Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in a variety of fields and disciplines. Its promise is often seen in a variety of tasks, from playing games to driving cars. In this article, I will sketch a theory that opens the door to the use of artificial intelligence in the study of religion. Focusing on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, I will show that if, following Smith, the study of religion is considered primarily an act of classification, it can be aided by narrow artificial intelligence that excels at classification and prediction. Then, using a web A.I. called EMMA to classify the New Testament texts as Pauline or non-Pauline as a toy example, I will explore the issues that occur in the application of A.I. Finally, I will turn to Bruno Latour and actor–network theory as a way to theorize the larger issues brought up by the productive use of artificial intelligence in the study of religion

The Emerging Church is one of the more interesting new movements in the religious landscape of the United States today. The Emerging Church has come out of US Evangelicalism, which has found itself in crisis, with a diminishing number of young people remaining in the church and a general popular impression of being intolerant, judgmental, and right-wing. Many in the Emerging Church are attempting to construct a vision of Christianity that addresses these problems. However, the Emerging Church is not a monolith; it includes a variety of perspectives and positions. What I will argue in this article is that there is, among several different perspectives within the movement, a critique of the US political and economic system that provides an interesting and new way of thinking about the relationship between Christianity, politics, economics, and identity that may serve to create a challenge to the hegemonic system of the United States. For the purposes of this article I use three examples to illustrate my point: Shane Claibourne’s “New Monasticism”/”Red Letter Christians” movement; Brian McLaren’s recent work, Why did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross The Road; and Peter Rollins as a self-proclaimed inheritor of the radical tradition. I will show that the Emerging Church thinkers, by challenging the theological constructions of US Evangelicalism, are likewise providing fodder, to varying degrees, for a critique of the US political and economic system. Whether this will coalesce into a real significant challenge or will ultimately be reabsorbed by the status quo and/or marginalized remains to be seen.

The millennial generation is distinctive for several reasons, not the least is its growing religious disaffiliation. Given a growing disinterest in religion in general and the Bible in particular especially among the fast growing group of millennial "nones" how can biblical studies classes still be seen as appealing and relevant? This article seeks to answer this question by examining the identity and concomitant values of millennials. As a result of this analysis I argue that while the Bible as inherent authority may be quickly losing its appeal, the Bible as an example of human creativity, group reflection, political rhetoric, and social discourse makes the study of the Bible particularly relevant for millennials contemplating careers in the global marketplace even if the importance of the Bible itself is waning for this generation. I show how in my introductory New Testament class I attempt to implement these ideas. Millennials, Nones, and the Problem for Biblical StudiesCurrently there is much in the popular media about a rising demographic group known as the "nones." These are individuals who have selected no religious affiliation on national surveys. While the meaning of the category is contested (Ramey and Miller 2013), the persistence and growth of the category now requires attention. The category is particularly present among individuals who are eighteen to twenty-nine, the so-called "millennials." This demographic phenomenon is concomitant with another reality, which is the membership decline of the institutional church. As sociologists have documented, both liberal and conservative churches are losing members (Putnam and Campbell 2012, Smith and Snell 2009), and this is particularly true of, again, the millennials, who seem to be leaving churches in droves (Pew 2012). For those who teach religion these are not simply idle facts, they represent a new reality for the collegiate landscape.Further, for those of us who teach specifically biblical studies, this demographic change presages another issue we face: the presence of the religiously indifferent student in our classroom. I have seen this shift in my own teaching career. After teaching biblical studies for the better part of a decade, I have noticed that my students' responses to me (as seen in my class evaluations) have shifted. Whereas students at the beginning of my career were either horrified or gratified when introduced to the historical critical method, today there are an increasing number who neither revile me as "anti-christ" nor herald me as intellectual liberator, they are simply disinterested. In my evaluations, proclamations of life changing insights, or prayers for my salvation have been increasingly replaced by more mundane assessments of "hard quizzes," "reasonable class requirements," and (most painful of all) "boring." The passion that oozed from my previous evaluations, that

Modern dispensationalism in the United States has been a thorny sociological problem. The sociodiscursive mechanism(s) by which dispensationalist preachers are able to propagate their message has yet to be determined. The theoretical work of Martin Riesebrodt, specifically his discussion of salvific demand, legitimation, and discursive and behavior-regulating practices, sheds light on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's best-selling Left Behind series and the equally popular dispensationalist writings of John Hagee. Dispensationalists create a demand for their message through the interpretation of current events using the apocalyptic lens of the dispensational scenario, which points to the imminence of the rapture and the global doom that will follow. As part of the propagandizing discourse (discursive practices) that promises escape from this cataclysm, dispensationalists preach a set of behavior-regulating practices that seek to constrain and control the actions of their adherents.Keywords: dispensationalism, salvific demand, evangelicalism, fundamentalism. Konieczny for their substantive engagement with this project after the conference as well as the reviewers and editors of JSSR. Their suggestions and help have made this a much stronger article.

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly present part of our world. This article outlines connections between religion and artificial intelligence, looking at the development of A.I. and its current state, including the issues of ethics and bias that are currently under discussion in A.I. research. Looking forward to the future, the article addresses the way that perspectives and scholarship in Religious Studies are already, and will continue to be, relevant in making sense of possible developments of A.I. into Artificial General Intelligence. Finally, the article examines GPT-2, a text generating A.I., looking at the way such an artificial intelligence might apprehend religion and what that tells us about religion and A.I.