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Religion and Paradox: The Backrooms of Heaven's Gate

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Meeting / Discussion

Mon, Nov 2, 2026

12 PM – 1 PM EST (GMT-5)

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How do new and often controversial religious movements make sense of failed prophecy? Why do some religions persist (online or in person) despite evidence that disconfirms their most deeply held expectations? Using the recent horror film ""Backrooms"" (2026) as a useful analogy, BU faculty member Doug Jones proposes that such failure often plays an important, though often unrecognized, role in the creation and evolution of belief for a particular subset of media- and online-savvy religious movements, starting with the Heaven's Gate ""cult"" in the 1990s.

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