■ It has been over 50 years since the controversial Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) was propagated through Donald McGavran’s book Understanding Church Growth. The HUP held that evangelism and church growth are most effective among groups of people with similar characteristics, people being more likely to become Christian if they do not have to cross cultural, […]
■ There have been several recent books about the emergence of “wokeness,” and some of them have traced this diffuse phenomenon of political correctness and identity politics relating to race and gender to religious or quasi-religious origins and sentiments. There is some debate as to the definitions and extent of “wokeness” and whether it is losing […]
■ The current issue of the journal Communal Societies (43:1) carries several interesting articles on the past and future of communal movements in the U.S. Historian Carl Guarneri retraces the history of communal groups and movements, arguing that classic interpretations of them as mainly responses to socio-economic conditions ignore more important cultural and religious factors, such […]
■ Francis X. Maier’s new book True Confessions (Ignatius Press, $24.95) is unusual. Although the author is a well-known conservative Catholic journalist, he doesn’t editorialize (aside from the Introduction) but rather turns the spotlight on Catholicism in the U.S., attempting to paint a portrait of the American church that might be missed in surveys. He […]
■ A new peer-reviewed journal of Anglican theology, Cranmer Theological Journal, would like “to fill a void by addressing the needs of biblically orthodox Anglicans in North America, at a time when the existing journals reflect the same doctrinal issues that prompted numerous Anglicans to leave the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.” […]
■ Media (and soon most likely book) coverage of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and religion and spirituality is widespread. While little of such speculation has been based on research, the current issue of the journal American Religion (Fall 2023) moves the conversation along in that direction with several articles and a roundtable discussion […]
■ The journal Religion, State, and Society devotes its current issue (51:4–5) to the state of religion in the European Parliament (EP) and opens with the provocative observation that “The ongoing secularization of Europe…is little contested. Its outcomes, especially regarding European integration, are much more controversial.” This is borne out in several contributions, where it […]
■ As with sociologists of religion before them, anthropologists specializing in religion are branching out to study atheism and other forms of non-religion, according to the annual journal Religion & Society. The 2023 issue is devoted to anthropological studies of non-religion, although these focus less on the familiar sites of secularism, such as atheist and […]
■ Although recent research and media accounts have focused on the process of losing one’s Christian faith, following the growth of the unaffiliated, there is a countercurrent of new research looking at how atheists are becoming Christians. Of course, there have long been popular treatments of Christian conversions in the form of apologetic literature, but […]
■ A thematic series growing out of a partnership between the Berkley Center’s Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power project and the United States Institute of Peace looks at a wide range of religious and political dynamics in the Balkans. The working papers in the series touch on external religious influences on the Balkans, post-war religiosity, […]
