While new religious movements (NRMs) tend to be seen by church and state authorities as a threat to “spiritual security” in the Russian Federation, they seem mostly to be perceived as a minor and relatively innocuous phenomenon in other post-Soviet countries if one reads the articles on various NRMs in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia, […]
In areas where they have no access to “Tamil-orientated” temples, Tamil Hindus either visit non-Tamil temples or perform their own rituals in non-institutional settings, reports Demelza Jones (Aston University, Birmingham) in the journal Religion (Jan.). Tamil temples tend to be different from those of Northern India. Their deity images are carved from black granite, while […]
Just as the growth of Methodist piety in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to trade union activism in Britain, the southern African country of Botswana is seeing strong church-based involvement in its burgeoning labor movement, writes Pnina Werbner in Anthropology Today (Feb.). She writes, “In Botswana, unlike in some neighboring countries including South […]
While India’s gurus have long combined financial acumen with spiritual and ascetic virtuosity, today’s gurus are more likely to market and sell a wide range of products and services, often with the support of Hindu politicians, reports BBC News (Feb. 10). Prominent guru-entrepreneurs include Baba Ramdev, who is behind Patanjali, India’s fastest growing consumer good […]
A growing number of Christian study centers based around prestigious American universities are taking “advantage of their campuses’ multicultural marketplace of ideas,” even as evangelical groups have faced exclusion from these centers of education, writes Molly Worthen in the New York Times (Jan. 17). Christian study centers, which occupy private buildings off campus and exist […]
Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular way to support new ventures in business and non-profits, and now new congregations and other religious organizations are investing in such campaigns as they seek to expand their ministries, according to the current issue of the Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (No. 9). Such crowdfunding sites as […]
Vancouver, long Canada’s most unchurched city, is showing that megachurches and other religious innovations can flourish there, even if their American origins are downplayed. The Christian Century (Jan. 6) notes that Vancouver “is known in religious circles for being a very secular city in a secular province in an unchurched part of the continent. According […]
The nature of the Islamic State (IS) gives rise to various and often conflicting approaches among scholars and other observers monitoring its development. In an article published in Terrorism and Political Violence (Nov.-Dec. 2015), Jeffrey Kaplan (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) and Christopher P. Costa (Department of the Navy) approach it as an instance of a […]
For the past few years, women have started to serve as assistant priests for the Zoroastrian community in Iran, reports Giulia Bertoluzzi in the Swiss monthly Sept (Dec.-Jan.). Following the emigration of many Zoroastrians—including priests—after the Islamic Revolution, there has been a severe shortage of priests for performing the rituals of this very old, Persian-born […]
A spate of attacks on Palestinians and churches and mosques in Israel in the last year has put the spotlight on the growth of extremism among Jewish youths, reports a Religion News Service-based article in the Washington Post (Jan. 20). Both religious Zionists and secular Jews were shocked by reports of youths in the Zionist […]
