General Articles
A late March conference on religious demography at the Pew Research Center in Washington, attended by RW, suggests that this field is expanding and finally engaging secular-minded demographers.
It comes as little surprise that recent research conducted in several European countries shows that Islam holds by far the top position when it comes to the amount of secular media reports dealing with religion: media attention is naturally drawn toward conflicts and tensions.
The Waldensian Church, considered the oldest Protestant body in the world, is facing a mixed picture of growing urban churches and declining rural ones in its home country of Italy.
Since 2010, the number of people leaving mainline churches in Germany has continued to rise, writes Sylvie Toscer-Angot in Eurel (Feb.), an academic website based in Strasbourg, France, that provides updates on sociological and legal developments in the field of religion in European coun
The terrorist attacks in Paris and more recently in Brussels are leading investigators to look at the Francophone factor in the spread of Sunni Islamic extremism in the world, write William McCants and Christopher Meserole in the Brookings Institution blog Order from Chaos (March 25).
Under the Islamic State (IS) as well as Al Qaeda, soccer stadiums have re-emerged as preferred jihadist targets, but, at the same time, the game has become a potent tool in their recruitment efforts, according to a study in the American Behavioral Scientist (online version, March 2).
Saudi leaders have been attempting to introduce reforms and exercise more control on the forms of Islam they have been funding, especially in the wake of terrorism striking close to home, as well as falling oil prices, but such efforts may have polarizing effects, writes Yves Gonzalez-Quijano (Un
Twenty five years after the end of the USSR, it is clearer how religious minorities in the Caucasus region have adjusted to environments in which new national identities have succeeded the Soviet common identity and how such pluralism is “managed” by majorities in power.
The days when evangelicals defined themselves by their uncompromising style of biblical interpretation may be over according to an article by religion writer Jim Hinch, senior editor for Guideposts magazine, in the Los Angeles Review of Books (Feb. 15).
American evangelical colleges are under pressure to diversify their student body and faculty as well as their worship programs according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Feb. 5).