General Articles
In areas where they have no access to “Tamil-orientated” temples, Tamil Hindus either visit non-Tamil temples or perform their own rituals in non-institutional settings, reports Demelza Jones (Aston University, Birmingham) in the journal Religion (Jan.).
Just as the growth of Methodist piety in the 19th and early 20th centuries led to trade union activism in Britain, the southern African country of Botswana is seeing strong church-based involvement in its burgeoning labor movement, writes Pnina Werbner in Anthropology To
While India’s gurus have long combined financial acumen with spiritual and ascetic virtuosity, today’s gurus are more likely to market and sell a wide range of products and services, often with the support of Hindu politicians, reports BBC News (Feb. 10).
A growing number of Christian study centers based around prestigious American universities are taking “advantage of their campuses’ multicultural marketplace of ideas,” even as evangelical groups have faced exclusion from these centers of education, writes Molly Worthen in the New York Times
Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular way to support new ventures in business and non-profits, and now new congregations and other religious organizations are investing in such campaigns as they seek to expand their ministries, according to the current issue of the Heidelberg Journa
Vancouver, long Canada’s most unchurched city, is showing that megachurches and other religious innovations can flourish there, even if their American origins are downplayed. The Christian Century (Jan.
The nature of the Islamic State (IS) gives rise to various and often conflicting approaches among scholars and other observers monitoring its development. In an article published in Terrorism and Political Violence (Nov.-Dec.
For the past few years, women have started to serve as assistant priests for the Zoroastrian community in Iran, reports Giulia Bertoluzzi in the Swiss monthly Sept (Dec.-Jan.).
A spate of attacks on Palestinians and churches and mosques in Israel in the last year has put the spotlight on the growth of extremism among Jewish youths, reports a Religion News Service-based article in the Washington Post (Jan. 20).
The decision taken in November 2015 by the Israeli government to allow 9,000 Ethiopians previously not recognized as Jews to immigrate to Israel marks a last step in successive approaches to the issue, as reported by Bernard Dichek in the Jerusalem Report (Jan. 25).