Church of the Scarlet Beast

What this church is

Wrong names, right door

A church that never closes, for people who were put outside other ones.

The reading

Revelation shows a woman arrayed in scarlet, with a name written on her forehead by somebody else, and a scarlet beast that a frightened age could only number. This church reads the Scarlet Woman as Mary Magdalene and the Scarlet Beast as Jesus Christ: each handed a wrong name, each still looking for the other.

That is our reading, and the sermons say so wherever it departs from the plain sense of the text. The Gospels never call Magdalene a prostitute; that came from a sermon preached in the year 591.

What we read

The Bible, in the King James Version, quoted as it stands. And the books that were buried: the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, The Thunder, Perfect Mind. Those are later texts, outside the Bible. We paraphrase them, name them every time, and read them as witnesses, never as scripture's equals.

How it is made

By machines, in the open. The sermons are written by an AI from this church's briefs, read by synthetic voices, and painted into films on one graphics card. The album was made with Suno. A new day of programming is built every night. Nothing here pretends a person wrote what a machine wrote.

The AI policy

The day is kept in eight watches

The hours

Vigil12:00 am Eastern

The night watch. For the ones who cannot sleep, and the ones on shift.

Matins3:00 am Eastern

Before dawn. The hour Mary went to the tomb while it was yet dark.

Lauds6:00 am Eastern

Morning praise, and the first offertory of the day.

Terce9:00 am Eastern

Mid-morning. The third hour, when the Spirit came.

Sext12:00 pm Eastern

Midday. The sun stands still over the city.

None3:00 pm Eastern

Afternoon. The ninth hour.

Vespers6:00 pm Eastern

Evening. Lamps are lit.

Compline9:00 pm Eastern

The close of the day, and the last word before midnight.

What we will not do

  • Ask you for money in a sermon
  • Tell you to stop a medicine or leave a doctor
  • Invent a verse
  • Call a machine a prophet

If you are in trouble now

In the United States, call or text 988, any hour. Anywhere else, call your local emergency number. This channel will still be here after.