Posts in Arts & Culture
What Do Horror Movies Tell Us About Gen Z’s Spirituality?

This week, Religion Unplugged’s culture writers Joseph Holmes and Jillian Cheney sat down before Halloween to explore how Gen Z thinking is changing the horror genre.

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Spirits On Display: Faith And The Supernatural Highlight ‘Art of Manga’

(REVIEW) Manga has always been a medium in which the ordinary and the extraordinary coexist. A playground can become a site of spiritual encounter, a forest can conceal ancient powers and a familiar creature can reveal a universe of supernatural possibilities.

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National Fund Awards Over $9 Million To 30 Congregations For Historic Preservation

The latest grant round drew 466 applicants and includes the program’s first recipient in Arkansas, as historic houses of worship seek funding to preserve their buildings and community services.

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From ‘The Odyssey’ To ‘A Christmas Carol’: Remembering The Way Home

(ANALYSIS) There is also a contemporary way of eating lotus. It consists in settling in. At first, we live off our reserves: convictions, habits and certainties we acquired when we still remembered where we were going. Then we compromise.

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How Hollywood Films Have Reimagined The South Asian Epic ‘Ramayana’

(ANALYSIS) For hundreds of years, people from different religious traditions across South Asia have retold the “Ramayana” through dramas, narrative poems, shadow puppet plays, pageants, folk songs, comics, television shows and many other mediums. Director Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming “Ramayana” film is the latest retelling of this epic tradition.

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New Lucio Fontana Exhibit Cuts Between The Infinite And The Divine

(REVIEW) Lucio Fontana’s radical slashed canvases sought to transcend the limits of painting, opening onto infinite space and spiritual possibility. Exploring his Spatialist works alongside his religious sculptures and ceramics, this article examines the connections between abstraction, Christian theology and the unknowable nature of God.

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Religious Pilgrimages

(ANALYSIS) Two scholars decided to make a pilgrimage along the Kumano Kodō trail — an ancient route in Japan connecting Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples — guided by an artificial intelligence assistant. The two — Wayne E. Arnold and John A. Shultz — trained an AI companion to suit their travel needs. They were also curious to see how AI would shape their pilgrimage experience.

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UFOs, Demons Or Something Else?: Mystery Grows Around Sacred African Mountain

The highest peak in Zimbabwe, standing at 2,592 meters above sea level, has been the source of local intrigue for decades: People have gone missing, strange natural phenomena have created inexplicable mystical experiences, and now, some are even claiming the mountain is home to UFOs. Whatever the case, it has attracted curious travelers from around the world.

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‘Sowing And Growing’: UK Churches Bring Back Community Gardens

More than 9,000 Anglican churches and chapels across the United Kingdom participate in the A Rocha U.K. Eco-Church movement, which encourages congregations to care for the environment around their buildings. This has become a bigger part of church outreach, especially in the six years since the pandemic.

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Inside Bangalore: India’s City Of Churches Etched In Faith And Memory

(TRAVEL) We Bangaloreans are just a stone’s throw away from a place of worship. And if one threw a stone, chances are it would probably land on one of the beautiful, iconic places of worship in Bangalore. Or perhaps the stone might get stuck in one of the many traffic jams.

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Blessing The Beasts: How Animals Are Finding Their Place In Church

Puppies in the pews? Churches worldwide are gearing up to celebrate St. Francis, patron saint of animals, by inviting pets, including goats, cats, tortoises and more into their buildings to receive a special blessing — chaotic comedy often ensues.

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TV Series ‘Silo’ Is More Than Dystopia, But A Theology Of The Human Spirit

(REVIEW) “Silo” skillfully weaves all of these dystopian tropes into the background of something quite new. The hints were there from the show’s start. The series skillfully weaves all of these dystopian tropes into the background of something quite new. The hints were there in the opening titles we streamers learn to skip. The closing shot is an animation of the show’s citizens going up and down and up and down the endless steps. 

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Life, Pain, Joy, Art And Illness In Appalachia

(ANALYSIS) Shortly before her “Para(site)dise” exhibition at the William King Museum of Art in Abingdon, Virginia, artist Jocelyn Mathewes used a pillowcase and 30 pieces of fabric to create a 7-by-9-foot floating sculpture called “The Bed (Horizontal Time).” This experience touches minds and souls, as well as bodies.

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800 Years After St. Francis Of Assisi’s Death, His Story Gets A Vivid New Restoration

(ANALYSIS) The frescoes, located in the Bardi Chapel of Florence’s Basilica of Santa Croce, take up a major place in Christian art relative to their physical footprint. Giotto is routinely credited as the artist who broke decisively from the flat conventions of medieval painting and introduced something recognizably modern.

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‘Like Christ’s Rebirth’: Forgiveness At The Heart Of Oasis Reunion

(REVIEW) Oasis, the Manchester-born rock n’ roll band who defined the 1990s pop scene, were broken up between 2009 and 2024, when they finally announced a reunion tour for 2025. In “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” a newly-released documentary film accompanying last-year’s tour, one fan says the band’s reunion was “like the rebirth of Christ.”

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An English Church Has Hired Someone To Find Hidden Treasures

Walk along the River Thames, and you can encounter thousands of years of history through artifacts that wash ashore. Some “mudlarkers” spend significant time looking for the treasures — and now a nearby cathedral has named its first Mudlark-in-Residence to help visitors learn about the area’s history.

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Keep An Eye Out For London’s ‘Church Watchers’: ‘Beautiful Spaces And Interesting People’

The Church Watchers — all of whom are volunteers — are responsible for maintaining the openings of these small sanctuaries throughout the week. They take the job very seriously.

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25 Years After 9/11, St. Nicholas Church Stands as a Place of Peace

A church in New York City offers visitors a place to find peace as they mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11. St. Nicholas is a small Greek Orthodox parish that was destroyed when the South Tower collapsed. More than two decades later, the church has been completely rebuilt and is now a national shrine. 

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‘The Queen Of East Tennessee’: Who Was Dolly Parton To You?

(ANALYSIS) I learned she had died while gazing around inside an airplane approaching the Rocky Mountains. Someone with the funds to buy on-board WiFi had a news program playing on his tablet and I saw the headline. I was stunned, even though I have been following her health struggles for several months. She managed to hide any information that pointed to cancer.

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Why French Officials Placed A Muslim War Memorial In The Heart Of Paris

(ANALYSIS) The Paris Grand Mosque — a cultural landmark located in the heart of the city — is celebrating its centenary. Built as a war memorial to honor Muslim soldiers killed during World War I, it was the first permanent mosque in the French capital and remains its only mosque built with a minaret and a dome.

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