Christopher Douglas

The cure for misinformation is not more information or smarter news consumers Political scientist Samuel Bagg explains why social identity is at the root of the misinformation crisis -- which calls for something deeper than factchecking.

This is precisely what I discussed with political scientist Sam Bagg:

What If God is a ‘Pagan Amalgam’: Marilynne Robinson and Historical Bible Scholarship Abstract. Marilynne Robinson is one of the most influential Christian writers and public intellectuals alive today, and her views on a range of topics shou

It's true: lots of Christians do struggle with it, including Marilynne Robinson

doi.org/10.1093/litt...

Religion influencers have become like Yelp for faith seekers Online religious experts are part professor and part pastor and they’re reaching millions of people who have questions about modern faith.

Hey, everybody! If you’re interested, I’m featured in a WaPo piece by @michelleboorstein.bsky.social about online “religion influencers”

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

I love how it's *looks at notes* having a fun little coffee drink is the example of prioritizing hyper-individualism over communal norms instead of like.....people not wanting to mask during a still ongoing pandemic 🙃

Trump’s holy warriors finally got the apocalypse they’ve prayed for Hundreds are dead. Iran is retaliating. And some of the people who helped start this war think it's going exactly as God intended.

Hundreds are dead. Iran is retaliating. And some of the people who helped start this war think it’s going exactly as God intended.

reposting for the new week--and I now have a PDF of my own in case folks don't have access and want a copy!

Molech would be a suitable god to feature, the eater of children. Subplot: many scholars now think mlk was a term for a kind of (child) sacrifice, and not the name of a god at all.

"Basically Church Type Stuff:" Old Timey Christian Americanism and the Rhizomatic History of American Fascism Or, the crucial but sometimes fuzzy distinction between a) being a White American Christian, and b) being influenced by a violent, White Christian Supremacist variety of conspiratorial, antisemitic Am...

I finally finished writing a long, winding piece on "America's distinctive political culture of vernacular fascism." It's about white country music, AM radio, paramilitary camps for Klansmen in 1960s Colorado, TPUSA, and a former chair of the OR GOP. rightlandia.ghost.io/basically-ch...

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

What we suspected is, of course, true.

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%

Renewable Energy and National Security The wind and the sun don’t need to transit the Strait of Hormuz

Trump's Iran war makes the case for the energy transition to renewables for most countries much clearer and immediate. @pkrugman.bsky.social 1/

From Divine Rapture to Tech Rupture: Why Silicon Valley Supports Armageddon in the Middle East When US military commanders are telling troops that strikes on Iran fulfil biblical prophecy this is expression of an apocalyptic network connecting the Pentagon, Silicon Valley and the Kremlin

From Divine Rapture to Tech Rupture: Why Silicon Valley Supports Armageddon in the Middle East

US military commanders telling troops that strikes on Iran fulfil biblical prophecy are apocalyptic network connecting the Pentagon, Broligarchs and Putin

open.substack.com/pub/pdjukes/...

Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right What do we make of former friends who fell down the rabbit hole of the Right?

Hi! Do you think Tucker Carlson “has a point”? Do think Platner platforming Holocaust deniers isn’t really a big deal? Do you think the “Epstein class” is short for “good w/ $$”? Well, my pal @kathrynajoyce.bsky.social and I wrote an article just for you! inthesetimes.com/article/form...

Waiting for Liberal Democracy in the American South Our country’s constitutional order is withering before us. In the states of the former Confederacy, democracy never fully flourished.

Joanne Freeman is incredible. This book and HCR’s How the South Won the Civil War informed a lot of this essay I wrote last year

www.thebulwark.com/p/liberal-de...

This is a profound continental divide. Canadians overwhelmingly view other Canadians, even those unlike them, as being good people. Americans, more than any other country, view their neighbours and fellow citizens as bad people. Anti-Americanism flourishes in the United States

A man asked me last night what publishing needs to do for literary fiction to begin appealing to men again. I said, as nicely as I could, that, with over 2,000 books published every Tuesday, of which many would appeal to men, it’s not a publishing problem, it’s a men problem.

Cfp for academic conferences I want to attend and have research to present, keep popping up on my feed. All of them are in the US.

Maybe orgs that have international memberships need to consider other locations since travelling to the US is fraught with danger.

This is insane, but also the obsession with transhumanism is one only available to the billionaire class. How much is it driving their fucked up views of the world, like the apparent indifference to the effects of climate change on living, breathing humans?

Here's a mini-thread on how Reign of Error episodes can help you understand how different parts of the MAGA Christian nationalist base are driving and understanding Trump's war in Iran: 🧵

How we know the book of Acts isn’t historical YouTube video by Dan McClellan

How we know the book of Acts isn’t historical
#maklelan3166
youtu.be/EuVH6chfkzo

In case you're wondering how some sectors of the Christian right are seeing Trump's war in Iran, I've just read several articles seeing a prophetic meaning in a coincidence of Trump's strikes, the assassination of Khameni, and a blood moon occurring on Purim (tomorrow).

there are a lot of people working in the government right now who want to intentionally trigger an apocalypse to create the conditions for the return of jesus christ and I know how crazy that sounds but its absolutely true

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

This is intensely wtf and yet on a smaller scale I think a lot of writers find factual mistakes in professional book reviews that make you think hmmm.

*Enemies of the Future: As part of the 2026 AAR theme of Future/s, explorations of Luddism, anti-tech, anti-AI, intentionally low-tech, and anti-modern religion (e.g., Anabaptism). *Techno-futures: As part of the AAR 2026 presidential theme of Future/s, considerations of the transformative role of technology in creating new material forms, new scientific horizons, and new religious iterations. Does the science/religion dynamic change as technology changes? *Funding Structures, Funding Collapse: Studies of the transformed landscape of funding for science in the second Trump presidency and its implications for religion as well as how science and religion funding have built the field. *Prediction and Uncertainty: Considerations of science and prediction, of unpredictability, divination, prophecy, the affects of certainty/uncertainty, despair and hope, optimism/pessimism, and speculation. *Revisiting When Prophecy Fails and Cognitive Dissonance: Considerations of new research emerging in the past decade challenging or reframing Festinger et al.’s influential 1956 book *When Prophecy Fails* and Festinger’s follow-up volume *Cognitive Dissonance.* *Genealogies of Science and Religion (for a possible cosponsored session between the Science, Technology, and Religion and Cultural History of the Study of Religion units): Where does science and religion—as a subfield—come from? What are the origin points, lineages, inflections, institutional politics, and material conditions of knowledge production that have led to the current field? Proposals may consider the Pitts Digital Collection repository of “American Academy of Religion Program Books” and/or explore the history of the STR unit (founded as “Theology and Science” in 1987) and related subdivisions of AAR/SBL. We welcome proposals from all scholarly ranks including graduate, contingent, and early-career scholars. AI-generated proposals will not be considered.

AAR/SBL folks: We're very excited about our CFP for the Science, Technology, and Religion unit this year! Have a look and consider submitting something by the March 6 deadline!

@aarweb.bsky.social @sblsite.bsky.social

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account Our national project of elite impunity

After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Monotheism and Divine Aggression Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Monotheism and Divine Aggression

Just finished reading @collincornell.bsky.social's terrific short book Monotheism and Divine Aggression. I was able to download a pdf through my university library. Highly recommend!

doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Look, you guys, you don't have to praise Tucker Carlson for criticizing Christian Zionism *while being an antisemite.*

I've been criticizing Christian Zionism for 20 years, and I've never needed white nationalists to help me do it.

The reason we're here is that tens of millions of people will punch a hole in a wall if they hear someone used food stamps to buy soda but they're fine if the right-wing podcaster turned fbi director uses his taxpayer funded private jet to go party whenever he feels like it bsky.app/profile/thed...