At a conference better known for holding forth on the steady advance of secularization in much of Europe, it was striking how many of the papers at this year’s meeting of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion in Barcelona showed the growing political influence of religious groups and discourse on the continent. In […]
After more than fifty years of existence, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal’s (CCR) influence is now spreading in the Catholic Church through groups that are adopting some Charismatic practices while not wanting to be identified as Charismatics, writes Valérie Aubourg (Catholic University of Lyon) in Social Compass (June). Based on her research in France, Aubourg distinguishes […]
There has been a significant decline in religious freedom from just a decade ago, a trend which may adversely affect economic growth, according to an analysis by the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (RFBF). A just-released Pew Research study found that governments in 52 out of 198 countries and territories had high or very high […]
Quebec has moved toward a strong form of secularism, known as laïcité, that challenges the growth of religious pluralism and of Islam in the province, reports Michael Higgins in Commonweal magazine (July 9). In June the National Assembly in Quebec City passed Bill 21, a law seeking to address the challenges of religious pluralism. The […]
The desire to dissociate Polish identity from a Catholic version of it forcefully promoted by the church has led a number of non-Jewish Poles to support the renewal of Jewish culture, according to Geneviève Zubrzycki (University of Michigan) at the International Society for the Sociology of Religion conference in Barcelona that RW attended. The kind […]
Increasingly, one can notice the development of evangelical activities related to Israel in the Southern hemisphere—a rise that can be attributed to internal factors, but also to external influences involving U.S. Christian Zionists and the Israeli state, according to Paul Freston (Wilfrid Laurier University) at the conference of the International Society for the Sociology of […]
Despite an early presence of secularist movements in Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, little was heard about them subsequently. But a reemergence of these movements over the past 10 years is drawing new attention to secularist activism, according to Hugo H. Rabbia (Catholic University of Cordoba and National University of Cordoba) […]
The label of “mushūkyō,” or non-religious, that is spread through Japan’s school system is having the effect of stigmatizing children with religious—often Catholic or religious minority—backgrounds, leading to their “silent exodus” from churches, according to a study in the journal Religions (July 1). Alec R. LeMay of Bunkyo University conducted observations of children, some of […]
The current issue of the Review of Religion and Chinese Society (6:1) is devoted to “negotiations and diversifications of China’s Christianities.” The stress on “negotiation” among these articles suggests that church-state outcomes in China are far from uniform, varying by the resources and strategies that churches employ in bargaining with officials for various privileges and […]
The recent establishment as a pilgrimage site of a reenacted Temple of Solomon by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) in Brazil suggests how Christian Zionism circulates on a global level with Israel not always at the center of such a movement. The Pentecostal church built the temple in São Paulo as […]
