General Articles
Christian “micro-schools” have been started across the country, “offering a hybrid in-class and at-home education to keep costs down and the odds of survival up in an increasingly competitive K-12 sector,” writes Vince Bielski on the Real Clear Investigations website (August 17).
There is a clergy shortage in Zen Buddhist communities in the U.S., leading to new roles for the laity but also greater bureaucracy in some cases and a looming crisis in transmission as teaching and rituals are scaled back, according to sociologist Rebecca S. K. Li of the College of New Jersey.
After years of decline, Basic Ecclesial Communities are sensing that the time might be ripe for growth again thanks to support from Pope Francis, reports journalist Eduardo Campos Lima in La Croix International (July 28).
Sweden’s reputation as a leader in secularization trends still holds, though it seems less monolithic when looked at regionally, according to an article by Paul Glader on the website Religion Unplugged (August 11).
The recent soccer player-buying spree by Saudi Arabia also involves both geopolitical and religious dimensions, writes James M. Dorsey in his Substack newsletter The Turbulent World (August 5).
In regime-controlled areas of war-torn Syria, there are now 620 centers where people can practice yoga and meditate for free, reports Petra Ramsauer in the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag (August 6).
Pope Francis’s recent naming of 21 new cardinals in early July is likely to be decisive in tilting the vote of the next papal conclave and keeping the papacy in the mold of Francis, according to reports.
Departures from the United Methodist Church (UMC) are increasing, reaching over 6,000 congregations—a fifth of the U.S. total—that have now received permission to leave the denomination, the Associated Press reports (July 6).
Witchcraft has become a multibillion-dollar business, with a level of commercialization that has been affecting these Pagans’ practices and relation to the natural world, writes sociologist Helen Berger in The Conversation (July 26).
Source: Source: Halal Focus.
Lab-grown meat has become a topic of interest for startups, as the possibility of its being certified kosher or halal could open up access to mil