Thursday's News & Ideas - 9/7/2023
- America’s dechurching
- France’s secularism & colonialism
- When Judaism became Judaism
- Flannery O’Connor biopic
- Silicon Valley’s AI religion
- Listening to Taylor Swift in prison
America is experiencing a ‘great dechurching.’ What’s happening to all the church buildings?
Deseret News: Closing a church isn’t just about shutting its doors, as many communities and pastors are finding out.
France’s laicité in the name of secularism is really only supremacist legacy of colonialism
Religion News Service: What is it that makes schoolgirl’s choice to wear the abaya a form of religious proselytism?
When Judaism became Judaism*
The Christian Century: Archaeologist Yonatan Adler argues that widespread, ordinary observance of the Torah did not take place until the Hellenistic period.
How Ethan Hawke’s Flannery O’Connor biopic confronts the author’s controversial legacy*
Vanity Fair: “Wildcat,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and is on its way to Toronto, takes an inventive approach to O’Connor’s racism and personal crises — but it leaves out some key details too.
Silicon Valley’s vision for AI? It’s religion, repackaged.
Vox: It’s no accident — the intertwining of religion and technology is centuries old.
The Spark
Listening to Taylor Swift in prison
Her music* makes me feel that I’m still part of the world I left behind, Joe Garcia writes at The New Yorker.
*access is limited for nonsubscribers
