From its title, University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith’s new book How Religion Went Obsolete (Oxford University Press, $34.99) may seem like other recent books charting a secular future for America and the rest of the world, but Smith has something different in mind. The book marshals survey research, qualitative interviews, and content analysis […]
In the Trump administration’s drive to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs from government agencies, faith-based and religious freedom initiatives have been caught in the crossfire, writes Brian Grim of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation on the website of the Coalition for Faith and Media (March 31). While Trump has established a White […]
As its momentum has dissipated, Hillsong’s place within the Contemporary Congregational Song (CCS) industry has been irrevocably altered, writes Daniel Thornton (Alphacrucis College, NSW, Australia) in the journal Religions (March 27). For decades, Hillsong was the dominant producer of the contemporary worship music used in churches worldwide. By 2017, it had managed to become a […]
New Calvinism, known for its impact on the wider evangelical world in the early 2000s, has retreated to more internal concerns, primarily serving its own community, writes social forecaster Aaron Renn in his Substack newsletter (March 7). The movement generated a considerable number of institutions, spokesmen, and old and new media and publishing outlets compared […]
The gender gap in churches is growing, with young men and women differing on social and moral issues. In the Substack newsletter American Storylines, pollster Daniel Cox analyzes the recent 2024 Pew Religious Landscape Survey and finds that more than 6 in 10 (61 percent) young Christian women say abortion should be legal in all […]
A growing number of converts to various forms of Protestantism in France come from Catholic backgrounds, reflecting broader societal shifts in religious attachment, writes Claire Bernole in the French Catholic weekly La Vie (April 3). According to an Ifop survey published in January, 25 percent of French Protestants were not born into Protestant families, with […]
Kosovo, the Muslim-majority Balkan nation, is seeing a growing trend of Muslims converting to Catholicism, reports Sonia Sarkar in Religion Unplugged (March 17). She writes that a group called the Decanski Movement Association has been promoting the voluntary exit from Islam, while also seeking to preserve Albanian national identity and values under the motto: “We […]
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has left behind a fractured country and an increasingly divisive politics that raises new concerns about the safety of Christians and also the Alawite minority, the heterodox branch of Shia Islam espoused by the Assad family, according to two reports. In The Dispatch (March 16), Michael Reneau, […]
Relations within and between American and European churches are becoming frayed due to the growth of populism and challenges to the post-Cold War international order, according to two reports. The newsletter Evangelical Focus (February 18–19) reports on growing tensions both within European churches but especially between evangelicals in Europe and religious conservatives in the U.S. […]
First there were the progressive “exvangelicals” who gained prominence in popular books and academia for their accounts of abuse, hypocrisy, and politicization in the institutional church, along with their emphasis on how such tendencies clashed with the ethics of Jesus. Now, conservative ex-evangelicals are allegedly gaining attention, embracing politics while retaining their churchly settings and […]
