Journalists and other observers seem to agree that religion in 2024 was more of the same from 2023—as seen in the slow-motion schism in the United Methodist Church and Israel’s war with Hamas and its repercussions for American Jews and Muslims. Even the Trump campaign and election were something of a replay of 2016 and […]
The label “cultural Christian” has become a new way to position oneself between theism and a rejection of the value of Western culture and civilization that has its foundation in Christianity, according to the Christian Science Monitor (December 18). Sophie Hills reports that Elon Musk, a name usually associated with atheism, now calls himself a […]
The anti-natalist movement, which calls for humans to stop having children, involves many secular people and can be seen as a reaction to recent technologies of birth that have given humans greater control over matters of life and death, writes Jack Jiang in Anthropology Today (November/December). While anti-natalism is not a new movement or philosophy, […]
Current Research Homosexuality is becoming rarer in the American Catholic priesthood and can be expected to be cut in half over the next 20 years, according to a study published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (20:8). Homosexuality has been widely documented as being more prevalent in the Catholic priesthood than in the […]
Paganism in Lithuania and in much of Europe is receiving more recognition from governments, but still has some way to go toward receiving equal treatment with other religions, writes Chas Clifton in his Pagan studies blog Letter from Hardscrabble Creek (December 14). The large Lithuanian Pagan movement Romuva, which was formally organized in the early […]
The large Pentecostal movement among Spain’s Roma or Gitano population has created a marriage market where Christian Gitano men are considered a “good catch,” writes Antonio Montañés Jiménez in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (online in December). As in other European countries, Roma have converted in significant numbers to Pentecostalism in Spain, as […]
While some have seen the Russian Orthodox Church’s new outreach to Africa and other regions of the global South as a partnership with the Russian state to extend its influence in these countries, that partnership is far from an equal one for the church, writes Mikhail Suslov in the journal Religions (December 11). The Russian […]
There is a fear of Judaism in Israeli culture, rooted in the concern that the Jewish religion will threaten and potentially eliminate secular Israeli identity, writes Gideon Katz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede-Boker, Israel) in Israel Affairs (30:4). Katz adopts a phenomenological approach to analyze Israeli literary works, including essays, critiques, and dystopian novels, […]
After the rapid fall of the Assad regime, the jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has quickly become the key player in Syria and is evolving towards an ideological refocusing that is “at once Sunni, Islamic, conservative and revolutionary,” according to Swiss researcher Patrick Haenni (European University Institute in Florence, Italy) in an interview with […]
In the case of Christian converts to Islam in the Philippines, religious conversion does not always involve a complete transformation or separation from previous religious and social ties, a recent study finds. The research by Asuna Yoshizawa (Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan), published in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations (online December 13), consisted of participant observations and […]
“Daoists, as much as devotees of all other religions in China, are severely affected by the Sinicization policies,” writes Karine Martin in the newsletter Bitter Winter (December 19–20). In an adaptation from her forthcoming book, Martin reports that the increasing restrictions against religions, started in 2018, have widened to target religious schooling and the times, […]
■ The current issue of Pneuma (46), the journal of Pentecostal studies, is devoted to higher education in Pentecostalism, a movement where tensions over higher learning persist despite institutional progress. While Pentecostalism has a reputation of discouraging higher education, denominations and even congregations in this tradition developed many Bible schools, seminaries, and most recently colleges […]
