Fueled by Armenia’s humiliating defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war against Azerbaijan that displaced thousands of ethnic Armenians, and by the fear of further concessions, protests in Armenia took on religious accents in 2024 when an archbishop became its leading figure. But the lack of a coherent political strategy and the involvement of discredited opposition […]
The current issue of the Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies (12:1–2) features an interesting section on Amish settlements in North America, profiling 38 of the largest and best-known communities. An Amish settlement refers to a self-designated area of residences, congregations, businesses, and other institutions that can host multiple Amish and plain Mennonite affiliations, […]
Pope Francis has appointed Sister Simona Brambilla as the first woman prefect of a dicastery, reflecting the increasing presence of women in the management if not the ministry of the Catholic Church. Brambilla will head the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, becoming the first woman to hold this position. […]
Journalists and other observers seem to agree that religion in 2024 was more of the same from 2023—as seen in the slow-motion schism in the United Methodist Church and Israel’s war with Hamas and its repercussions for American Jews and Muslims. Even the Trump campaign and election were something of a replay of 2016 and […]
The label “cultural Christian” has become a new way to position oneself between theism and a rejection of the value of Western culture and civilization that has its foundation in Christianity, according to the Christian Science Monitor (December 18). Sophie Hills reports that Elon Musk, a name usually associated with atheism, now calls himself a […]
The anti-natalist movement, which calls for humans to stop having children, involves many secular people and can be seen as a reaction to recent technologies of birth that have given humans greater control over matters of life and death, writes Jack Jiang in Anthropology Today (November/December). While anti-natalism is not a new movement or philosophy, […]
Current Research Homosexuality is becoming rarer in the American Catholic priesthood and can be expected to be cut in half over the next 20 years, according to a study published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (20:8). Homosexuality has been widely documented as being more prevalent in the Catholic priesthood than in the […]
Paganism in Lithuania and in much of Europe is receiving more recognition from governments, but still has some way to go toward receiving equal treatment with other religions, writes Chas Clifton in his Pagan studies blog Letter from Hardscrabble Creek (December 14). The large Lithuanian Pagan movement Romuva, which was formally organized in the early […]
The large Pentecostal movement among Spain’s Roma or Gitano population has created a marriage market where Christian Gitano men are considered a “good catch,” writes Antonio Montañés Jiménez in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (online in December). As in other European countries, Roma have converted in significant numbers to Pentecostalism in Spain, as […]
While some have seen the Russian Orthodox Church’s new outreach to Africa and other regions of the global South as a partnership with the Russian state to extend its influence in these countries, that partnership is far from an equal one for the church, writes Mikhail Suslov in the journal Religions (December 11). The Russian […]
