Fundamentalist Baptists are facing their own sex abuse crisis, propelled by their churches’ pastor-centered model of leadership, according to an in-depth report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (December 9). The eight-month investigation by the newspaper found that “For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshipping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around […]
American Sikhs of the millennial generation are pioneering new human rights and political groups and are highly literate when it comes to Sikh teachings and rituals, but their influence has yet to be felt on the local congregational level. That is the conclusion of a series of articles on Sikh millennials in a special issue […]
Evangelicals in Brazil played a significant role in the election of hard-right President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, writes Filipe Domingues in the Jesuit magazine America (December 10). Bolsonaro, who took office on January 1, ran a religion-themed campaign that resonated with Brazil’s evangelicals. On social media, the candidate indicated that God had special plans for him […]
European churches are having an unexpected impact on turning back the influence of far-right populist parties, especially in Germany, writes Tobias Cremer in Religion and Global Society (December 20), a blog of the London School of Economics. Surveys have found that Western Christians have been more “immune” to voting for far-right parties in Europe than […]
Although the current Turkish government is supportive of Islam, various observations confirm a trend among a number of young Turkish people of rejecting institutional religion and turning either to deism or to atheism, writes Mucahit Bilici (City University of New York) in the Middle East Report (Fall). He quotes a Muslim professor of philosophy at […]
The conversion of Iranians to evangelical Christianity is more evident in Turkey than in Iran due to the greater freedom and the presence of refugees in that country, according to a National Public Radio report (December 14). In Turkey and across the Middle East and Europe, Muslim refugees are encountering and, in some cases, converting […]
Two Orthodox churches exist within the territory of the Republic of Moldova—one associated with the Russian Orthodox Church and the other with the Romanian Orthodox Church—but the Patriarchates of Moscow and of Bucharest are downplaying this conflict, writes Mihai-D. Grigore (Leibniz Institute for European History, Mainz, Germany) in Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West […]
The practice of exorcism in the Catholic Church has been growing worldwide, with the U.S. being no exception, according to a report in The Atlantic (December). Both belief in demonic possession and the use of exorcism by the Catholic Church has been growing in the U.S, as it has in Italy and other Catholic countries […]
A branch of Tibetan Buddhism known as the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) is growing globally as it adapts the Tibetan tradition to a Western audience, but is also attracting mounting criticism for its authoritarian practices, according to an article in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Winter). The NKT is one of the largest Buddhist traditions in […]
Faced with demographic realities within the movement and looking for new ways to reach Westerners and other people of non-Indian heritage, some members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) are promoting a project for communicating their spiritual message in a way more compatible with Western culture, explained Nicole Karapanagiotis (Rutgers University) at a […]
