The largely affirmative response to the classic question of whether religion is good for democracy seems to have become more qualified over the last decade, articles in the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy (October) show. In recent years, scholars studying democracies have sounded the alarm about a “democratic recession” in the face of […]
Oriental Orthodox churches in the U.S. are outgrowing their sister Eastern Orthodox bodies, possibly even stealing some of their members, according to a new analysis of this venerable yet largely forgotten ancient church tradition hailing largely from the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. At the late-October conference of the Society for the Scientific […]
While the Worldwide Church of God no longer exists after the schisms and scandals this new religious movement experienced in the 1980s and ’90s, its offshoots continue to preserve important features of the movement and show some growth, writes J. Gordon Melton in the Journal of CESNUR (September/October), published by the Center on New Religions […]
Against predictions that Catholics would enter the ranks of the academic elite at the same rate as those of other and no religions, a recent study finds that they are significantly behind mainline Protestants and Jews on that measure. The study, conducted by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, looked at winners of Nobel Prizes to assess the late […]
A growing number of Haredi men are volunteering for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) following the outbreak of the war against Hamas, which might signal that the “modern Haredi” phenomenon is developing into a real movement, writes Eliyahu Berkovits of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel Program on the website of the Israel Democracy Institute (October 26). […]
The second-largest national Orthodox church with 25 million members, autocephalous since 1885 and under its own Patriarch since 1925, the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) has played an important role in Romanian society and national identity, and has managed to preserve a high level of social acceptance throughout regime changes over the past century, writes Mihai-D. […]
Boko Haram, known for its Islamic jihadist terrorism in Nigeria, has slowly evolved from an organization under siege by the government to one estranged from its Muslim rivals and now actively targeting fellow Muslims with violence, writes Abubakar Abubakar Usman of the Asia Middle East Centre for Research and Dialogue (Malaysia). Writing in the journal […]
1) Vietnamese-American Catholics have become a source of vocational growth and vitality in the American church and the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement (VEYM) has served as their nerve center. While Vietnamese Americans make up only 1 to 2 percent of the American Catholic population, they represent 12 percent of seminarians. The VEYM has 136 chapters, […]
