The growing interference of the Military Rabbinate in military affairs and the influx of soldiers from religious Zionism have represented a significant shift for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), turning them into something quite different from the apolitical and areligious army dreamed of by the state’s founding fathers in 1948, writes Samy Cohen (Sciences Po […]
Although Catholicism remains central and widespread in the Philippines, the religious landscape is diversifying, with a noticeable growth and development of evangelical churches, writes Jérémy Ianni in Ad Extra (September 26), the French Catholic website of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, dedicated to reflections and dialogue about missionary work. While Catholicism, a legacy of Spanish […]
“Divine femininity” has become a popular phenomenon on social media, particularly TikTok, for its teaching that women need to harness a particular feminine energy to improve sex relations and everyday life, reports the magazine Teen Vogue (August 13). Sithara Ranasinghe writes that divine femininity is based on the idea that everyone holds two core energies […]
The Satanic Temple (TST), a quasi-religious and activist group seeking to spread secularism and strict church-state separation, is experiencing a “mass exit,” according to Diego Córdova and Ryan Cragun of the University of Tampa. In a paper presented at the August meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Chicago, attended by RW, […]
While Fethullah Gülen (1941–2024) was the undisputed leader of the Hizmet (“service”) movement for over 50 years, his authority gradually became routinized into a bureaucratic structure of hierarchies, procedures, and offices, writes Ida Hartmann (University of Copenhagen) in an article in Contemporary Islam (online August 25) focusing on the aftermath of the dramatic 2016 coup […]
Anglicanism in the UK is facing a “severe crisis,” demonstrated by the unprecedented resignations, or calls for the resignations, of all four church leaders in England, Scotland, and Wales, writes Martyn Percy in the Journal of Anglican Studies (online in August). The cases of Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop […]
Charismatic Christianity is having a little-known but significant growth in the Punjab region of India, the cradle and stronghold of Sikhism, according to Miroslav Atanasov of the University of Colorado. Although hard numbers are difficult to come by, the recent growth is significant enough to have concerned Sikh leaders about its effect on the stability […]
With the Trump administration’s June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities considerably weakening the regime, it is now increasingly focused on Iraq as one of its last footholds in the region, posing an existential threat to the survival of the country’s Christians and other religious minorities, reports Providence newsletter (August 18). After decades of war, […]
Immigrant and second-generation African young people in Britain are engaging in transnational and hybrid religious practices that contrast with adult patterns of religion and migration, according to a study by Dominic Pasura of the University of Glasgow. Pasura, who presented his study at the August meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in […]
Singapore’s megachurches have been known as some of the largest worldwide, but recently there has been some disenchantment about these mammoth congregations and the movement of some ex-members toward mainline churches, writes Robbie B. H. Goh in the current issue of the journal Studies in World Christianity (31:2). Singapore and other global South countries (such […]
