Archive for the ‘On/File’ Category

On/File: A Continuing Record of Groups, Movements, People, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

Launched in 2019 by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), the “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” campaign has been a relative success in making room for an evangelical voice critical of Christian nationalism in the U.S., although its influence on broader white evangelical sympathy for the movement has been limited. Christians Against Christian Nationalism […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of People, Groups, Movements, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

1) Faced with declining membership, a number of Roman Catholic dioceses in the western hemisphere are considering reducing the number of parishes in order to coalesce around a smaller number of places of worship. But the Archdiocese of Baltimore (MD) is contemplating a rather radical move with its project to eliminate two-thirds of its parishes […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of People, Groups, Movements and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

The Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR) has caught the attention of journalists and social critics for seeking to revive a fraternal order for men of a Christian and conservative bent. The group’s founders, Scott Yenor and Skyler Kressin, argue that the only places left for male bonding in American society are in sports or […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of People, Groups, Movements and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

1) Emet Classical Academy is the first Jewish classical school, seeking to “make sense of the West in a Jewish way.” Most classical schools that have been established in recent years have backgrounds in Catholic and Protestant worlds, stressing engagement in foundational texts for Western civilization, learning Latin and Greek, and character formation. Emet, located […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of Groups, Movements, People, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

Launched on February 27 at the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6) in Nairobi, Kenya, Al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth presents an Islamic outlook on the environment in a bid to strengthen local, regional, and international actions that would combat climate change and other threats to the planet. The result of […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of People, Groups, Movements, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

1) The After Party is seeking to become a leading publishing program to counteract the influence of Donald Trump and political polarization among evangelicals. Led by Duke Divinity consulting professor Curtis Chang, head of the program’s founding organization Redeeming Babel, and developed with two prominent “never-Trump” evangelicals, the New York Times columnist David French and […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of Events, People, Movements, and Groups Impacting Contemporary Religion

Romana Didulo, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Canada” has been among the most successful in starting a new religion based on QAnon conspiracies. Using Theosophical ideas found in earlier new religious movements, such as the I AM and the Church Universal and Triumphant movements, Didulo, who is almost 50 years old and originally from the Philippines, […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of People, Groups, Movements, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been imputed with spiritual, even mystical, power by its proponents and critics, Way of the Future is among the first organized religions based on the technology. The church was originally launched by Anthony Levandowski in 2015, while he was working on the self-driving technology Waymo for Google. Levandowski envisioned a […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of Groups, Movements, People, and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

1) Vietnamese-American Catholics have become a source of vocational growth and vitality in the American church and the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement (VEYM) has served as their nerve center. While Vietnamese Americans make up only 1 to 2 percent of the American Catholic population, they represent 12 percent of seminarians. The VEYM has 136 chapters, […]

On/File: A Continuing Record of Groups, Movements, Individuals and Events Impacting Contemporary Religion

1) This summer, the film Sound of Freedom found both a worldwide audience and a place in the culture wars because of its religious and political associations. At the box office, the movie actually beat the supposed summer blockbusters, the final farewell to the “Indiana Jones” character and another installment of the “Mission Impossible” series, […]