New Amish groups are being established in non-traditional ways outside of the faith’s heartland in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, according to an article in the Washington Post (June 25). Two small South American settlements were both founded last fall after longstanding Mennonite communities in those countries reached out to North American Amish to explore affiliation, […]
First- and second-generation members of new religious movements (NRMs) experience similar conflicts when they leave these groups, although the latter find it much more difficult to exit and build new lives, according to a study in the Journal of Religion & Society (Vol. 18, 2016). Most of the information on ex-members of NRMs has focused […]
The future of public funding or support of religion in Europe is likely to become increasingly linked with its potential for positive contributions to society, according to several articles in the inaugural issue of the new French-language journal on religion and law, the Revue du Droit des Religions (May). The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) […]
Even as terrorists from Central Asia have taken the spotlight for their recent part in the Islamic State’s attack in Istanbul in late June, the region is seeing the emergence of “Islamo-democrats” who are challenging the influence of political Islam. The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (Vol. 36, No. 2) reports that the growth of […]
Recent expressions of the charismatic movement still find their inspiration in the Toronto Blessing movement of the 1990s, but they are more likely to stress supernatural miracles, the role of laypeople in healing, and ministry to the poor, writes Michael McClymond in the Pentecostal studies journal Pneuma (38). The Toronto Blessing, called the “laughing revival,” […]
While Buddhist meditators have been prodded and probed by neuroscientists and medical researchers, a wider range of Buddhist practices and rituals have been hailed by practitioners for their healing benefits and are gaining new attention. In the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Summer), C. Pierce Salguero writes that “Buddhist healing practices that one might think of as […]
There is a small but growing wave of conversions to Judaism in Latin America, with many of these converts coming from evangelical backgrounds, according to journalist Gabriela Mochkofsky. In an interview on the Jewish magazine Moment’s website, she notes that this movement is distinct from the Latin Americans who discover their hidden Jewish ancestry (known […]
Media reports in Switzerland (and neighboring countries) tend to associate evangelicals with dynamism and growth, thus contrasting them with other, established branches of the Christian faith, according to RW associate editor Jean-François Mayer, who was speaking at the 10th anniversary of the Réseau Evangélique Suisse (Swiss Evangelical Network) in the town of Tavannes. Mayer was […]
In recent decades, Seventh-Day Adventists (SDA) have managed to a large extent to discard their image of being a separate community aside from other Christians and have increasingly become part of local and regional mainstream ecumenical councils and working groups. But this reformist approach has led sections of the SDA church to become concerned about […]
While the pope’s encyclicals or books inspired by him are selling well—already more than 50,000 copies of the French translation of The Name of God Is Mercy have been sold—Catholic French-speaking publishing houses are facing serious economic hurdles, writes religion journalist Claire Lesegretain in the French daily La Croix (May 3). Some challenges are shared […]
