Posts Tagged ‘Volume 39 No. 9’

Elites gravitating to religion—and religious moving to elites

Talk of a religious revival among American elites and creatives may be an exaggeration, but there are signs that those in the art worlds and other elite segments of society are showing a new interest in spirituality and religion. The New York Times (July 14) reports that a group of tech savvy young artists are […]

Closing congregations repurposing properties for affordable housing

Faced with the prospect of closing their houses of worship, an increasing number of congregations are repurposing their properties to provide affordable housing, especially as the housing crisis intensifies, writes Nadia Mian in The Conversation (July 19). It is estimated that 100,000 congregations may close in the next few decades due to declining membership, aging […]

CURRENT RESEARCH

■  Recent church planting efforts tend to be near each other and are concentrated in Northeastern and West Coast areas as well as Florida and Texas, a new analysis finds. In his newsletter Graphs about Religion (July 25), Ryan Burge discusses the results of his study of two leading church planting networks, Acts 29 and […]

Brazilian Spiritists in Germany: integrating or staying among themselves?

While religious communities are often thought to be resources for the integration of migrants, the opposite can also be true, as Helmar Kurz (University of Muenster, Germany) writes in an article in the International Journal of Latin American Religions (June) based on his research on the role of Brazilian Spiritist centers in Germany for migrants. […]

Congo attempts regulation as revival churches proliferate

Following an administrative decision in June by the Minister of Justice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo intended to regulate the proliferation of evangelical churches in large Congolese cities, many of those churches suddenly find themselves in an irregular situation, reports William Minh Hào Nguyen in La Croix International (July 26). Revival churches stemming […]

Youth culture in Japan now based on weak self, vicarious religion

Japanese youth culture is shifting from embracing spiritual and self-empowerment to stressing a “weak self,” which includes invoking and having relationships with self-created sentient beings, Satoko Fujiwara and Hiroki Miura report in the journal Social Compass (71:2). In analyzing popular youth culture, particularly pop songs, anime, and online sites, especially X, they find references to […]

Tibetan Buddhist women’s ordination—so close yet so far

Although a group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns received full ordination in 2022, breaking with centuries of monastic tradition, the practice continues to be resisted by Tibetan clergy, writes Vicki Mackenzie in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Summer). Hosted and initiated by the royal family in Bhutan, 144 women became the first-ever Tibetan nuns to receive full […]

Findings & Footnotes

■ There have been several recent books about the emergence of “wokeness,” and some of them have traced this diffuse phenomenon of political correctness and identity politics relating to race and gender to religious or quasi-religious origins and sentiments. There is some debate as to the definitions and extent of “wokeness” and whether it is losing […]