The seemingly sudden public emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in its recent incarnation of ChatGPT, has led to a good deal of speculation in both the secular and religious media. Various observers see the technology as speeding up secularization, creating new religions and spirituality, or even making space for a more human-based religiosity to […]
The greater acceptance and political support of the LGBTQ community is a source of growth as well as change in liberal religious groups, according to two reports. In the Jewish magazine Tablet (June 26), Erica Silverman reports that Reform Judaism has seen a significant increase in members and conversions to Judaism, especially in urban areas. […]
Growing Muslim activism in the U.S., Canada and other countries on such issues as sex education and gender is finding new support and cooperation from conservative Christians, reports Sarah Haider in her blog Hold That Thought (June 15). Recently, conservative Christians have expressed admiration for Muslim parents protesting progressive classroom curricula and teachings on gender […]
There is an ideological shift taking place among the alt-right, or “dissident right,” away from paganism toward the adoption of “already existing religious and specifically Christian symbols,” writes Tamara Berens in the Jewish magazine Mosaic (June). She writes that while this shift may be more politically effective in a majority Christian society, the move “to […]
Mormons in America have become less Republican over time, according to recent analyses of the Cooperative Election Study (CES). In analyzing national CES data from 2008 to 2022, political scientist Ryan Burge found that Republican affiliation among Mormons peaked at 75 percent in 2012 (when Mitt Romney was a candidate), while reaching a low of […]
Russia’s Protestant churches are adapting to the country’s Orthodox, nationalist, and collectivist culture in their style of worship, architecture, and reconstruction of an indigenous Russian past for themselves, write Eugene Zaitsev and Dmitrii Fokin in the Journal of Church and State (online in May). The authors do not specifically mention Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and […]
New practices and products dealing with death are emerging in Japan, as older traditions of families maintaining cemeteries are disappearing due to population loss, lack of family ties, and a subsequent disintegration of the temple system for the deceased. In an article published in Anthropology Today (June), Anne Allison and Hannah Gould write that as […]
■ An article published in late May on the LinkedIn social network, as reported by journalist Loup Besmond de Senneville in La Croix International (June 30), proposes that the Roman Catholic Church could contribute to the development of an integral security paradigm for governing cybersecurity. The article, written by four Catholic computer experts (two of […]
