General Articles
Faced with space constraints in urban environments such as Singapore, religious groups are responding in flexible ways, writes Orlando Woods (Singapore Management University) in the journal Social Compass (March). Singapore represents an ideal case study for such observations.
Widespread sexual abuse and the ability of abusive pastors and church leaders to move on to other congregations without censure or reproof in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) may also be a problem in other parts of the evangelical world, writes Dale Coulter in a blog at First Things
Conservative American Muslim leaders are more likely to be concerned about a creeping liberalization in their own ranks than about promoting Sharia law or some other political issue, writes Mustafa Akyol in the New York Times (February 18).
When it comes to following gurus and spiritual masters, “[w]e have come to know too much to worship unconditionally,” says Bernhard Pörksen, a German media scholar and professor of media studies at the University of Tübingen, in an interview with Ursula Richard published in Buddhismus Aktuel
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is still in a period of “revival” marked by the rehabilitation of its position in society and rapid institutional expansion, but “signs of crisis are mounting rapidly,” writes Sergey Chapnin in IWM Post (Fall/Winter), a publication of the Vienna-based In
With some 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating in Africa and hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers currently staying in African countries, an unexpected consequence is that some of them return home after having converted to Christianity, reports journalist Christopher Rhodes in UnHerd
Despite the attempt of a syncretistic movement known as Chrislam to bridge the differences between Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa, the public reception to such groups has been characterized more by sharp debate and hostility than interest and acceptance, according to a study by Core
The Catholic Church in the Philippines is losing its once substantial civic role as it faces growing secularism and an aggressively anti-Catholic president, writes Adam Willis in Commonweal magazine (February 22).
While the New Atheist movement, represented by such authors and spokesmen as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, has lost much of its public prominence, its contentious form of atheism is now more often directed at academic liberalism as well as Islam.
There are signals of a new dynamism of the religious left in the U.S. for similar—if opposite—reasons to those that drove the Moral Majority on the right 40 years ago, writes Tom Gjelten in NPR News (Jan. 24).