While short-term missions have already challenged older models of career missionaries, there is a new tendency among Christian volunteers to embrace “independent missionary” organizations that “operate without the infrastructure provided by a denomination, congregation, or para-church organization,” write Carrie Miles and Frank Michael Salongo Tweheyo in a paper appearing on the website of the missions […]
The percentage of Americans returning to church since the lifting last year of public health restrictions addressing the pandemic may have plateaued, according to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center. While people steadily returned to in-person services during the first half of 2021, the trend appears to have reached a plateau. Around two-thirds […]
There is a revitalized interest in the cult of Saint Brigid in Ireland and beyond, even as the Catholic Church is in retreat in the country, writes Ed O’Loughlin in the New York Times (March 14). The legend surrounding the spiritual power of Saint Brigid and its relation to nature, ecology, and healing, and the […]
While transnational networks have played a crucial role in the organization of Muslim life in European countries, that role is being eclipsed by more local networks. Muslims have developed their own thought and activities in close correspondence with contextual and local needs as they encounter more critical attitudes from European states and public opinion in […]
There is a small yet growing anti-war movement among evangelicals in Russia that matches that of their counterparts in the Russian Orthodox Church [see the cover article in this issue], write April French and Mark Elliott on the website Religion Unplugged (March 29). Russian evangelicals have traditionally been careful and passive in resisting and protesting […]
For Ukrainian Jews, both at home and abroad, the war in Ukraine has helped solidify their Ukrainian identity where they had previously been wary of such identification or had called themselves Russian, writes anthropologist Marina Sapritsky-Nahum in the London School of Economics’ Religion and Global Society blog (March 2). Focusing on the Jewish bastion of […]
An excellent resource for keeping track of the religious aspect of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe, published and edited by Paul Mojzes, a veteran specialist in thisfield. The monthly journal has published less on Russia, but it obviously frames the Ukraine situationin the context of Russia and its […]
The black church is facing the reality of spiritual alternatives and growing non-affiliation through more aggressive evangelism and greater use of technology, according to scholars. In a lecture at Princeton University attended by RW in late February (via Zoom), sociologist Jacqueline Rivers of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies argued that many […]
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has largely been interpreted by Western media and foreign policy experts within geopolitical as well as authoritarian frameworks, centered on its instigator Vladimir Putin. But Putin’s ruthless military strategy and designs owe much to his vison of Russia’s religious identity, writes Giles Fraser on the website Unherd (February 24). Fraser, […]
The debate concerning critical race theory (CRT) that has proven so divisive in secular society has landed on the campuses of evangelical colleges, sparking similar episodes of conflict, writes Julia Duin in Newsweek (February 14). CRT is a disputed concept, but it generally relates to the idea that racism is endemic and systemic in most […]
