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.
Pentecostal healing practices in Africa and in the African diaspora are being adapted to different contexts and are becoming more individualized, according to an article in the International Bulletin of Mission Research (online in October, 2020). The study of eight Pentecostal churches and their healing practices was conducted in Kampala, Nairobi, Cape Town, and London in such denominations and networks as Heaven on Earth International Ministries, Revival Church, Pentecostal Universal Church and the Gospel Harvest Church of London.
Two recent attacks, barely a month apart, by Islamic extremists has intensified France’s struggle with political Islam, but it may also be reviving the government’s controversial campaign against “cults,” according to new religious movement specialists.
As China gains new influence in Hong Kong, religious groups find themselves divided about the future of and prospects for religious freedom in the former British colony. Amidst protests that have engulfed the city, China introduced a security law in the summer that monitors and punishes “subversive” activity.
The arrest of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, in late August in Cairo has sparked a succession crisis, write the editors of European Eye on Radicalization (October 2, 2020). At the helm of the Islamist movement for the past seven years, after the hard repression by Egyptian authorities that started in 2013, Ezzat was considered as a hardliner and had possibly been living abroad during part of that time (European Eye on Radicalization, August 30, 2020).
The New York Times (August 28, 2020) reports that “a new corporate clergy has arisen to formalize the remote work. They go by different names: ritual consultants, sacred designers, soul-centered advertisers. They have degrees from divinity schools. Their business is borrowing from religious tradition to bring spiritual richness to corporate America.”
Ireland does not look like the country that one would spontaneously associate with Hinduism. But the number of Hindus had grown to more than 14,000 by the time of the 2016 census, and representatives of the Hindu community estimate that the number is now somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 due to immigration.
A “civil war” being fought between “global jihadis is intensifying,” writes Mohammad Hafez in the CTC Sentinel (September, 2020), the newsletter of the Combatting Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While al-Qa`ida and the Islamic State share enemies and ideological commitments, these movements have fragmented under the stress of conflict and territorial retreat.
The growth and networking of “double lifers,” those ultra-Orthodox Jews who doubt and often secretly live lives in conflict with their religious communities, is having a liberalizing impact on Orthodox Judaism, writes Michal Leibowitz in the Jewish Review of Books (Summer, 2020). In reviewing the recent book Hidden Heretics; Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age, Leibowitz notes that the phenomenon of double lifers first became visible in 2002, when disillusioned ultra-Orthodox Jews “seized on the anonymity of blogs to share their opinions on subjects that they couldn’t speak about openly in their communities: crises of faith, reactions to rabbinic sexual abuse scandals, reflections on banned books, criticisms of the ultra-Orthodox leadership, and the like.”
