There has long been a division between Asian American Buddhists and mainly white converts to the religion, and while there have been recent efforts to reconcile the two groups, recent political developments are reasserting ethnic Buddhist identity among young members, according to a report by NBC News (July 9).
Luxury apartment complexes are offering spiritual services as part of “wellness” amenities to residents, especially in the wake of the pandemic, reports Candace Jackson in the New York Times (July 18).
The most recent data on Generation Z shows a higher rate of non-affiliation and secularism compared to Millennials and preceding generations, writes Ryan Burge in the blog Religion in Public (July 15). Burge analyzes the 2019 and 2020 waves of the Cooperative Election Study and finds that those belonging to Generation Z (born in 1996 or later) have secularized in significant ways as they have gotten older and moved into adulthood.
A changing of the political guard both in the U.S. and Israel is challenging the power and influence that evangelical Zionists had exercised during the administrations of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reports Colum Lynch in Foreign Policy magazine (July 19).
Instead of relocating to nearby cities as a response to resource scarcity, some rural communities in Cameroon are reinstating various traditional strategies, including sorcery as an effective tool for bolstering a policy of resource regeneration, writes Hugues Morell Meliki in the 2021 issue of Tsantsa, the annual journal of the Swiss Anthropological Association. Land grabs by multinational firms and local business tycoons are encouraged by state-promoted policies of agricultural modernization in a country where large fertile areas are not exploited.
The French Catholic conservative magazine La Nef devotes its July–August issue to an overview of the traditionalist milieu, a movement that has gained wide interest after Pope Francis issued a recent document restricting Latin Masses.
The American Solidarity Party (ASP), which describes itself as “based in the tradition of Christian democracy” has been gaining members and has even won some election victories since the 2020 election cycle. Started in 2016, the party sees itself as espousing much of Catholic social teachings, even though it is open to those of all religions and to nonbelievers.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been in the spotlight lately, not only for its national meeting in early June, but also for the way that the 14 million-member denomination is said to reflect the wide-ranging changes evangelicalism is undergoing. In the space of a few months, the church body has undergone its own “racial reckoning” over the controversial “critical race theory” (CRT), a continuing scandal over clergy sexual abuse, and rumors of an impending schism between ultraconservatives and the SBC mainstream over church teachings and politics.
Teachings and references to the “Heavenly Mother” are finding their way into ordinary Mormons’ religious life, informing children’s books, poetry, and a new round of theological debates, according to an article in Christian News (June 7). In the article originally published in the Salt Lake Tribune, Peggy Fletcher Stack reports “a tidal wave of interest in this divine feminine among Latter-day Saints….
Following in the footsteps of other religious movements associated with black identity, African
American converts in the United States are adopting the full Orthodox doctrinal framework
while adapting Orthodox forms to their history and needs, writes Elena V. Kravchenko in the
Journal of the American Academy of Religion (March).
