Religious groups and volunteers, particularly evangelicals, are becoming a dominant influence in prisons thanks to a new model of incarceration that relies on outsourcing rehabilitation programming to faith groups, write Michael Hallett (North Florida State University) and Byron Johnson (Baylor University) in the online magazine Public Discourse (October 25). Facing unprecedented levels of violence and […]
Leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), who prophesized that Donald Trump would be reelected, show few signs of recanting their predictions, according to scholars assessing the movement at a recent meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, which RW attended. This is even as a formalization of the movement seems likely, […]
Suspicious about proselytizing initiatives targeting Jews, anti- missionary Jewish groups over the past few years have exposed several Christian missionaries posing as Orthodox Jews, including most recently a father and son who had changed their name from Dawson to Isaacson and been active as Orthodox rabbis in several U.S. Jewish communities, reports the Jewish Chronicle […]
The new, recently released Faith Communities Today (FACT) study shows continuing declines in congregational attendance, although about one-third of congregations report growth. The survey, which was conducted right before the pandemic and is issued every five years, was based on questions about congregational life sent to 15,278 congregations and their leaders from 80 denominations. The […]
While evangelicals in El Salvador, pandered to by the country’s conservative populist president, Nayib Bukele, have been met with growing suspicion by the left, this growing group of Christians has adopted many of the liberation theological views of Catholics, writes Claire Moll Namas in Religion and Global Society (October 25), a blog of the London […]
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has become a hero for many conservative Christians in the West (see the New Yorker, September 13), seems also to be generally appreciated by mainstream churches in the country, writes Hungarian sociologist of religion Gergely Rosta in a background report published in German by Nachrichtendienst Östliche Kirchen (September 9). […]
“Despite a history of sectarian strife, cooperation between the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in Ireland has deepened in recent years, with the churches increasingly speaking with one voice on important social and political issues,” writes Ger FitzGerald in the online magazine The Conversation (October 19). FitzGerald reports on the Church Leaders […]
The Catholic Church may not be winning the hearts and minds of those engaged in the war on drugs in the Philippines, but the church is playing an important role in preventing violence and helping victims, according to University of Louisville sociologist David Buckley. In a paper presented at the recent meeting of the Society […]
