Scholars of religion are not in the fortune telling business, but the comparative study of religion does provide multiple examples of how social, economic, and political crises have contributed to the transformation of cultural and religious systems in the past and can help us understand and anticipate how contemporary crises might be navigated in the...

In Jeff Nichols’s 2011 film Take Shelter, Michael Shannon portrays Curtis, a blue-collar family man who is haunted by terrifying prophetic visions of the end of the world. As he becomes obsessed with building a shelter in his backyard, convinced a storm is coming, Curtis’s relationships suffer and his life falls apart. How are we...