General Articles
While leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Sudan seem reluctant to make Islamic law a source of legislation, the country’s ruling military council insists that “Islamic Sha
Police programs in the United States using undercover officers in mosques to monitor members suspected of extremism are facing pushback from the Muslim community, which tends to view such tactics as anti-Islamic and sinful, and are fostering distrust in Islamic institutions, according to Ibrahim
Nashville, Tennessee, has emerged as a center of Coptic Orthodox Christianity in the U.S. and also serves as a case study of Muslim-Coptic coexistence outside of a context of conflict and persecution, writes Lydia Yousief in the blog Public Orthodoxy (April 17).
Charismatic ministries, festivals, and conferences around the world have recently been closing, though not necessarily for lack of success and numbers, reports Charisma magazine (March).
While liberal Quakers have allowed room for non-theists in the last century, the church body, at least in the northern hemisphere, is “increasingly open-minded on the ultimate religious question: whether or not there is a God,” reports The Economist (April 26).
Mediums or psychics are increasingly finding a prominent place in the holistic healing milieu, especially among women, reports Lisa Held in the New York Times (March 24).
The growing interest in meditation practices—mostly disconnected from their traditional religious anchoring—means that some apps helping people to meditate are also enjoying an amazing success.
While different denominations in North America and Europe have had to close and sell places of worship due to shrinking attendance or moves of their followers to new urban areas, the recent figures published by the National Trust for Canada, with estimates that 9,000 religious spaces in the count
The violent persecution of Christians has intensified significantly in the last seven years, with much of this violence shifting to China and India, writes religion journalist Rupert Shortt in the British magazine The Tablet (April 20).
Contrary to headlines announcing the loss of Catholic Ireland and an accompanying loss of Catholic education in the country, Catholic schools continue to retain the loyalty of Irish parents, even though these schools are facing new secular pressures from the government.