Human-drawn illustration of person conversing with a smartphone on an altar

Suprahuman but Inhuman Gods?

It is vitally important that religious studies scholars and theologians critically assess what it means to sustain conversation with AI. By Daniel H. Weiss And Darren Frey

Autumn/Winter 2025

Featured

Human-drawn illustration cityscape with high tech buildings up on a hill and glowing lines looming over the lower poorer buildings

AI is Not Truly Innovative

Compassionate interrogation offers an intervention to interrupt the creation of often invisible systems of inequity and violence in AI design and profiling. By Jenn Louie

Art print with resting figures on landscape with glowing aurora in the night sky

Sacred Sleep of the Wandering Fool

After the author starts treating sleep as worthy of attention and cultivation as any other soulful domain, she experiences shifting energies and curious moments of insight. by Sarabinh Levy-Brightman

Dialogue

AI Harms Are Not Ethically Inevitable

It is essential to recognize AI’s active role in exacerbating social ills and injustices so ethical guardrails can be crafted. By Richard J. Geruson

Human-drawn illustration of four people attempting to hold guardrails up around a chaotic void.
Plate 2. from the Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius Exhibition

The Fog of AI

The fog of AI captures both the uncertain informational provenance around concepts of human flourishing and the confounding effects a transformative technology like AI has on these same concepts. By Swayam Bagaria

Human-drawn illustration of The Thinker with glowing points and swirls

Meaning Making, Bodies, and AI

We are quick to simplify not only the human mind and consciousness, but also the importance of embodied social realities that make us who we are. By David Lamberth

Stone relief carving of seated figure surrounded by additional figures

The Human Story Is ‘I Love’

How do we hold on to our humanity in the face of revolutionary technological change? By James Prashant Fonseka

In Review

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BOOKS

Dancing with the Demiurge

Gregory Shaw’s Hellenic Tantra: The Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus is a critique of the metaphysics of our age, which disempower the imagination and blind us to our own capacities for the divine. By Simon Cox

Photo of massive tent city at night

Books

Reframing Religions as Platforms

In The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People, Paul Seabright draws on insights from economics to reframe religions as competing “platforms.” By Swayam Bagaria

Detail of Underworld Work book cover

Books

Descending Into the Underworld

A Q&A with Ahmad Greene-Hayes on his new book Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans. By Janan Graham-Russell

Photo of man in pink outfit surrounded by figures in black body suits, all standing on a path in a garden of succulent plants

Music

Being Happy for a Change

Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE reckons with what happiness might be, once we have come to terms with sadness. By Russell C. Powell

Poetry

[and       the field      the ground       the ground]

By Rebecca Gayle Howell

Perspective

Autumn/Winter 2025 issue cover

To Dream, Perchance to Pilgrimage: What AI Can’t Do

The essays in this issue that are not focused on AI also serve as counterpoints, exemplifying the idiosyncratic, embodied, meaning-making work that makes us human and humane. By Wendy McDowell

 

 

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