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.
◼ We almost neglected to mention that this issue marks the thirty-fifth year of publishing Religion Watch. Some things do get better with age, and we hope RW is among them. We thank readers for their support and interest in this newsletter over the years. Our gratitude also goes out to the Institute for Studies […]
◼ While surveys have found that younger evangelicals are not substantially more liberal than their older counterparts, the media still regularly reports on the growing gap in political views between younger and older evangelical cohorts. The new book Rock of Ages (Temple University Press, $34.95), by Jeremiah J. Castle, confirms previous studies showing relatively minor […]
◼ The rise of the narrative of persecuted Christians around the world not only encourages American evangelicals to help victims abroad, but is also linked to a process of their seeing themselves as victims, part of a global community under attack, writes Melani McAlister (George Washington University) in an issue of The Review of Faith […]
The phenomenon of the non-affiliated or “nones” has been prodded and probed from every available angle, although most often by social scientists and religious professionals concerned about what the rising tide of nones means for the future of institutional religion. Public Discourse, the electronic weekly newsletter of the conservative Witherspoon Institute, devoted its August 18 […]
The current issue of the Review of Religion and Chinese Society (6:1) is devoted to “negotiations and diversifications of China’s Christianities.” The stress on “negotiation” among these articles suggests that church-state outcomes in China are far from uniform, varying by the resources and strategies that churches employ in bargaining with officials for various privileges and […]
Twentysomething Soul (Oxford University Press, $29.95) looks beyond the barrage of research and reporting on non-affiliated young Americans to also examine those who have a strong attachment to their congregations and faith. These “active affiliated” Christian young adults are not as unusual as one might think, argue authors Timothy Clydesdale of the College of New […]
The fact that the latest (2019) edition of the World Almanac of Islamism (American Foreign Policy Council, $119) has expanded to two huge volumes (totaling about 1,500 pages) suggests that there has been a significant increase in groups and individuals involved in Muslim-based political activism. But it should be noted that the term “Islamist” is […]
The current issue of the open-access Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (Vol. 14) is devoted to the impact of online religion on faith communities. There is much conjecture about how online involvement affects religious belonging and community but not much actual research about this relationship in all its variety of settings and contexts. […]
RW has covered the rise and growth of FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students), and now Katherine Dugan fills out the picture considerably, showing how this group has fused evangelical practices and fervor with orthodox Catholicism in her new book Millennial Missionaries (Oxford University Press, $34.95). As its title implies, the book provides an in-depth […]
