Antisemitism within the American right has become the most divisive and contested issue among conservatives today, drawing pro-Israel evangelicals and Jews into more antagonistic relationships with other segments of the movement. “For more than four decades, the alliance between evangelicals and pro-Israel conservatives has been an almost uniquely powerful force in American politics,” Jonathan Mahler […]
The MAGA movement, which has been known to adapt religious practices and devotions to their politics, is reviving but also refashioning the rosary, writes Matthew Walther in a critical article in the Wall Street Journal (January 8). “Social-media platforms are suddenly full of images of the rosary being treated with all the gravity of a […]
Pope Leo XIV has provided clues to how he governs the Vatican and Curia and manages international affairs, with his style differing in significant ways from Pope Francis, according to two reports. Commonweal magazine (January 8) reports that some of Leo’s recent appointments are reversing some of Francis’s reforms and applying American management practices to […]
The survey Next Mormons 2, conducted by Jana Riess and Benjamin Knoll, finds that among current LDS members the gender advantage in terms of women’s religiosity that was evident in 2016 has been largely erased. In Riess’s blog for Religion News Service, Flunking Sainthood (January 15), she notes that today’s LDS women look “more like […]
After 60 years of continuous decline, French Catholicism is experiencing a notable if modest rebound in adult baptisms, though only time will reveal whether it represents lasting change or another fleeting “flux” in French Catholicism’s cyclical history, writes historian Guillaume Cuchet in the journal Etudes (January). While the rise from 4,468 baptisms in 2020 to […]
Members of Generation Z in Ireland are more open and interested in religion than their millennial counterparts, according to a report in the Irish Independent newspaper (January 17). Laura Lynott writes that especially among young people undergoing crises, such as their parents’ illnesses and death, adopting or returning to the Catholic faith is seen as […]
The prospects for Muslim democracies, which just over a decade ago seemed bright, have grown dimmer as key Islamic countries said to be on the cusp of democratic reform have fallen short of that goal, according to a study in the Journal of Democracy (January). In the early 2000s, “many scholars observed a pragmatist turn […]
The conflict between the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has intensified, with an opposition now also forming within the church, consisting of young parish priests, believers, and several hierarchs eager to reform the church, reports Harutyun G. Harutyunyan (State University of Yerevan, Armenia) in an […]
The return of Alawite celebrations in public life in Syria suggests that the adherents of this syncretistic Islamic sect are gaining new confidence in their identity since the fall of the Bashar al-Asad regime, even as persecution has intensified, according to the Public Orthodoxy website (January 7). Fadi Abu-Deeb reports that this year many Alawites […]
The current issue of the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience (Vol. 11, No. 2), marking its 10th anniversary issue, is devoted to recent research on AI and religion. The introduction notes that AI has impacted religious practice and devotion, not to mention religious imagery, to a similar degree to its influence in other […]
