ReligionDispatches.org

In the ever more dystopian world of Syfy Channel’s Caprica, teenage girls inhabit robot bodies, or live eternally without bodies at all, human bodies are marked by memories, and all the while there is blood flowing in the virtual streets. 

What is the black church and what does it mean to say that the black church is dead? A provocative assertion and prophetic challenge by a prominent interpreter of African-American religion occasions a lively and varied set of responses. Updated with a response to those responses by Eddie Glaude, Jr., whose article sparked the discussion.

As the ‘gods’ of Hollywood descend in designer digs, religion scholars Gary Laderman and Anthea Butler discuss the divinity of celebrity in America. 

Tamara, the girl who is dead but doesn’t know it, who exists only within the “magic circle” of a virtual game, takes center stage in this week’s episode, and in our commentary. 

Among other clues to this sci-fi opera, our Caprica watchers took particular note of a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron killer. What can we learn from the possibility that Capricans can be as kitsch-obsessed, cigarette-addicted, and as reckless with civil liberties as earthlings can be? 

More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”

Had the inexperienced Idaho missionaries read so much as Haiti’s Wikipedia page they would have learned that the nation has a history of slavery, colonialism, and missions that warns against attempts to remove Haitian children from their home. 

Welcome to the first installment of our ongoing coverage of television’s latest contribution to the cultural intersection of science and religion, with bonus themes to include: the body, artificial intelligence, paganism, original sin, immigration, and race. Join Diane Winston, Anthea Butler, Salman Hameed, and Henry Jenkins every week as they delve into deep exegesis of Caprica.

As people around the world begin to reckon with the scope of the catastrophe in Haiti, we offer a set of responses to what was—for those whose work focuses on American religion—a shameful expression of prejudice and ignorance from a once-prominent evangelical leader. 

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog picks up where Katrina left off. The movie is a wholesale desecration of New Orleans, Creole culture, Cajun culture, religion, zydeco, and even Louis Armstrong.

Before there was Falwell, Robertson, Bakker, or the Crouches, there was Oral Roberts, the iconoclastic pioneer of televangelism.

Chris Rock’s new documentary scrutinizes the politics and pathos of black hair care: from the beauty salon to the hair show, and from chemical relaxers to the Indian hair that fuels the hair weave industry. 

In the official “Year for Priests,” dedicated by Pope Benedict, a priest in Florida has upped the ante on clerical malfeasance, allegedly fathering a child with a stripper, and threatening the woman with violence. What will it take for the Catholic Church to begin to take responsibility for priests gone wild?

In this chronicle of mutations within the Pentecostal movement, we learn to distinguish among the Prosperity Gospel, Word of Faith, and New Apostolic Movements—and we learn why it matters.

Given that so many powerful Pentecostals and Charismatics, like Senator John Ensign and Sarah Palin, are embroiled in high-profile scandals, one might expect to hear more about the movements that unite them. Anthea Butler, a leading scholar on Pentecostalism and American religious history, traces the various movements and their theologies of wealth, healing, and dominion.

Last week it was discovered that several powerful republicans at the heart of two sex scandals—Sens. John Ensign and Tom Coburn and Gov. Mark Sanford, among others—are members of The Family, reputed to be an “aggressively anti-democratic” Christian movement quietly steering us toward a “theocentric” state. Three scholars discuss The Family with the author. Sparks fly.

Was Michael Jackson a supernatural magician or an icon of self-immolation? Both? The physical body is gone, the musical productivity has ceased, the capacity to speak for himself is no more, so now MJ is a wonderfully ambiguous figment of our imagination. Three religion scholars discuss the life, legend, meaning, and myth of one of the world's most talented, successful, and perhaps tortured performers.

Michael Jackson, pop theologian and transcendent performer, went from Jehovah’s Witness to Nation of Islam to Islam searching for the well-being embedded in so many of his songs. Farah Fawcett, who was so much more than a pretty face and healthy head of hair, courageously faced death on camera in a youth-obsessed culture.

Obama’s speech marks a radical departure from the prophetically-laden, right-wing rhetoric that cast America and Israel together waiting for Armageddon at the hands of Arab countries. In fact, what if the speech were intended to deconstruct the simplistic mistrust of American Christianity towards Islam?

If King could have conceived of this day, with the coincidence of a holiday in his honor and the swearing-in of the first president of African descent, he would surely have marveled. And then he would have set us all to work.

With the choice of Rev. Warren to make the inaugural invocation, the president elect has proven himself tone deaf to the nuances of American religious life.

A professor of African-American religious history talks about teaching with a heavy heart, year after year, about the truths of racism. With the election of Barack Obama, this year will be different, but the journey of healing has only just begun.