Features
The role of missionaries has long been recognized as consequential, but can the missionary effect endure long after the missions have closed and been replaced by indigenous churches and leaders?
Just as the rapid rise of artificial intelligence has raised new concerns as well as utopian hopes about a post-human future in work, religious professionals are debating the real prospects of “spiritual robots” replacing worshippers’ performance of traditional rituals, writes anthropologist Holl
Just as there is mounting concern about the effect of smartphones and social media on mental health, the pandemic has raised new questions about the impact of digital religious expressions on emotional and spiritual life.
The pandemic has led Jainism to engage in greater community and social involvement, resulting in a renewed connection to India but also helping the religion transcend traditional caste and sect identities, writes Brianne Donaldson in the journal Nova Religio (January/February).
In our annual review last month, RW speculated that the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI might spur conservative Catholics on to greater dissatisfaction and protests against the papacy of Francis, who is seen as having a freer hand to implement his progressive reforms.
While national college enrollment has decreased by 13 percent over the last decade, a new breed of “classical” religious colleges have defied the crises of Covid, economic recession, and a smaller national pool of applicants with significant increases in enrollment, writes Jeremy Tate in Firs
Religion in 2022 saw the intensification of trends that were visible in the previous year, none more dramatic and traumatic than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on Eastern Orthodoxy.
While financial and sexual scandals have taken place among Buddhist monks for decades in Thailand, the spread of news and criticism of this behavior through social media is having a detrimental effect on the reciprocal relationship between clergy and laity, write Brooke Schedneck and Steve Epstei
It came as no surprise that many of the sessions and papers presented at the November meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Baltimore were devoted to the pandemic.
Theological education programs have been growing in evangelical churches for members who want to study church history and theology without going to seminary or who don’t feel called to the ministry, reports Maria Baer in Christianity Today magazine (November).