QAnon Conspirituality and QAmerican Culture

Last updated on: October 12, 2021 at 11:02 am By James F. McGrath

This isn’t the first time that I and other scholars in religious studies have turned our attention to anti-vaccination stances, QAnon, and other conspiracy theories, all of which have lots of religious connections and religious aspects. There’s more to be said about that in relation to some recent news items. Let me begin with a brief CBS documentary on the connection between rejection of mainstream knowledge in the Yoga/New Age/crystals sorts of communities and embrace of QAnon, anti-vaccination and other... Read more

Star Trek’s Post-Capitalist Society

Last updated on: October 11, 2021 at 9:14 pm By James F. McGrath

A great quote from an article by Usha Alexander about the near-utopian vision of Star Trek and the importance of imagining alternatives to capitalism if we are to make real-world progress. The world of Star Trek appeals so widely, I think, because it presents us with something colorfully short of a utopia, a flawed human attempt toward a just, caring, and individually enabling social order. It imagines a society based on a shared set of human values—fairness, cooperation, political and... Read more

AI Imaginaries: Artificial Intelligence in Literature #CFP

Last updated on: October 11, 2021 at 5:45 am By James F. McGrath

This call for papers came to my attention: ACLA 2022 Annual Meeting June 15-18, 2022 National Taiwan Normal University Organizer: Dr L. Acadia ([email protected]) Submit a proposal: https://www.acla.org/node/add/paper Deadline: October 31, 2021 (11:59PM PST) Literature’s imaginings of Artificial Intelligence reflect ethical and social values, shape public hopes and fears, inspire technological development, and may even prefigure our futures. Humans are constructing AI: not only programmers through their coding, but also authors and readers through centuries of discourse, from ancient automatons... Read more

Michele Bachmann Cites Famous Social Justice Verse from the Catholic Bible

Last updated on: October 9, 2021 at 10:49 am By James F. McGrath

Michelle Bachmann has done so many strange and dubious things with the Bible that at first this seemed like just another example. Here’s what she said when speaking recently: When you have government forcing private businesses to fire people because the people aren’t complying with what government says, then you’re denying people the right to earn a living. In the book of Ecclesiastes, it says when you deny someone the right to their living, it’s the same as murder, and... Read more

Christianity and Science Fiction Conference Schedule

Last updated on: October 6, 2021 at 5:21 pm By James F. McGrath

The website for the conference on Christianity and Science Fiction is back up and running, thankfully! Here are the details for blog readers, for your convenience: Christianity & Science Fiction: A Virtual Event (11-12 October, 2021) The Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies, in partnership with the Department of Middle East Studies (University of Michigan), is pleased to announce a four-day virtual conference that explores the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and science fiction. The meeting is chaired by James McGrath,... Read more

Exorcism Left and Right

Last updated on: September 27, 2021 at 11:13 am By James F. McGrath

I enjoyed talking about the story of the Gerasene/Gadarene/Gergesene demoniac in my Sunday school class recently. I explained why I believe that story (at least in the version in the Gospel of Mark) to be political satire. A Roman legion of unclean spirits comes to the Messiah to try to exorcize him, and then when that attempt fails, begs him not to exorcize them from the country. Showing a map to convey the geographical aspect of the story can be... Read more

Moses the Musical Lawgiver

Last updated on: October 3, 2021 at 7:59 am By James F. McGrath

I’ll save the big update related to my work on the Bible and music for a bit later in this post. But first, let me start with music. And before I can share music I must confess that I somehow missed that 2021 is the 50th anniversary of Jesus Christ Superstar even though I talked about the rock opera in my class there is a delightful article featuring extensive interview with New Testament scholar Mark Goodacre that digs into the detail.... Read more

If You Don’t Build It, Will They Come Anyway? From an Iowa Cornfield to the Judaean Wilderness

Last updated on: September 25, 2021 at 5:46 am By James F. McGrath

I am not a sports fan and so I am not sure why my mind made a connection between John the Baptist and Field of Dreams. I saw on the news recently that they have a real baseball field in the middle of a cornfield on Iowa and (after an introduction by Kevin Costner) they played a classic game in classic uniform. It was well attended. The movie Field of Dreams features the famous line “if you build it, they... Read more

AI News

Last updated on: October 1, 2021 at 8:05 am By James F. McGrath

A round up of recent technology news that intersects with my interests: There are calls for papers on source code criticism and fiction and technology Eric Schwitzgebel has an important piece on his blog about creating AIs and giving them or not giving them the rights of persons. Here is a taste: That’s the dilemma: If we create robots of disputable status — robots that might or might not be deserving of rights similar to our own — then we risk moral catastrophe... Read more

#CFP Arkham’s Souls

Last updated on: September 27, 2021 at 11:08 am By James F. McGrath

Call for Chapter Proposals: Arkham’s Souls: A multidisciplinary Analysis of Batman’s Villains and Villainesses (Edited volume – De Gruyter Comicstudien) Why Study the Villains of Gotham? Batman needs no presentations. The World’s Greatest Detective, the Cape Crusader. He is the vengeance, he is the night, he is BATMAN! The shadow of the Bat had reached every popular culture corner – and even more. The academy – the so-called “high culture” – did not remain indifferent to the charm of the... Read more