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
Category: Topics
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Time in Ancient Judaism & Christianity
A selected reading list from Annette Yoshiko Reed’s course “Time in Ancient Judaism & Christianity.”
Dionysus and the Tragedy of Greek Religion Scholarship
Albert Henrichs’s work on Dionysus is a case study in the complexities and tensions that characterize the relationship between the fields of religion and the classics. By Kate Whitaker
Solidarity and Mercy in Ukraine
For Ukrainian Catholic sisters and clerics, the war is a Calvary and resurrection narrative. By Chris Herlinger
Unio Mystica and What Comes After
After an experience of mystical union, depression, doubt, and despondency aren’t uncommon. By Andrew McCarron
The Himalayas as Spiritual Chaplains
The Himalayas become wise, nurturing elders who help the author navigate an unsettling liminal time. By Swami Chidekananda
And Yet . . . We Hope
History has shown us that humanity has the propensity to persist despite catastrophe. At Harvard Divinity School, we must focus on what is in our control to build toward a better future for all. By Marla F. Frederick
Empire and Epistemicide
Precisely at the times when Jews and Christians were most experiencing the violence of the Roman Empire, some of Rome’s rulers were most vociferously claiming to bring and keep peace. By Annette Yoshiko Reed
Sewing Together at a Hindu Temple in Sindh, Pakistan
The location of a sewing class for young Hindu and Muslim women in the Jhoolelal Mandir shapes their sometimes fraught social interactions. By Ghazal Asif Farrukhi
What Is Midrash?
A terminological inquiry can shed entirely new light on midrashic hermeneutics, revealing a depth and structure that often go unnoticed. By Ishay Rosen-Zvi
