Religion in 2022 saw the intensification of trends that were visible in the previous year, none more dramatic and traumatic than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on Eastern Orthodoxy. The following review of last year and preview of how these trends may play out in the year ahead is lengthier than previous annual […]
While financial and sexual scandals have taken place among Buddhist monks for decades in Thailand, the spread of news and criticism of this behavior through social media is having a detrimental effect on the reciprocal relationship between clergy and laity, write Brooke Schedneck and Steve Epstein in the online magazine The Revealer (December 8). The […]
It came as no surprise that many of the sessions and papers presented at the November meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Baltimore were devoted to the pandemic. Yet even the scholars making the presentations were unsure about Covid’s effect on religious institutions, beliefs, and practices in the long term. […]
Theological education programs have been growing in evangelical churches for members who want to study church history and theology without going to seminary or who don’t feel called to the ministry, reports Maria Baer in Christianity Today magazine (November). While congregations have always had Bible studies, adult education programs, and new member classes for teaching […]
Judging by the number of new books and social media posts, there has been a surge of belief and discourse concerning the “end-times,” writes Molly Olmstead in the online magazine Slate (October 6). She cites Publishers Weekly reports on the increasing reader demand for end-times topics, usually centered around interpreting current events like the pandemic, […]
As younger generations take charge, the Vineyard church, once known for its emphasis on “signs and wonders” and the entrepreneurial style of its pastors, is shifting to a worship and leadership style characterized by democratic participation and collaboration, writes Daniel Silliman in Christianity Today (October). Since the 1970s, Vineyard churches have been seen as the […]
A new study finds that religious freedom is becoming a long-lasting wedge issue in the culture wars between conservative religious believers and secularists, especially as the former become likely to take on the status of a religious minority themselves. In a study published in the journal Religion, State, and Society (50:3), political scientist James Guth […]
In the race between current President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s elections, evangelicals are finding themselves sharply divided on the candidates, even as Afro-Brazilian religions are finding a new voice in the political process. Writing in Christianity Today magazine (September), Marcos Simas and Carlos Fernandes report that while […]
While the “green wave” of progressive politics that is sweeping much of Latin America is unlikely to secularize the continent, it is creating a new pluralism as well as a growing divide between younger and older generations on religion and morality, according to specialists. RW was in Bogota, Colombia, shortly after Gustavo Petro assumed the […]
While some observers have seen the consistory and two days of meetings Pope Francis held in late August with 197 cardinals as a pre-conclave preparing the way for the election of a new pontiff in the not-too-distant future, Vatican observer Jean-Marie Guénois sees the pope preparing methodically to ensure the continuity of his line (Le […]
