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Jon Bialecki

Lecturer

Jon Bialecki is an anthropologist whose research explores the intersections of religion, technology, and human experience. Currently based at the University of California, San Diego, his work bridges the anthropology of Christianity with investigations into artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and digital technologies. His first book, "A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement" (2017), which was awarded the Sharon Stephens Prize by the American Ethnological Society, examines American charismatic Christianity, while his second book, "A Machine for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds Without End" (2022), explores how Mormon transhumanists imagine technological and religious futures. He is currently working on a third book focused on the anthropology of religion and artificial intelligence. With over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published across anthropological journals, his work contributes to ongoing conversations in the anthropology of religion and technology.

Before joining UCSD, Bialecki served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at Reed College from 2006 to 2009, where he taught courses on global Christianities, religious language, and anthropological theory. He later held positions at the University of Edinburgh, first as a Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology from 2013 to 2015 and then as an Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Science from 2015 to 2019. These experiences in both American liberal arts and European research contexts have informed his transnational perspective on religious and technological movements.

Bialecki's current research examines how religious worldviews engage with technological innovation, particularly focusing on AI and transhumanist movements. His publications address topics like "Mormon Secrets and Transhumanist Code," "Sexbots Playing the Imitation Game," and "Gods, AIs, and Mormon Transhumanism." Through his investigations of both Christian communities and emerging technologies, he analyzes how religious and technological frameworks shape contemporary understandings of personhood, community, and the future. His approach reveals the unexpected connections between seemingly disparate domains, offering new perspectives on how humans navigate belief and technology in their search for meaning.
Books:
  • "A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement" (University of California Press, 2017)
  • "A Machine for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds Without End" (Fordham Press, 2022)
AI, Technology and Religion:
  • "The Mormon Archive's First Ten Thousand Years: infrastructure, materiality, ontology and resurrection in religious transhumanism" (Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2025)
  • "Sexbots Playing the Imitation Game" (Social Analysis, 2023)
  • "Strange Aeons: Transhumanism, H.P. Lovecraft, and the affective index of posthuman dread" (The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2022)
  • "Kolob Runs on Domo: Mormon Secrets and Transhumanist Code" (Ethnos, 2022)
  • "Future-Day Saints: Abrahamic Astronomy, Anthropological Futures, and Speculative Religion" (Religions, 2020)
Anthropology of Christianity:
  • "Virtual Religion" (Oxford Handbook of the Anthropology of Religion, forthcoming)
  • "A managerial apocalypse: Mormon missionaries, eschatological anxieties, and Covid-19" (Religion, 2022)
  • "After the Denominozoic: Evolution, Differentiation, Denominationalism" (Current Anthropology, 2014)
  • "Does God Exist in Methodological Atheism? On Tanya Lurhmann's When God Talks Back and Bruno Latour" (Journal of the Anthropology of Consciousness, 2014)
  • "Diagramming the Will: Ethics and Prayer, Text and Politics" (Ethnos, 2016)
  • "Eschatology, ethics, and ēthnos: ressentiment and Christian nationalism in the anthropology of Christianity” (Religion and Society, 2017)
  • "Between Stewardship and Sacrifice: Agency and Economy in a Southern California Charismatic Church" (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2008)
  • "Disjuncture, Continental Philosophy's New 'Political Paul,' and the Question of Progressive Christianity in a Southern Californian Third Wave Church" (American Ethnologist, 2009)
  • "Virtual Christianity in an Age of Nominalist Anthropology” (Anthropological Theory, 2012)
  • “The Anthropology of Christianity” (Co-written with Naomi Haynes and Joel Robbins; Religion Compass, 2008)
  • PhD in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (2009)
  • JD in Criminal Jurisprudence, University of San Diego, summa cum laude (1997)
  • MA in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (2000)
  • BA in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (1992)