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, […]
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 […]
There is a fear of Judaism in Israeli culture, rooted in the concern that the Jewish religion will threaten and potentially eliminate secular Israeli identity, writes Gideon Katz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede-Boker, Israel) in Israel Affairs (30:4). Katz adopts a phenomenological approach to analyze Israeli literary works, including essays, critiques, and dystopian novels, […]
After the rapid fall of the Assad regime, the jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has quickly become the key player in Syria and is evolving towards an ideological refocusing that is “at once Sunni, Islamic, conservative and revolutionary,” according to Swiss researcher Patrick Haenni (European University Institute in Florence, Italy) in an interview with […]
In the case of Christian converts to Islam in the Philippines, religious conversion does not always involve a complete transformation or separation from previous religious and social ties, a recent study finds. The research by Asuna Yoshizawa (Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan), published in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations (online December 13), consisted of participant observations and […]
“Daoists, as much as devotees of all other religions in China, are severely affected by the Sinicization policies,” writes Karine Martin in the newsletter Bitter Winter (December 19–20). In an adaptation from her forthcoming book, Martin reports that the increasing restrictions against religions, started in 2018, have widened to target religious schooling and the times, […]
Despite professionalization, Muslim clergy in the U.S. rely on an informal “Rolodex” of contacts composed of fellow imams, students, and other sources of support to fill leadership positions in American Islam, Nancy Khalil and Safiyah Zaidi write in the journal American Religion (Fall). By this figurative Muslim “Rolodex,” the researchers point to an element they […]
Divisions over same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination in the Anglican Communion are now expanding to include new issues related to the nature of the priesthood, including women’s ordination, and deeper matters of biblical interpretation among conservative Anglicans. Writing in First Things magazine (November 6), Gerald McDermott argues that these issues stem from divisions in the […]
