The Druze religion is facing a pattern of defection and inactivity among its young people, according to The Economist magazine (September 21). The approximately one million members of the Druze are spread across Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, but the esoteric religion does not proselytize and only accepts members whose parents are both Druze. The faith […]
A new generation of Jewish children in the Bay Area are being raised in multiracial households, according to the Portrait of Bay Area Jewish Life and Communities study released last February, which means that congregations will have to become accustomed to Jews who are black or have other backgrounds not usually associated with Judaism, writes […]
The global growth of the Noahide movement, which consists of ex-Christians seeking to follow Jewish law and monotheism, has come to the attention of Jewish leaders who are trying to build support for world Zionism, but there are sharply differing views on how Jewish these new believers can be, writes Rachel Z. Feldman in the […]
Uruguay is slowly becoming more accommodating to the expression of religion in the public sphere after years of strict separation between the state and public religious expression, according to a new study by Nestor Da Costa in the journal Social Compass (online in August). secularism was traditionally close to the French laïcité model of church-state […]
Abortion has become a contentious political issue in the Latin American countries of Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, even though more as a subject of debate than a change in policy. Writing on the news site Vox (August 9), Amy Erica Smith argues that the new attention to abortion is less a sign of secularization in […]
Buddhist scouting is the most recent addition to scouting organizations in France, where they were helped by French Muslim scouts in launching their organization, reports the French newsletter LaïCités (August). Alongside French Catholic scouts (of various shades), Protestant scouts and secular scouts, they are part of a lively and growing interest in scouting in France, […]
Christian activity directed at North Korea is continuing despite sanctions and travel bans, even if such efforts are changing their focus from evangelism to social service, according to political scientist Joseph Yee. In a paper presented at the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the researcher reported that from 1985 to 2012 there were 480 […]
Examining the paradox of a country where book-vending machines sell Korean versions of the Talmud and documentaries on Judaism are broadcast on television, at the same time that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has found South Korea to be one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world although there are not more than 100 Jewish […]
“Since the beginning of the 2000s, a kind of home schooling providing children with Christian education has emerged in the big cities [of China], such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou,” writes Xiaoming Sheng (University of Cambridge) in an article published in the British Journal of Religious Education (online in June). The scarcity of research on […]
The “Word of Wisdom,” which dictates diet regulations in Mormonism, is not followed strictly by most Latter-Day Saints, with only about half of church members saying they do so, according to a study in the independent Mormon journal Dialogue (Spring). The prohibition of such beverages as caffeinated soda and coffee has become a well-known feature […]
