In this new piece I write about how apocalypse breaks democracy. /1 theconversation.com/republicans-dr… If you’ve never heard of Demoncrats before, you’re welcome. Usage example: “Marlene Palicz, an elderly protester in a MAGA hat, told me that ‘Faux-Fauci’ and the ‘Demoncrats’ had orchestrated the ‘plandemic’ to prevent Trump’s reëlection.” /2 newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…

My newish piece "What Is Christian Postmodernism?" has been behind a subscription wall for a couple of years but is now available for free. A thread. /1
frameliteraryjournal.com/32-1-religion-… Christian Postmodernism is a rhetorical strategy of fundamentalist apologetics. It levels the playing field of expert knowledge with institutions and networks of counter-expertise to produce uncertainty about evolution, Bible criticism, climate change, sex education & more. /2

In a new piece I argue that the Christian Right is in a political apocalypse of its own imagining. religiondispatches.org/apocalypse-now…. By apocalypse here I don’t mean imminent End Times, return of Jesus. There’s another aspect to apocalypse: seeing your political opponents as the enemies of God.

I wrote a weird piece for @ConversationCA on the evangelical bestseller The Shack, arguing that it tries to solve the problem of evil by discovering ... ancient Israelite polytheism. /1
theconversation.com/popular-christ… My hypothesis: William Paul Young’s evangelical bestseller The Shack inadvertently rediscovered the ancient Israelite polytheism of 3,000 years ago, for the simple reason that justifying the gods’ ways to humans is an easier task than justifying God’s ways to humans. /2

In a new piece for @RDispatches, I argue we should read fundamentalist fictions as a way to understand 'the scandal of the evangelical mind.’ Evangelical identity and knowledge circulate through storytelling – as with all other human groups. @SSHRC_CRSH /1
religiondispatches.org/fundamentalist… Fundamentalist fictions are part of the vast alternate information ecosystem that white evangelicals have built up over the last century - conveying their sense that they are a besieged minority in an aggressively secular state. /2

Last year I wrote a piece about the religious aspect of fake news circulation during the 2016 election. The Cambridge Institute for Religion & International Studies asked me to expand it to include the 2017 European elections. /1 ciris.org.uk/2018/02/21/int… So I wrote this report for their network of Western diplomats. My research uncovered three asymmetries in the way fake news circulated in the U.S. and Europe. /2
ciris.org.uk/2018/02/21/int…