The Almighty God group was founded in the 1990s by self-proclaimed grand priest Zhao Weishan in central Henan province.
Beijing has for years struggled to suppress the Almighty God group, with state media reporting the arrest of nearly 1,000 followers in 2012 when the organisation was under the spotlight for predicting an apocalypse.
Time's coverage "was a complete surprise to these guys," said Terrence W. Tilley, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University, referring to Dr. Hamilton, Dr. Altizer and others identified in the article as members of the "Death of God" group.
The Problem of God group show deconstructs the visual vocabulary of Christianity in 120 artworks.
The other sections – the human figure, animals, gods, groups, objects and reliefs – also reinforce the common motifs of artists regardless of time and place.
As Phil Salerni, a born-again Christian and saxophonist from Ohio, alternately played "Amazing Grace" and shouted about the glories of God, a group of stock exchange clerks could barely contain their smirks.
During "He Ain't the Leavin' Kind," a song about the omnipresence of God, a group of United States marines marched onstage to stand at attention, which might have offended only those worried about separation of church and state.
"The notion that it was the atheism of the Nazis that led to their extremist and hateful views, or that it somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today, is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God," the group said in a statement.
Examples include Tawhid (the Unity of God), a group said to be run by a Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has been most active in Iraq and Jordan; and Ansar al-Islam, with cells in Italy, Turkey and Iraq.Such al-Qaeda spin-offs are clearly harder to nail than a single large organisation.
But for the heavy-metal interpretation of Americana, convention delegates will have to travel to Irving Plaza, (212) 777-6800, tomorrow night for a concert by Lamb of God, a group from Richmond, Va., that, without any irony or sarcasm, describes its music as "pure American metal".
He telephoned Cambridge's John Thompson, the God of group theory, and they determined it was the double: 8,315,553,613,086,720,000. When I pestered Conway for more details regarding the seminal Moscow meeting that inspired his triumphant half-day of discovery, he begged off.
