Megachurches continue to grow in attendance, even as these congregations are subdividing into smaller satellite churches, according to a study by Scott Thumma and Warren Bird. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research-based study confirmed that the majority of participants continue to be white and college educated, although these racial patterns are changing. While megachurches experience people leaving the pews, nearly two-thirds have been at their churches for more than 5 years.
In Sweden, a country where the established church has been in decline, unexpected new members find their way to the Lutheran as well as other churches (e.g., Pentecostal), since thousands of young people with a Muslim background, who had arrived as unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs), have converted to the Christian faith, becoming active and engaged members of their congregations, writes Jonathan Morgan (Lund University) in The Review of Faith & International Affairs (Fall, 2020).
Religion plays a significant role for North Korean refugees and migrants seeking a sense of belonging in their new homelands, a phenomenon that has been largely neglected by scholars, writes Jin-Heon Jung in the online journal Religions (October 9, 2020). Jung writes that after being exposed to Protestant missionary networks while staying in Northeast China […]
Although there has been a recent spate of terrorist attacks in Europe, jihadism on the continent has declined markedly, according to The Economist (November 3, 2020). The number of completed Islamist attacks fell every year from 2017 to 2019, while the number of failed or foiled ones rose, according to Europol, the EU’s law-enforcement agency. […]
China is exporting its own version of Buddhism throughout the world that is sympathetic to the Chinese government and the Communist party as way of spreading its “soft power,” according to Yoshiko Ashiwa of Hitotsubashi University and David L. Wank of Sophia University. Speaking at a webinar series on how religions are serving as a form of soft power by sponsoring nations (mainly looking at the Islamic world) at the Berkley Center for Religion and World Affairs of Georgetown University in mid-November, Ashiwa and Wank noted that China is using Buddhism to exert such international influence as it has previously done with Confucianism.
The state of the patriotic or “Three-Self” church movement in China is the subject of the current issue of ChinaSource Quarterly (September 2020). Patriotic churches, which can be of various denominations, are registered with China’s government but are not necessarily subservient to the Communist Party in terms of their teaching and practices, as was the case in earlier years, according to several articles.
Whatever the results of the 2020 presidential elections, the voting behavior of American Jews shows both continuities and change under the presidency of Donald Trump, according to reports. In his blog Spiritual Politics (October 22, 2020), Mark Silk reports that Jewish voting patterns have changed little since 2016, even as President Trump made his support of Israel an important part of his campaign. In that year, Jewish voters chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by 71 percent to 24 percent.
Revival gatherings led by evangelical worship leader Sean Feucht across the country have gathered thousands of Christians and are seen by some as fueling “a new Jesus Movement,” write Meagan Clark and Haeven Gibbons in Religion Unplugged (October 24, 2020). The writers hasten to add that the audience for the group Let Us Worship looks quite different from that of the spiritual seekers of long-gone hippie times.
The combined effect of the pandemic and its toll on African-Americans and the recent protests over racial violence in law enforcement has alienated a segment of black members from their more conservative churches as they seek spiritual fulfillment elsewhere, writes Dara T. Mathis in the Atlantic (October 11, 2020).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) has seen the greatest impact of the pandemic on its mission force and the growth of home-based worship, reports the Salt Lake Tribune (October 1, 2020). The church cohort that was probably the most disrupted was the 60,000 young people who serve as missionaries around the world, as their practice of door-to-door missions were restricted. Eventually, the missionaries adapted their work to online formats.
