but devoid…

The Creepy Surveillance of Elf on a Shelf

By Kelly J. Baker

…t for any reason. Second, the elf cannot interact with children during the day because its role is to observe and listen. The creators, however, encourage children to talk to their elves—especially to share secrets. The elf can learn more about the children, the more they share. Telling the elf secrets seems to secure a space on the nice list. These elves are ubiquitous. They can be purchased from bookstores, Target, and online retailers. Tutus ca…

Conservative Christian Book on Obama’s Faith

By Bill Berkowitz

…d it both troubling and in some cases lacking in depth. Describing a USA Today column by Mansfield titled “The Founders got it right: Religion now rests in a tortured place in society today, thanks largely to unfortunate and misguided rulings of the Supreme Court,” Don Byrd of Talk2Action wrote that Mansfield “called up all of the standard church-state myths and mis-directions: that the Founders intended America to be a Christian nation, that reli…

This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

By Jeff Sharlet

…sing to a nation battered by unfettered capitalism that it “Repeal a Law a Day.” The most influential of these businessmen for God was a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, founder of an annual ritual of piety and politics that survives to this day, the National Prayer Breakfast. In 1935, Vereide created a “fellowship” of Christian businessmen bound together by the idea that God hates government regulation because it interferes with a belie…

No God but Country: The Religion of John McCain Has Something Important to Tell Us

By Kathryn Lofton

…on Christmas day, and how one guard looked him straight in the eye on that day (that holy day) and “drew with his sandal a cross in the ground.” In recent press events, this moment in Hanoi has become his road to Damascus, the tale told to shunt rumors of irreligion. Conversion narratives have become mandatory formulations in American politics, signaling simultaneously theological affinity with an important voting bloc as well as the character req…