The Waldensian Church, considered the oldest Protestant body in the world, is facing a mixed picture of growing urban churches and declining rural ones in its home country of Italy. The Waldensians started out as a perfectionist and egalitarian sect in the Middle Ages that merged with the Reformation in the 15th century, becoming first […]
Since 2010, the number of people leaving mainline churches in Germany has continued to rise, writes Sylvie Toscer-Angot in Eurel (Feb.), an academic website based in Strasbourg, France, that provides updates on sociological and legal developments in the field of religion in European countries. Leaving one of the mainline churches represents a purely administrative move […]
The terrorist attacks in Paris and more recently in Brussels are leading investigators to look at the Francophone factor in the spread of Sunni Islamic extremism in the world, write William McCants and Christopher Meserole in the Brookings Institution blog Order from Chaos (March 25). The researchers looked at the number of Sunni foreign fighters […]
Under the Islamic State (IS) as well as Al Qaeda, soccer stadiums have re-emerged as preferred jihadist targets, but, at the same time, the game has become a potent tool in their recruitment efforts, according to a study in the American Behavioral Scientist (online version, March 2). Last month’s bombing at a soccer stadium in […]
Saudi leaders have been attempting to introduce reforms and exercise more control on the forms of Islam they have been funding, especially in the wake of terrorism striking close to home, as well as falling oil prices, but such efforts may have polarizing effects, writes Yves Gonzalez-Quijano (University of Lyon, France) in his blog, Culture […]
Twenty five years after the end of the USSR, it is clearer how religious minorities in the Caucasus region have adjusted to environments in which new national identities have succeeded the Soviet common identity and how such pluralism is “managed” by majorities in power. Each country of the Caucasus has a clear majority religious group: […]
The days when evangelicals defined themselves by their uncompromising style of biblical interpretation may be over according to an article by religion writer Jim Hinch, senior editor for Guideposts magazine, in the Los Angeles Review of Books (Feb. 15). Hinch sees this growing diversity as part of a wider transformation of evangelical Christianity confronted by […]
American evangelical colleges are under pressure to diversify their student body and faculty as well as their worship programs according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 5). The recent controversy over the firing of professor Larycia Hawkins from Wheaton College over her beliefs about Islam (claiming that Christians and Muslims worship […]
Jewish-Christian relations have appeared to enter a new stage of tolerance and acceptance, although it is uncertain to what degree the new conciliatory attitudes will reach laypeople on the congregational level. In an exchange of letters marking the 50th anniversary of the Vatican document Nostra Aetate in December, more than 50 Orthodox rabbis issued a […]
The Czech Republic has been called the most secular and atheistic society in the world, but its atheism is actually not much higher than in other European countries, and churches still play important roles in the nation writes sociologist Petr Pabian in the current issue of the Czech theological journal Communio Vittorum (1:2015). Pabian argues […]
