Academic Publications

Forthcoming

“AI, Religion, and Neoliberalism: From ‘Thin Pagan Religion’ to ‘Appifying’ Jesus”, in Guest, M. and Bielo, J. (eds), The Handbook of Religion and Neoliberalism, Bloomsbury

“What is a God? Modalities and Typologies of Deities in Post-AI Religiosity, the Case of LLM-Theisms” in Neumaier, A. (ed) Religion and AI: Media – Practices – Materialities, Kohlhammer, Germany

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2025

“‘Specialists without Spirit’: GenAI Professors, Epistemic Networks, and Religious Education”, in a special issue of Journal for Pedagogy and Theology, edited by Prof. Dr Thomas Schlag

“Insights from Current Research on the Entanglements of AI and Religion”, with Kristina Eiviler, in Schlag, T and Yadav, K (eds)., Religious communication, interaction and transformation in a culture of digitality. Collected insights from the Zurich University Research Priority Program Digital Religion(s), DeGruyter

“Hope and Artificial Intelligence”, chapter 50 in Anthony Scioli and Steven C. van den Heuvel (eds), The Oxford Compendium of Hope, Oxford University Press

2024

Shanahan, M. and Singler, B. 2024. “Existential Conversations with Large Language Models: Content, Community, and Culture”, at arxiv.org/abs/2411.13223

Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction, Routledge. November 2024

The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence (co-edited with Fraser Watts). Including specific chapters – “Religion and AI: An Introduction” and “The Anthropology and Sociology of Religion and AI”, Cambridge University Press, November 2024

2023

“AI Gods, Jeans Gods, and Thrift Gods: Responding to Responses to the Blessed by the Algorithm Paper (Singler 2020)”, in a Special Issue on the Work of Beth Singler, Debates do NER, YEAR 23, N. 43 (2023): Religion and Digital Life (November 2023)

“The Algorithmic Forms of the Religious Life: AI and the Idea of the ‘Creation’ of Religion”, Journal of American Religion, Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2023, pp 95-103

“How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Question the Apocalyptic AI”, in ‘Thinking Tools for AI, Religion and Culture’

2022

“Left Behind? Religion as a Vestige in ‘The Rapture of the Nerds’ and Other AI Singularity Literature” in Science and Religion in Western Literature: Critical and Theological Studies, Routledge)

“Origin and the End: Artificial Intelligence, Atheism, and Imaginaries of the Future of Religion”, chapter in Emerging Voices in Science and Theology: Contributions by Young Women (Routledge)

“AI Apocalypticism and the Religious Impulse In, and From, the Terminator Franchise” in Representing Religion in Film (Bloomsbury)

2021

Radical Transformations in Minority Religions (co-editer Eileen Barker) November 2021. Including specific chapters – “Radical Transformations in Minority Religions: Reflections” and “When Galaxies Collide: The Question of Jediism’s Revisionism in the face of Corporate Buyouts and Mythos ‘Retconning’”

2020

The AI Creation Meme: A Case Study of the New Visibility of Religion in Artificial Intelligence Discourse in a special issue of Religions on the New Visibility of Religion.

“Blessed by the Algorithm”: Theistic Conceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Online Discourse in the Journal of AI and Society

“Artificial Intelligence and the Parent/Child Narrative”, a book chapter for AI Narratives: A History of Imagining Thinking About Intelligent Machines (March 2020)

2019

“Conceiving AI: Creation and the Parent/Child Narrative in Blade Runner 2049”, book chapter in Blade Runner 2049 and Philosophy, eds Robin Bunce and Trip McCossin, Open Court Publishing Company.

“Existential Hope and Existential Despair in AI Apocalypticism and Transhumanism”, in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

2018

A special issue on AI and Religion for The Journal of Implicit Religion, edited by Beth Singler and including her articles: “An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Religion for the Religious Studies Scholar” and “Roko’s Basilisk or Pascal’s? Thinking of Singularity Thought Experiments as Implicit Religion”.

Perceptions and Portrayels of AI and Why They Matter (Royal Society Report, co-written with Cave, S., Craig, C., Dihal, K., Dillon, S., Montgomery, J., & Taylor, L.)

2017

The Indigo Children: New Age Experimentation with Self and Science, monograph with Routledge. Review in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2020

JAAR Review, last paragraph

2016

“No Leader, No Followers: The Internet and the End of Charisma?” in Inform’s 25^th Anniversary Conference Volume, edited by Eugene Gallagher, with Routledge.

“The New Age Movement and the Definition of the Child”, in The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood, edited by Anna Strhan, Stephen G. Parker, Susan Ridgely, with Bloomsbury.

2015                

“Big, Bad Pharma: New Age Biomedical Conspiracy Narratives and their Expression in the Concept of the Indigo Child”, Nova Religio, November 2015.

“‘My Brother, the Insect’: Researching the Indigo Children and Their New Age Cosmologies and Spiritual Guides” in DISKUS, Journal of the BASR, September 2015.

“Internet-based New Religious Movements and Dispute Resolution” in Sandberg, R. (ed.) Religion and Legal Pluralism, Ashgate

“New Age Movement, Possession and Exorcism in” in Laycock, J. (ed.) Spirit Possession Around the World: Possession, Communion, and Demon Expulsion across Cultures, ABC-CLIO.

2014                    

“’SEE MOM IT IS REAL’: The UK Census, Jediism and Social Media”, in Journal of Religion in Europe, Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2014.