General Articles
Celebrity among evangelical women, especially the wives of prominent pastors, has helped them to circumvent the obstacles to female leadership in evangelicalism, giving them disproportionate influence in the movement, according to historian Kate Bowler, the author of a recent book on p
President Donald Trump’s appointment of Paula White as head of the White House’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, a unit in the Office of Public Liaison tasked with outreach to religious groups, suggests that the mainstreaming of Pentecostal Christians within the Christian right is ab
Over the course of a decade the percentage of priests turning down offers to become bishops has tripled, according to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, as reported in La Croix International (December 13).
In a field that is relatively unpoliced and protected by claims to spiritual authority, yoga teachers are facing accusations and pressure about inappropriate touching and other forms of abuse against followers, according to Katherine Rosman in the New York Times (November 10).
While evangelical churches are often viewed as safe havens from gang life in El Salvador and much of Central America, there is actually significant interaction between these churches and gangs, writes Stephen Offutt in the journal Social Forces (online in December).
Not a few Muslims in France see Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the model of a modern Islamic leader, and such feelings accord with Turkish efforts for influence across the Muslim world, writes Ariane Bonzon in the Revue des Deux Mondes (November).
Mindfulness meditation is returning to its origins in Japan, though the more secular style it has assumed in the West is proving difficult to integrate with Buddhism in that country, reports Karen Jensen in Tricycle magazine (Winter).
Exorcism has been growing in Catholic and Protestant corners for some time, but the perception of high demand for the practice among church leaders of both traditions is leading to greater cooperation and consultation, reports Griffin Paul Jackson in Christianity Today magazine
While German-speaking Lutheran congregations in America have long been agents for preserving a specific tradition, pressures for change are creating new dilemmas, writes Thorsten Wettich (University of Bremen, Germany) in the monthly Protestant journal Materialdienst der EZW (Oc
Muslim imams are viewed in Europe with a mixture of fears about radical preachers and hopes that they might provide crucial help in the integration of Muslims, concerns which are drawing new attention to how they should be trained in the context of Western societies.