Young people in the Turkish Black Sea region are increasingly breaking away from Islam and seeking to join Christian communities, reports Evangelical Focus newsletter (November 22). “What is striking,” Johannes Reimer writes, “is that Christian missionaries are rarely responsible for this awakening. For one thing, they have hardly any access to the region, and for […]
While the Orthodox Church has enjoyed special status since 2002 through a concordat-like agreement, the ruling Georgian Dream party, which won the October parliamentary elections with 53.9 percent of the vote, is proposing to make Orthodox Christianity the state religion through a constitutional amendment, reports special correspondent Thomas Guichard in La Croix International (Dec. 2). […]
While faith-based films have grown sharply over the past few decades and drawn a global audience, mainstream movie studios still largely steer clear of these projects despite a clear economic upside, Daniel Parris writes in his Substack newsletter Stat Significant (September 25). The early 2000s witnessed the emergence of numerous independent studios dedicated to creating […]
The relationship between Islam and space exploration is evolving as more Muslim-majority nations venture into space activities, writes Béatrice Hainaut (IRSEM, Institute for Strategic Research, Paris) in the online Bulletin de l’Observatoire international du religieux (October, in French). The first instance of a Muslim in space was in 1985, and to date, 18 Muslim astronauts […]
A “hinge moment” may have been reached in the longtime battle against the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), as the jihadist movement has been “mustering forces in Syria’s Badiya desert, recruiting and training a new band of holy warriors to resurrect its dream of ruling a caliphate,” reports Brian Stewart in Quillette (October 10). This […]
Since its emergence in the early 1990s among Cambodia’s Muslim minority (about 5 percent of the population), Salafism has undergone significant changes, with young Salafis seeking cooperation and understanding with other Islamic groups. Writing in Mediterranean Politics (online October 7), Zoltan Pall (Austrian Academy of Sciences) explains that these younger adherents have sought to build […]
While schismatic separations from the United Methodist Church (UMC) have largely taken place within the U.S., the largest being the Global Methodist Church, the denomination is now facing the situation of its international partners threatening to leave, according to Evangelical Focus (September 9), a newsletter on European evangelicals. So far, the denomination has lost around […]
While allowing for “prudent adherence” to the messages, the Vatican has recently taken steps to tighten control over the alleged Marian apparitions in Medjugorje (Bosnia and Herzegovina), writes Mikael Corre in La Croix International (September 20). On September 19, the Holy See issued a decree that does not formally recognize the supernatural nature of the […]
In recent years, a new generation of young left-wing Christians has emerged in France, challenging the notion that Christian leftists were disappearing in the face of right-wing Catholics, writes Pascale Tournier in the Catholic weekly La Vie (September 26). This group, primarily consisting of individuals aged 25–40, is beginning to organize and assert itself in […]
Australia’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2017 has opened the door to a series of federal, state, and territory-level religious discrimination bills (or proposed bills) that focus on anti-discrimination rather than protection of the autonomy of religious institutions, curtailing the capacity of such organizations to govern their affairs, writes Ian Tregenza in the Journal of […]
