Covid-19 has impacted both individual religious practice and belief and congregational life, according to new surveys. One recent survey, conducted in late 2020 by Brandon Vaidyanathan of Catholic University, included 1,609 respondents rom Virginia, Maryland, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Although not a random sample, these respondents reflected the demographic traits found in a 2019 survey […]
Since 2009, young Twelver Shi’ites in Norway have started forming their own groups, independent from mosques, in an attempt to localize Islam and address current issues, writes Ingvild Flaskerud (University of Oslo) in the proceedings of a conference that took place last Spring in Rome, now published by OSMED (Observatory on the Mediterranean) under the […]
Widows play an undervalued but vital role in the spread of Christianity in northern Nigeria, writes Sung Bauta in the International Bulletin of Mission Research (Vol. 45, No. 4). Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim, but there are Christian enclaves. Women constitute the largest segment of church members in Nigeria and widows are a significant proportion […]
After facing a “stained glass ceiling of limitations” in Middle Eastern churches due to religious but also cultural restrictions, women are gradually ascending to the pulpit in the region, reports Mae Elise Cannon in Sojourner’s magazine (November). Even in churches that allow women’s ordination, such as the Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations, Middle Eastern congregations have […]
Religious groups in Korea continue to face controversy and some fallout from the pandemic, even though there has been considerable diversity in how Korean religions have dealt with the virus, according to scholars speaking at a roundtable session of the recent conference of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio, which RW attended. The […]
The Covid-19 pandemic has influenced social and digital media consumption in Sri Lanka and given rise to a wave of hate speech and disinformation, with Muslims being the most targeted religious group, write Senel Wanniarachchi, Prihesh Ratnayake and Harindrini Corea in a chapter of the new book, Muslims in Post-War Sri Lanka. Anti-Muslim narratives have […]
Twenty-five years ago, prominent church historian George Marsden wrote The Soul of the American University, a widely hailed history and portrayal of Christian, specifically evangelical, higher education and its struggle to resist secularization. Now Marsden has revisited the subject in a new edition of the book, which is the subject of a symposium in the […]
Nordic animism is a growing phenomenon in Scandinavia, seeking to return to a native spirituality while distinguishing itself from Neopagan groups holding to ethnic nationalism. Founded by Swedish religious historian Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen, the diffuse movement has been influenced by the Brazilian religion Candomblé and links environmentalism with the return to animism. Rasmussen teaches that […]
Religious groups and volunteers, particularly evangelicals, are becoming a dominant influence in prisons thanks to a new model of incarceration that relies on outsourcing rehabilitation programming to faith groups, write Michael Hallett (North Florida State University) and Byron Johnson (Baylor University) in the online magazine Public Discourse (October 25). Facing unprecedented levels of violence and […]
Leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), who prophesized that Donald Trump would be reelected, show few signs of recanting their predictions, according to scholars assessing the movement at a recent meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, which RW attended. This is even as a formalization of the movement seems likely, […]
