"Johnson has created a groundbreaking, significant, and provocative addition to scholarship on how people conceive of religion. And... he is also the first in religious studies to broach the neglected subject of agency—which should be a key term in the academic study of religion—in a book-length study... Any writers who embark on future forays into the subject of agency and religion will be fortunate to have Johnson’s Automatic Religion as a resource with which they can start."

Reading Religion

“Automatic Religion is a work of sweeping ambition and true originality. Wide-ranging, erudite, and eloquent, Johnson compels us to rethink everything we thought we knew about religion, agency, machines, animals, and the human. The histories he tracks have uncanny relevance in the age of Amazon’s Alexa and the algorithm.”

Webb Keane, author of 'Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories'

“In this fascinating and fantastic account of what Johnson calls religion-like and near-human phenomena, he succeeds in obliquely calling us to a radical reappraisal of what we might mean by religion. Recentering the religious on situations in which we see humans ‘playing across’ agential ambiguity, he vividly brings to life a remarkable series of characters who demand our attention and our recognition. The modern religious—maybe all religion—is both more and less than we had thought. It figures, on Johnson’s account, between automatism and agency, always swapping out woman, machine, and animal.”

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, author of 'Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in US Law'