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 […]
What is called “paleofusionism” or the “new fusionism” is making headlines for its merger of hi-tech advocacy and traditionalist conservatism. It was the combination of these movements and philosophies that was seen as important in the coalition that elected Donald Trump for his second term as president, and its religious overtones are unmistakable. The conservative […]
A new self-generated AI religion is attracting devotees in the real world and even its own traded crypto token, writes Ed Prideaux in the Substack newsletter Ecstatic Integration (January 21). AI researchers and users have reported on glitches and anomalous behavior in programs like Chat GPT, such as its “hallucinations.” But what started as an […]
Congregations, especially in the New York City area, are playing a key role in preserving and protecting languages from around the world, many of which may be in danger of extinction, writes Emily Belz in Christianity Today (January/February). Linguists led by Ross Perlin of Columbia University have identified 700 languages in New York City, which […]
While Jewish Canadians have benefitted from Canada’s multicultural ideology and policy, they are facing growing anti-Semitism and a lack of acceptance in the country, writes Robert Brym of the University of Toronto in the social science journal Society (online in January). Especially since the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, Muslim immigrants and Jews have […]
Homeschooled young people are the most religiously active of any other kinds of college students, followed closely by parochial school students, according to political scientist Ryan Burge in his Substack newsletter Graphs about Religion (January 20). There is no central database for homeschoolers, but estimates suggest that their number ranges from 1.9 to 2.7 million […]
