Just as there are secular and cultural Jews and, increasingly, people claiming to be “cultural Catholics,” Muslims are likewise claiming that identity, according to scholars speaking at the mid-August conference of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Chicago, which RW attended. Survey research has found that almost a quarter of people from Muslim […]
Although mainline and evangelical churches and denominations have taken clear sides in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, Catholics and the black church have either straddled the fence or experienced internal divisions about this contentious issue. In Commonweal magazine (July–August), Julie Schumacher Cohen writes that there has been a Catholic hesitancy in applying the church’s social […]
“Divine femininity” has become a popular phenomenon on social media, particularly TikTok, for its teaching that women need to harness a particular feminine energy to improve sex relations and everyday life, reports the magazine Teen Vogue (August 13). Sithara Ranasinghe writes that divine femininity is based on the idea that everyone holds two core energies […]
The Satanic Temple (TST), a quasi-religious and activist group seeking to spread secularism and strict church-state separation, is experiencing a “mass exit,” according to Diego Córdova and Ryan Cragun of the University of Tampa. In a paper presented at the August meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Chicago, attended by RW, […]
While Fethullah Gülen (1941–2024) was the undisputed leader of the Hizmet (“service”) movement for over 50 years, his authority gradually became routinized into a bureaucratic structure of hierarchies, procedures, and offices, writes Ida Hartmann (University of Copenhagen) in an article in Contemporary Islam (online August 25) focusing on the aftermath of the dramatic 2016 coup […]
A new study finds a correlation between online gaming and atheist or agnostic beliefs, but also an association between social media engagement and religious practices like scripture reading and congregational attendance. While there has been a growing body of research on the secularizing effect of the Internet, Baylor University sociologists Jennifer Laderi and Jeremy Uecker […]
Anglicanism in the UK is facing a “severe crisis,” demonstrated by the unprecedented resignations, or calls for the resignations, of all four church leaders in England, Scotland, and Wales, writes Martyn Percy in the Journal of Anglican Studies (online in August). The cases of Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop […]
Charismatic Christianity is having a little-known but significant growth in the Punjab region of India, the cradle and stronghold of Sikhism, according to Miroslav Atanasov of the University of Colorado. Although hard numbers are difficult to come by, the recent growth is significant enough to have concerned Sikh leaders about its effect on the stability […]
With the Trump administration’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities considerably weakening the regime, it is now increasingly focused on Iraq as one of its last footholds in the region, posing an existential threat to the survival of the country’s Christians and other religious minorities, reports Providence newsletter (August 18). After decades of war, […]
Immigrant and second-generation African young people in Britain are engaging in transnational and hybrid religious practices that contrast with adult patterns of religion and migration, according to a study by Dominic Pasura of the University of Glasgow. Pasura, who presented his study at the August meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in […]
Singapore’s megachurches have been known as some of the largest worldwide, but recently there has been some disenchantment about these mammoth congregations and the movement of some ex-members toward mainline churches, writes Robbie B. H. Goh in the current issue of the journal Studies in World Christianity (31:2). Singapore and other global South countries (such […]
Organized fitness training is being adapted by young Salafi Muslim men as they create communities and transnational networks that foster spiritual and physical strength and well-being, writes Sergio Altuna Galán in the journal Current Trends in Islamist Ideology (August). As the practice and communication of Islam shifts away from institutionalized settings toward more “personalized, visually […]
Global Lutheranism in the Contemporary World, edited by RW’s editor, Richard Cimino, provides accounts and analyses of the Lutheran situation in a wide range of countries and societies. The new book from Routledge brings together 21 contributors to examine trends in Lutheranism in the U.S., Canada, Spanish-speaking South America, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia, Chinese societies in […]
