popular culture

From Fifth Avenue to Dorchester Heights, this St. Patrick’s Day will feature the traditional uilleann pipers and Irish step dancers; in Chicago the river will be dyed green, and in Washington DC the…

In a strange way, I envy the people who were raised as evangelical Christians in the 1980s and 1990s, because many of them got to experience This Present Darkness in a way I never could. For the…

Stop the presses! If you’ve been living in a neighboring cave, you too will know nothing about the latest scandal to shock the masses. According to Google and iconic director Martin Scorsese…

UFOs are in. The current wave of enthusiasm began in 2017 when major newspapers reported on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which spent $22 million investigating…

Cloying sentimentality, saccharine pablum, ridiculous camp and embarrassing kitsch—in the contemporary moment the word “angel” hasn’t fared well among those who describe themselves as sophisticates or…

Forget ugly sweater parties , this is our new national Christmas tradition: 1) a public venue creates a forum and invites everyone to erect displays; 2) Secular Humanists, Satanists, and other…

In advance of the Catholic Church’s recent global gathering, Pope Francis raised the hopes of LGBTQ Catholics that progress may be on the horizon through a series of letters and reports that hinted at…

What inspired you to write The Exorcist Effect ? Over twenty years ago, Michael Cuneo wrote a book called American Exorcism , arguing that William Friedkin’s The Exorcist had almost single-handedly…

Please note: spoilers ahead. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: three evangelicals, an atheist, an ex-nun, and a rootworker walk into an exorcism. Fifty years after William Friedkin’s The Exorcist…

An anthem is more than a song. An anthem is a representation of a people or a movement. It exemplifies how those with a shared identity or history or experience see the world, understand their…