According to various sociological studies, Korea’s type of Christianity owes much of its success to native shamanism, which provided a congenial mindset and models for the religion to take root. Much of the series’ religious humor satirizes aspects of Christianity and religion in general. Ultimately, most of the country continued with dual allegiance to both Christianity and, in everyday life, to paganism. This country shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. State Department uses in drafting its annual country reports on terrorism. Using these parts and some plywood, they built a slightly enlarged replica of a classic Ma Bell booth, and the first Talk to God phone was born. Jaye – who goes by “Yay” at Burning Man – was shepherding the phone booth. The Talk to God phone booth first appeared at Burning Man in 2003, the brainchild of a group of artists from Ojai, California, who camped together under the banner OBOP, short for “Ojai Bureau of Pleasure.” While many installations only make the difficult trek to the Nevada desert once, the booth has been there, in different iterations, every year since.

As she spoke, a picture of the Talk to God phone booth appeared over her left shoulder, an example of an iconic piece in a bizarro pantheon. Jaye slept by the phone. I talked to both Jaye and Miles, and to Scott who helped build the first booth, about my unnerving God Phone experience before going back this year, and none were surprised. Since then, two people – Jaye Hersh and Miles Eastman – have each brought the booth in different years. “I trust in the love and compassion of our fellow human beings to show up for each other,” Miles said. Scott’s approach was “get out of the way and trust people.” He said he was chasing honesty and intimacy between strangers. Miles, who shepherded the booth the year I first found the phone, shared Scott’s ethos: no instructions, no supervising gods. But their car, despite several searches, was never found. It was a very different God Phone from the one I found two years prior.

From there, we had a clear sightline to the phone booth, and everyone who approached it. I passed the queue and traced ever-widening circles searching for the gods’ lair until I found it, just a few hundred paces away, kitty-corner from the booth, obscured only half-heartedly by a gauzy curtain. Within days they found an abandoned booth already missing its phone by a highway, and mined it for parts: hinges, handles, a ceiling unit that housed its lights, and the shelf where the phone rested. Around that time, he attended Burning Man and found the God Phone. A retired phone enthusiast in Boston recreated its technical parts, boxed them up, and mailed them to California. In the vast expanse of Burning Man, a small phone booth could get lost, but instead it made a mark. “The Burning Man variation of god has it so when you pick up the phone to speak, god actually responds.” He said it with such positivity, but I couldn’t relate. “The conversations we have on the God Phone are very similar to the conversations I used to have with my god,” Benji said. “You’re god,” he said, holding out the receiver.

This year, a clipboard holding a bright orange piece of paper rested by the God Phone. OBOP member Michael Shevchuk remembered four muses merging in his brain to form the concept: Burning Man’s 2003 art theme “Beyond Belief”; a line from a U2 song (“God has got his phone off the hook, babe, would he even pick up if he could?”); an exchange between a fictionalized Andy Warhol and Jim Morrison in the film The Doors (“Somebody gave me this telephone. Reddit and Facebook threads overflow with accounts of phone calls that left an impact. More calls came: Can you tell me why my mom left? Why do children get sick? Parents also have the option of sending their children to private schools or educating their children at home. The teaching of religion in public schools coincided with a decline of religious belief and a growth of religious tolerance. “It’s a paradox of the current world that at the same time there is unprecedented opportunity for religious groups to spread but it also offers unprecedented competition in the religious field,” said Mayer, the Swiss historian of religion. For some individuals who feel less supported or even excluded from religious practice, it is important to weigh the potential good with the potential harm.