Although he was seen as a favored candidate for the papacy, the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, as the first American pontiff in history still caught observers off guard. The singularity of the event has quelled, at least until the new pope writes his first encyclical, the usual antagonism and culture-warring […]
There has been a spate of media reports about impending religious and spiritual revivals in Europe and the U.S., but it is not clear if these reported trends will prove to represent long-term shifts in religiosity or “blips” on the screen of continuing religious decline. A much-publicized Pew study in March showed a stabilization of […]
While weddings have taken on a more secular character in recent years, there is a growing interest in integrating wellness and spirituality into marriage ceremonies, reports the New York Times (April 13). “For many couples, health and mindfulness are an integral part of their everyday lives, and they want their weddings to reflect these values. […]
The “booming psychedelic church scene in the U.S. could be about to shift from the underground into the legal overground,” reports Jules Evans in the Substack newsletter Ecstatic Integration (April 8). There are anywhere up to 500 psychedelic churches in the U.S., of which “roughly 97 percent operate illegally and more or less un-transparently.” But […]
A major new study finds a strong association between religious identity and human flourishing. The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) study, a longitudinal survey across 22 countries, was conducted by Baylor University and Harvard University, with its initial findings presented at a recent conference at the Gallup world headquarters in Washington, which RW attended online. Employing […]
Women are often at the forefront of indigenous mission and church-planting efforts in Asia and Africa, write Gina Zurlo and Dave Coles in the journal Missiology (53:2). Many indigenous missionary efforts today are described as church-planting or disciple-making movements rather than Christian, and they operate below the radar and even underground due to religious restrictions, […]
Regardless of one’s moral stance toward Prosperity theology, its global impact cannot be dismissed as it continues to grow in influence, including within centers of political power, writes Simon Coleman (University of Toronto) in the bulletin of the Observatoire International du Religieux (April). A cultural logic of material and institutional growth is central to Prosperity […]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) continues to expand and grow more international in Spain, reports the Salt Lake Tribune (May 2). The church has grown more among immigrants than among native Spanish people, Mark Eddington writes. It was the late filmmaker Jose Maria Oliveira, a Latter-day Saint since 1966, who played […]
Chinese evangelical Protestant churches are expanding in France, congregations originating from several Chinese Christian diaspora groups that shared the same faith without being homogeneous. Writing in the French ecumenical studies journal Istina (January–June), Eric Pires Antunes (Psalt College in Paris) reports that there are now 50 Chinese evangelical churches in France, with more than 40 […]
Ukrainian Protestants are grappling with their historical commitment to pacifism in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country, which has forced them to reassess their beliefs amid the violence, reports David Kirichenko in the Kyiv Post (April 13). “Protestants make up around 2–4 percent of Ukraine’s population, but their influence, especially in central […]
