Religious Studies News communicates important events of the field and examines critical issues in education, pedagogy, research, publishing, and the public understanding of religion. Sometimes that involves sharing what others are writing about the field and these issues.
In Open Tabs, RSN editors will share the articles they’ve been reading and thinking about. If you have recommendations for articles, podcasts, or other media you’ve recently encountered that examine issues that fall under the purview of RSN, email us.
What We’re Reading
“This historic divinity school is offering the first doctoral degree in ‘AI and Moral Agency’”
Published July 27, 2026, in Religion News Service
Senior Editor Yonat Shimron reports on Shaw University Divinity School offering the first doctoral degree in AI:
“At the end of the Civil War, a Union soldier and Baptist minister founded a school in Raleigh, North Carolina, to provide formerly enslaved people with religious literacy.
Now that same school — Shaw University — wants to provide literacy of a new kind: AI literacy.
Starting next year, Shaw’s divinity school plans to offer a new degree track: a Doctor of Education (or Ed.D) in Artificial Intelligence and Moral Agency.
As the AI spreads and performs more and more tasks traditionally done by humans, the divinity school wants to get ahead of the curve and probe its moral implications.
“We say Shaw was created to provide leadership in building literacy,” said Mark Harden, dean of Shaw University Divinity School. “We ( half)joke this is our second calling because we’re building AI literacy for vulnerable communities with an emphasis on social justice and ethics.””
“AI Invades Religion Books on Amazon”
Published Aug 19, 2026, in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly looks at a new study released by Originality.ai that found “63% of paperback religious books listed for sale on Amazon” were likely written by AI:
“Originality.ai found that AI is most prolific among the subgenres of witchcraft (in which 78% were “Likely AI”), Hinduism (76%) and Taoism (74%), and least used in the subgenres of Satanism (22%), atheism (40%) and Mormonism (42%). The authors note that the sample sizes for the last three categories are smaller than the first three; they also offered up a theory about why Eastern religion books are likely AI-generated: “Our hypothesis is that non-native English speakers are likely using AI to enter the English-speaking market.”
The company also looked at which books were flagged as having likely used AI for all three elements: summaries, bios, and samples. Hinduism was the leader, with 72 books (25% of all Hindu books sampled) likely using AI to generate all available text. The report noted that books’ summaries—even for titles that were likely human-written—are the element of books that is most likely to be AI-generated.”
“U. of Chicago Bans Tech, AI in Social Sciences Core Courses”
Published August 24, 2026, in The Chronicle of Higher Education
Reporting fellow Shea Vance reviews the new restrictions on AI usage that apply to students and faculty in social-sciences core sequences:
“The University of Chicago’s undergraduate social-sciences division will go “analog” this fall, implementing a blanket policy banning technology in class and AI assistance on coursework across the division’s core courses.
[…]
The August 1 memo, signed by Jenny Trinitapoli, who leads the undergraduate social-sciences division, states that the new guidelines “afford students the freedom to think for themselves, to listen to one another without the cacophony of other (disembodied and non-human) voices in the room, to make mistakes, and to change their minds as they engage with thinkers of the past, with us, and with their fellow students in good faith, face-to-face.”
The new policy is a welcome change for faculty members who have grown frustrated with AI’s looming presence in the classroom. Aaron Jakes, an associate professor of history who teaches a core social-sciences course each winter, said his initial reaction to the memo was “relief and jubilation.””
“Dolly Parton’s faith was hard to measure”
Published August 26, 2026, in The Christian Century
An essay on the myriad ways Dolly Parton’s religious upbringing was part and parcel with her inestimable legacy:
“What was it about Dolly that made it possible for people who usually aren’t capable of sharing politics, theology, or even a common vocabulary to share her?
Ten years ago, Jad Abumrad, the creator of Radiolab, became fascinated by the breadth of that affection. He’d never given Dolly much attention until he saw her perform in Queens in 2016. The presidential campaign had American public life feeling especially raw, and he noticed the crowd: drag queens, evangelical Christians, hipsters, and people whose lives otherwise seemed unlikely to overlap, all waiting to see the same woman. The scene reminded him of a papal visit, he later said. It felt as though people had “elected her in their hearts,” and his curiosity about that eventually became the nine-part podcast Dolly Parton’s America.”
“Jason Arday’s unnecessary death and the cost of a graceless culture”
Published August 19, 2026, in Religion News Service
In this op-ed, different factors that may have led to the death of Cambridge University’s youngest-ever Black professor Jason Arday are explored:
“If it weren’t for a racist inquisition to prove his inferiority, Cambridge University professor Jason Arday would probably still be alive. But he’s not. The university’s youngest-ever Black professor was found dead after self-described “race realist” Nathan Cofnas published a hit piece to his Substack attacking Arday’s academic legitimacy and personal integrity.
Three weeks of brutal media scrutiny and harassment ensued, which led to Arday’s resignation, and probably his death (authorities have not released an official cause). His family said, “The public cruelty Jason was subjected to was too much for any man to bear.”
His family’s statement bears theological weight: A lack of grace likely killed him. The tragedy of his death is a mirror to our culture, revealing the cost of conflating cruelty and accountability.”
News Source
