Andrew Ali Aghapour

Andrew Ali Aghapour is a scholar, storyteller, writer, and artistic producer living in Durham, NC. With a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill, he worked as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where he helped develop the “Discovery and Revelation,” exhibition and co-author the exhibit […]

Continue reading

Brook Wilensky-Lanford

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. She is the author of A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America, forthcoming in June 2026 and Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden. Media inquiries should be directed to Deb Seager, Director of Publicity, Grove Atlantic.

Continue reading

Philip Butler

Philip Butler is a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. Butler’s work focuses on the intersections of neuroscience, technology, spirituality and Blackness. He engages in critical and constructive analysis on Black posthumanism, artificial intelligence and pluriversal future realities.

Continue reading

Updated on . Posted on

Jaimie Gunderson

Jaimie Gunderson is a religious studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh, whose research interests include Christian origins, Christianity in late antiquity, New Testament, Greco-Roman religions, material religion, affect theory and UFOs.

Continue reading

Updated on . Posted on

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Mary-Jane Rubenstein writes about the mythological assumptions beneath contemporary science and philosophy. She teaches religion and science studies at Wesleyan University and is the author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race.

Continue reading

Updated on . Posted on

Andrew Hartman

Andrew Hartman is a history professor at Illinois State University and the author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015.

Continue reading

Reporting on New Religious Movements (NRMs)

“New Religious Movement” is one of those tricky, catch-all terms that can refer to lots of different communities, including ones that have very little in common. Broadly, a New Religions Movement (NRM) is a religious group that came into existence more recently (typically somewhere around the 19th century or later). Other terms include alternative spiritualities, […]

Continue reading