There is a small but growing wave of conversions to Judaism in Latin America, with many of these converts coming from evangelical backgrounds, according to journalist Gabriela Mochkofsky. In an interview on the Jewish magazine Moment’s website, she notes that this movement is distinct from the Latin Americans who discover their hidden Jewish ancestry (known […]
Media reports in Switzerland (and neighboring countries) tend to associate evangelicals with dynamism and growth, thus contrasting them with other, established branches of the Christian faith, according to RW associate editor Jean-François Mayer, who was speaking at the 10th anniversary of the Réseau Evangélique Suisse (Swiss Evangelical Network) in the town of Tavannes. Mayer was […]
In recent decades, Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA) have managed to a large extent to discard their image of being a separate community aside from other Christians and have increasingly become part of local and regional mainstream ecumenical councils and working groups. But this reformist approach has led sections of the SDA church to become concerned about […]
While the pope’s encyclicals or books inspired by him are selling well—already more than 50,000 copies of the French translation of The Name of God Is Mercy have been sold—Catholic French-speaking publishing houses are facing serious economic hurdles, writes religion journalist Claire Lesegretain in the French daily La Croix (May 3). Some challenges are shared […]
Following a pattern similar to many other older religious groups, the Society of Friends has been losing members in the United Kingdom and the United States (around 25 percent between 1972 and 2002). But the movement is growing in Kenya, reports Nathan Siegel in Roads & Kingdoms (May). The shift to the Global South in […]
Muslim cities are not only likely to grow in numbers but also in Islamic identity and diversity in the near future, writes Nile Green in the journal History and Anthropology (May). A recent Pew Research Center study found the world’s Muslim population is expected to rise by 37 percent by 2030, with Green adding that […]
The Islamic State (IS) has engaged in the greatest threat to the Middle East’s cultural heritage and religious sites since World War II, writes Michael Danti in Anthropology News (May/June). Danti, who was part of a U.S. Department of State team assisting Syria in preserving its cultural patrimony, writes that while other extremist Muslim groups, […]
We’re pleased to announce that the archives for the issues of RW from June 1997 to January 2016 are now online. Readers can go to the archives of this site to find a link to the earlier RW Archives or click on http://www.rwarchives.com/. Although the site is independent from the ISR-Religion Watch site, it features […]
With this issue, we are pleased to introduce an occasional feature giving space for ISR scholars to discuss their current research on contemporary religion. For this month, we contacted Dr. Jeff Levin, University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Director of the Program on Religion and Population Health at Baylor, about his current research on the prevalence of healing prayer among Americans.
In a recent study based on an analysis of the Baylor Religion Survey, you find that Americans engaging in healing prayer are very widespread– almost three-quarters of Americans have prayed for the healing of others, and over half have participated in prayer groups. Do you think there has been a steady percentage of Americans engaging in these practices all along, or has it grown in recent years?
Possibly both, but it’s hard to say. Based on data from a few national health surveys since the 1990s, use of spiritual healers seems to be on the uptick. This isn’t the same thing, of course, as personally praying for one’s own healing or for others, but it suggests perhaps a rise in interest in making use of spiritual resources for purposes of healing. This would track with the rising popularity of complementary medicine as a form of primary care, and with continued interest in nonconventional expressions of spirituality. At the same time, the lifetime prevalence numbers are so high that it’s hard to imagine this all just emerged, out of nowhere, in the recent past.
You also find unexpectedly that over a quarter of Americans have experienced or have engaged in the “laying on of hands” in healing prayer. Could the growth of small groups and charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the past few decades have spread these types of practices to more people?
Both critics and supporters have recognized that Pope Francis’s new document Amoris Laetitia stands out from previous papal pronouncements for its flexible approach on such matters as the reception of church sacraments among the divorced and remarried. But what, if anything, will this document change in the relationship between the Vatican and world Catholicism on […]
