Study of the Talmud, long confined to men, especially in orthodox circles, is finding new interest and participation among orthodox Jewish women, reports the New York Times (January 5). The conclusion of an intensive international marathon of daily Talmud study in Jerusalem but streamed to an international audience showed a growing number of women who have joined the effort.
A study by the Pew Research Center finds striking differences in the length and content of American sermons according to their Christian traditions. The study used computational tools to identify church in the Google Places application programming interface (API) and then collected, transcribed, and analyzed the sermons publicly posted on a representative sample of their […]
There has been a growth of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America as seen by the spread of the celebration of Latin Masses, reports Julie Gomes in the conservative web site, The Church Militant (December 25). Latin Masses are mushrooming in the main South American dioceses of Rio, São Paolo, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima and Santiago, often attended by youth and young families. The website cites a frontpage article in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, which reported on the spurt in the Catholic traditionalist movement in Latin America: “Right-leaning blogs are multiplying, animated by young and very young people, with millions of followers.
Faced with a loss of innocence in the West after the controversies regarding the abuses by some spiritual masters, Buddhism must also deal with key questions about finding a balance between preserving ancient teachings and finding its European way, writes the former head of the unit for interreligious dialogue of the Archdiocese of Vienna (Austria), Werner Höbsch, in a contribution written for an issue on Buddhism in the West in the series Weltanschauungen – Texte zur religiösen Vielfalt (No. 113).
Meditation practices inspired from Sufism are gaining popularity in the Egyptian capital Cairo as people are looking for alternatives to rigid religious practices, writes Egyptian journalist Dalia Chams on the French website Orient XXI (January 9). This is a recent phenomenon, acknowledges 46-year-old Sonia Hassan, an American Egyptian-born meditation teacher who was trained at the US-based University of Spiritual Healing & Sufism and claims to have been the first to have associated Sufism with Zen meditation in Egypt in the years after the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
American JewBu (Princeton University Press, $29.95) by Emily Sigalow, is both a history and sociological study of the phenomenon of Jews converting to or simultaneously practicing Buddhism. The book is also one of a growing number of works that explores the growth of religious syncretism or at least “dual religion” in the West, where once this pattern was most evident in Eastern societies.
The newly launched Hurma Project is a Muslim expression of the broader #MeToo movement and is direct response to cases of sexual abuse by leaders in the Islamic community. The project, started by Canadian Islamic scholar Ingrid Mattson, recently had its first conference looking at abuse in Muslim spaces.
Just as there is a growing number of nones…there is also a growing interest in spiritual direction both within and outside of the Catholic Church…Interestingly, as more Americans move away from participation in institutional religion, many seekers and nones are also seeking out places where they can have in-depth conversations about their spiritual lives,” writes Kaya Oakes in America magazine (November 25).
Celebrity among evangelical women, especially the wives of prominent pastors, has helped them to circumvent the obstacles to female leadership in evangelicalism, giving them disproportionate influence in the movement, according to historian Kate Bowler, the author of a recent book on pastors’ wives and other prominent Christian women. In an interview in Christian Century magazine (December 4), Bowler, author of The Preacher’s Wife, said she was surprised to find that, without any theological education or supportive structures, the wives of well-known evangelical leaders and pastors exercised important leadership roles in churches and organizations usually barring women from playing such roles.
President Donald Trump’s appointment of Paula White as head of the White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, a unit in the Office of Public Liaison tasked with outreach to religious groups, suggests that the mainstreaming of Pentecostal Christians within the Christian right is about complete, writes Daniel Hummel in the e-newsletter Sightings (November 7). There
