A new study finds religious behavioral responses to the Covid pandemic, such as prayer, to be positively correlated with medically advised measures like mask-wearing and social distancing. The study, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (online February) and conducted by West Virginia University researchers Katie E. Corcoran, Bernard DiGregorio, and Chris […]
The commitment of Christian Democrat political figures had been central to Europe’s reconstruction process after World War II, but religion has again become a topic for the European Union (EU) over the past 20 years, due to concerns about both radical Islam and the use of religious themes by populist political movements. These issues are […]
Throughout Armenian history, even when many Armenians were dispersed and no longer had their own state, the Armenian Apostolic Church has played a key role as a national church. However, according to Matthieu Barlet of the Observatoire Pharos, a French think tank monitoring religious and cultural trends around the world, the linkage between Armenian identity […]
With much of the West’s attention fixated on Russia and Ukraine, the political influence of Islam shows signs of both decline and resurgence. In the scholarly newsletter Quillette (January 21), Imran Said reports that Islamist governments, “once seen as an unstoppable force throughout most of the Muslim world,” are now seen as being incapable of […]
Less anchored in their ways than traditional religions, new religious movements (NRMs) offer a rich field for research on radical transformations. This topic is the focus of a new volume edited by Beth Singler and Eileen Barker, Radical Transformations in Minority Religions (Routledge, $160). Its 17 chapters cover a varied landscape, from themes such as […]
1) The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) is a new project conducted jointly by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion and Program on Pro-Social Behavior and Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Project, that will look at the factors shaping human betterment, including its religious dimensions. The project will involve data collection from some 240,000 participants from […]
While evangelicals have moved into an era where society views them negatively, they haven’t found a strategy to deal with their more marginal status, writes Aaron M. Renn in the magazine First Things (February). Renn writes that the increasing fragmentation of evangelicals is largely due to the different ways they have sought to extend their […]
The issue of spiritual abuse by Muslim leaders is being tackled by ground initiatives and organizations, similarly to what has been taking place in other religious traditions, writes journalist and novelist Hanan Sulaiman in Ahram Online (January 6). Some Sufi spiritual leaders in particular are being targeted by groups confronting spiritual and sexual abuse in […]
The Covid pandemic has “accelerated people’s comings and goings and has required new strategies to welcome and assimilate new members into the church community,” writes Melissa Morgan Kelley in Christianity Today (January 18). Along with other life changes wrought by Covid, for “those who were already struggling with their church, the pandemic served as a […]
The recent growth of anti-Semitic incidents, most vividly seen in early January’s hostage crisis at a Texas synagogue, is most threatening to Jews who are religiously observant, writes Mark Oppenheimer in the Wall Street Journal (January 19). He notes that most of the recent attacks against Jews, which also include the shootings at a synagogue […]
