Charismatic ministries, festivals, and conferences around the world have recently been closing, though not necessarily for lack of success and numbers, reports Charisma magazine (March). Ministries and conferences including Onething, TheCall, the UK-based Soul Survivor conferences, and Germany’s Augsburg Prayer House conferences, which reached over 10,000 people annually, closed down in 2018 or will cease […]
While liberal Quakers have allowed room for non-theists in the last century, the church body, at least in the northern hemisphere, is “increasingly open-minded on the ultimate religious question: whether or not there is a God,” reports The Economist (April 26). Ben Pink Dandelion of the University of Birmingham said part of the reason for […]
Mediums or psychics are increasingly finding a prominent place in the holistic healing milieu, especially among women, reports Lisa Held in the New York Times (March 24). The new prominence of mediums, or “intuitives” as they are called today, was on display at the recent In Goop Health Summit, run by Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness media […]
The growing interest in meditation practices—mostly disconnected from their traditional religious anchoring—means that some apps helping people to meditate are also enjoying an amazing success. In February, Calm, an application for meditating, relaxing and sleeping, with a stated mission “to make the world a happier and healthier place,” announced that it had succeeded in raising […]
While different denominations in North America and Europe have had to close and sell places of worship due to shrinking attendance or moves of their followers to new urban areas, the recent figures published by the National Trust for Canada, with estimates that 9,000 religious spaces in the country will be lost in the next […]
Congregational membership has dropped by 20 percentage points over the past two decades, hitting a low of 50 percent in 2018, according to a new Gallup poll. Gallup found church membership to be at 70 percent in 1999, consistent with much of the membership rates throughout the 20th century. Since 1999, that figure has fallen […]
The violent persecution of Christians has intensified significantly in the last seven years, with much of this violence shifting to China and India, writes religion journalist Rupert Shortt in the British magazine The Tablet (April 20). Shortt reported on the widespread abuse and repression of Christians in his 2013 book Christianophobia, which, despite its title, […]
Contrary to headlines announcing the loss of Catholic Ireland and an accompanying loss of Catholic education in the country, Catholic schools continue to retain the loyalty of Irish parents, even though these schools are facing new secular pressures from the government. The Irish quarterly Studies (108:429) notes that the Catholic Church has been the main […]
The first Jewish military chaplain in the German armed forces might start his work by the end of this year, reports the German Catholic newspaper Die Tagespost (April 10). This is actually a return to what had existed in earlier times in Germany, since 30 Jewish military chaplains used to serve in the German forces […]
The decision to increase the number and duties of women preachers in Turkey has enlarged the influence and visibility of Islam, especially as it relates to family issues, writes Chiara Maritato in the current issue of the journal Anthropology of the Middle East (Winter). Turkey’s Diyanet, a state-based apparatus under the control of the prime […]
