While psychedelic substances have been making the rounds of alternative and mystical spiritual groups for several years, they are only just being embraced in liberal Christian and Jewish circles, where a mood of skepticism and caution still surrounds them. In a two-part series on the topic in Lucid News (April 20 and May 4), Don […]
The combined effects of the pandemic and the populism driven by the Trump presidency have caused new divisions among evangelicals that have reached down into everyday congregational life, writes Tim Alberta in The Atlantic (May 10). While divisions between evangelical leaders and activists were on display for all to see during the Trump administration and […]
While Satanism still exists, a gap between “rationalist’” and “occultist” or “theistic” groups “largely defines the global Satanist scene,” writes Massimo Introvigne in his newsletter Bitter Winter (May 24). Seeing Satan as more of a symbol of power and the priority of the self than a sentient being, rationalists eschew the supernaturalism of the occultist […]
Muslims are depicted more negatively in U.S. and Western media than members of other religions, a new study finds. Writing in the Conversation (May 29), political scientists Erik Bleich and A. Maurits van der Veen report that while newspapers tend to publish a balanced proportion of negative depictions of other minority religions, Muslims face negative […]
In a rapid succession of events during the month of May, the Orthodox Church in Northern Macedonia, which had been separated from other Orthodox churches for 55 years due to an unresolved conflict with the Serbian Patriarchate, was recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) of Constantinople and also restored into communion with the Serbian Orthodox […]
The Orthodox landscape in Ukraine continues to shift quickly as the war intensifies, with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) recently announcing it will cut its ties with Moscow. The church had been losing members, clergy, and parishes as well as facing severe legal restrictions, according to a report in The Pillar […]
New Age concepts, teachings, and practices from the West are increasingly being “psychologized” and used as a way of controlling the population as they are popularized and translated in China, writes Anna Iskra in the journal Nova Religio (25:4). What is called the Body-Mind-Spirit (shen xin ling) movement has expanded throughout China since the early […]
■ Church Planters: Inside the World of Religion Entrepreneurs (Oxford University Press, $34.95), by Richard N. Pitt, responds to a noticeable gap in research about the practice of establishing new Protestant congregations, which has grown markedly in recent years. As the title of the book implies, Pitt takes a supply-side approach to church planting, looking […]
Peoplehood is a spinoff of the spiritually oriented exercise company SoulCycle, but without the workout. The fledgling company, founded by SoulCycle entrepreneurs Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, conferred with psychologists, spiritual leaders, and scientists during the pandemic and started the first Peoplehood sessions last summer. The theme of connecting with others without the exercise came […]
