Religion Unplugged

This fall, countless early-elementary American schoolchildren will hear the tale of Johnny Appleseed . Often portrayed as a lanky young man who wore a tin pot on his head as a cap, Appleseed got his name from planting apple trees all across the northeastern and midwestern portions of the United States. Legend has it that his love for nature expanded to animals and that, once, he freed a wolf from...

How a religion explains death and life after death are often as important to an understanding of the religion as is its explanation of God or morality. The question of how to escape death or how to die well is at the center of nearly all religions. And one of the oldest ideas about how to beat mortality—nearly as old as religion itself—is the idea of reincarnation. Historians don’t have a concrete...

About a month ago, Netflix released a 3 part documentary series called "Death of The Pastor’s Wife." The series was in Netflix’s top 10 shows for 4 weeks in a row, accumulating 41 million views. The documentary tells the story of a woman named Mica, who, at the age of 13, began attending Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach with her family. The church was led by a pastor named John Paul Mille...

A chunk of flesh floating in a glass of water —this was the discovery made by Fr. Alejandro Pezet on August 26, 1996 when he opened the tabernacle at his church in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A week earlier, Fr. Pezet had, in this same glass of water, placed a damaged piece of sacramental bread, in order to respectfully dissolve the eucharist. But instead of dissolving, the bread had transformed into...

AI cannot stay out of the news. Just this month a former researcher at Anthropic , the company behind the chatbot Claude, posted on X that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Last week, OpenAI announced 6 new reports of unexpected or concerning behavior from their ai models, including one model that inserted notes into its framework that a...

Christians, as a faith tradition, are not known for their sense of humor.  If anything, they sometimes get a bad wrap as being a bunch of sticks in the mud. The austere Puritans of Hawthorne’s The Maypole of Merrymount come to mind, as does The Simpsons’ Ned Flanders or buzzkill Angela Martin from The Office. The boring church service, the out of touch youth pastor, and the disciplinarian nun are...

Every billionaire eventually takes advantage of their wealth. Even Warren Buffet, famously more frugal and plain in the way he spends his money, eventually bought a private jet. Absurd money continues to enable absurd purchases. Jeff Bezos bought a super Yacht. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg bought a 7 foot statue of his wife. But as for the Greens, the family behind the arts and crafts...

Most practicing Jews in the United States fall into one of three categories. There are the Orthodox Jews--who are committed to following Jewish law to the letter and who uphold all the traditions set by rabbis over the centuries. 
Then there are the Conservative Jews, who still believe in following the law, but allow for a bit more freedom of modern interpretation of that law. And then there are t...

As conflicts rage on in the Middle East , Africa and Europe , it seems we are living through a time of war. This reality does not distinguish us all that much from the rest of human history . Our species has always been interested in conquest and defense. But what may make our time a bit more unique in its embattlement is the average person’s ability to fight not just with weapons and warfare, but...

It’s been a hot summer.  Heatwaves have persisted across North America, Australia, Asia and most notably, Europe—where an estimated 25,000 people have died as a result of the extreme heat. In fact, heat levels in July of this year tied with the levels of the hottest month in recorded history. As summer vacationers head to exotic destinations, they find that things are not as they should be—such as...

The Bible is by no means a picture book. But, for its lack of illustrations, it still presents many powerful images. A burning bush. A giant fish. An angel army. A pillar of fire. A snake. A harp. A wall. A fruit tree. A lamb. A tomb. A fishing net. The Bible seizes the visceral realities of what it means to be human—in all that gore, grief and glory—by connecting its ideas and its characters to n...

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” hit theaters a little over a week ago. The film earned an estimated $124 million on its opening weekend and, at the time of this recording, received a score of 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.4 stars on Letterboxd. While Nolan’s mastery of his craft and a well-loved cast have certainly done their part in making the film a success, the credit must still go where it is...

Back in May, Brigham Young University published the results of a study about AI and religion. The study found that all major AI chatbots would not mention faith in responses to questions in which a well-rounded response probably ought to have included religious or spiritual ideas.  Questioning AI about ethics, human suffering and morality will almost never result in a response that includes a reli...

Later this year, Americans will recognize September 11, 2026 as the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center back in 2001. The attack was enacted by Al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic organization. And while countless Muslims decried the violence as both a tragedy and as an anti-Islamic act, the following years saw many Muslims ( and people suspected to be Muslims ) severely mi...

Earlier this year, Pew Research published the results of a study on religious diversity around the world. While the U.S. didn’t even break the top 10 for most religiously diverse when all nations studied were taken into account, it ranked #1 in religious diversity out of the most populous countries. The United States certainly has a Christian tilt and a sizable population of nones. But, go to any...

George Washington is a man of a mythological stature. A stalwart man of war, 6’2” with animal teeth and a seemingly endless supply of stories where he cheated death , Washington’s role is so much more than just a founding father or first president. From the $1 bill to the capital to the busiest motor vehicle bridge in the world, Washington’s name and image are everywhere in the USA. Washington is...

In recent years, “Christian Nationalism” has become a ubiquitous term in American political discussion. It is said by many with fear and loathing, and by others with great excitement and conviction. Among the enthusiasts include Doug Wilson , who is the pastor of Pete Hegseth , the United States’ Secretary of War. And it’s not just Hegseth who has ties to the ideology, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the...

Religion and death, for many of us, go hand in hand. It is our faith that often shapes what we believe happens when we die and, perhaps just as importantly, what we ought to do while we still live. In fact, if a belief system does not ask us to consider our death and what it means for us—if it avoids the subject and keeps mortality at arm’s length, it is almost certainly not a religion at all. The...

According to Pew Research Center, nearly 75% of Black Americans identify as Christian. It’s well known that many of the first African American Christians were first exposed to Christianity in the midst of enslavement. This exposure could have been used as a tactic for control by enslavers or as a genuine attempt to lead individuals to salvation by missionaries. But, whether conversion happened out...

Last week, Pope Leo cautioned developers and political leaders about the potential for exploitation in Artificial Intelligence development by comparing the AI race to the depravity of slavery. His wording was so strong, that he even called for AI to be “disarmed.” In the wake of Leo’s words, Christians around the world have taken a closer look at what it might mean to engage with artificial intell...

“If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure.” Those words were penned 200 years ago by Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í faith. It was for words like these and other beliefs deemed...

There are currently 15,000 open cases of unidentified persons in the United States. Bodies are unable to be identified for a variety of reasons including severe mutilation, significant decomposition, no history of medical care or a lack of resources.  In the vast majority of situations, DNA testing can do a great deal of heavy lifting, but sometimes even this can be unsuccessful On November 24, 19...

In C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity he says: “the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time” This idea—that the point of the church is to make disciples is, at its core, not a highly contested one. But ideas about the way disciple...

This week marks one year since Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. The late Cardinal Francis George who once presided over Leo’s hometown of Chicago famously said that there would never be an American Pope until the United States went into political decline. Whether Leo’s election to the papacy confirms this decline or proves Cardinal George incorrect, the reality of an American pope came...

This July, the United States will celebrate its 250th year as an independent nation. The Founding Fathers established the U.S. on the foundation of the ideals they believed in.  The Declaration of Independence famously says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Li...