Relations within and between American and European churches are becoming frayed due to the growth of populism and challenges to the post-Cold War international order, according to two reports. The newsletter Evangelical Focus (February 18–19) reports on growing tensions both within European churches but especially between evangelicals in Europe and religious conservatives in the U.S. […]
First there were the progressive “exvangelicals” who gained prominence in popular books and academia for their accounts of abuse, hypocrisy, and politicization in the institutional church, along with their emphasis on how such tendencies clashed with the ethics of Jesus. Now, conservative ex-evangelicals are allegedly gaining attention, embracing politics while retaining their churchly settings and […]
If there is a spiritual ethic of wealth today that is spreading beyond elites and the upper class, it would probably be the bohemian hedonism and spirituality of the psychedelic renaissance, writes Jules Evans in the Substack newsletter Ecstatic Integration (February 8). Evans reports on “the out-sized role played by a handful of very wealthy […]
Both in the U.S. and the UK, surveys on religion are showing some stability, even an uptick in spiritual and religious interest and involvement in the case of the latter. The Pew Research Center’s latest Religious Landscape Study (RLS) found that after many years of decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows […]
Rather than showing either continued religious revival or straightforward secularization, Arab Muslim societies from 2010 to 2022 exhibited trends toward religious polarization, since both highly religious and non-religious populations grew simultaneously at the expense of moderately religious individuals, with significant variations across countries, demographics, and time periods. In a study reported in the International Journal […]
While never very large in number, new religious movements in Israel are becoming more accepted by the general public due to these movements’ acceptance of Zionist ideology and involvement in the country’s settlement ethos and military, as well as their emphasis on education and success. Writing in the journal Politics and Religion (online in February), […]
Following the publication of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: Renewing the Instruments of the Anglican Communion last December by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), Anglicans are discussing the possibility of moving toward a polycentric model, highlighting “the growing influence of the global South in the Communion,” with the Church of England “less […]
