A new survey finds that college students with a religious identity report significantly higher rates of heterosexuality than their atheist, agnostic and non-affiliated counterparts. On the website Get Religion (September 20), political scientist Ryan Burge analyzes new data from FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), a free speech organization, which runs an annual […]
Besides ambiguities in the Russian Orthodox assessment of the Soviet regime, even its rejection of the Soviet past has rarely translated into an engagement with a democratic agenda, writes Alexander Agadjanian (Yerevan State University, Armenia) in the current issue of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies (5:2, dated 2022, but just published). Agadjanian starts by […]
With the war impacting all religious groups in the country, it has also affected Ukrainian Muslims, who have responded with humanitarian initiatives, the development of the military chaplaincy, and calls for help to foreign Islamic organizations, writes Oleg Yarosh (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) in Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West (September). Before […]
1) This summer, the film Sound of Freedom found both a worldwide audience and a place in the culture wars because of its religious and political associations. At the box office, the movie actually beat the supposed summer blockbusters, the final farewell to the “Indiana Jones” character and another installment of the “Mission Impossible” series, […]
The controversy surrounding the Satmar Hasidic Jewish sect of New York over its use of public funds for its schools already suggests that Americans are in the middle of a paradigm shift in how religious communities navigate church-state relations, writes Rita Koganzon in The Hedgehog Review (Summer). The way that the Satmar Hasidim, the largest […]
America’s capital city is proving to be highly receptive to nondenominational evangelical churches, Daniel Silliman writes in Christianity Today magazine (July/August). Nondenominational churches have been expanding across the U.S. for years now, but the number of these congregations established in recent years has been unique. Silliman writes that although Washington has been considered a “swamp” […]
Christian “micro-schools” have been started across the country, “offering a hybrid in-class and at-home education to keep costs down and the odds of survival up in an increasingly competitive K-12 sector,” writes Vince Bielski on the Real Clear Investigations website (August 17). After years of stagnation, many long-established Christian schools are also increasing their enrollment. […]
There is a clergy shortage in Zen Buddhist communities in the U.S., leading to new roles for the laity but also greater bureaucracy in some cases and a looming crisis in transmission as teaching and rituals are scaled back, according to sociologist Rebecca S. K. Li of the College of New Jersey. Li presented her […]
A sizeable segment of Americans are attending worship services at congregations that do not match the religious affiliations they report, a new study finds. In an article published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (online in August), Paul Djupe, Christopher R. H. Garneau, and Ryan Burge report on their analysis of data […]
After years of decline, Basic Ecclesial Communities are sensing that the time might be ripe for growth again thanks to support from Pope Francis, reports journalist Eduardo Campos Lima in La Croix International (July 28). Associated with Liberation Theology as a theoretical foundation, the Basic Ecclesial Communities (abbreviated as CEBs in Portuguese and Spanish) accordingly […]
