Quick and simple spiritual devotions are gaining popularity to fit the fast-food lifestyle and tight work schedules of Americans, reports the Dallas Morning News (May 3). “As the pace of lifestyles quickens, the demand for tips on how to fit prayer into a busy life grows. A cottage industry of new books, Web sites and spiritual aids […]

A nationwide movement is taking shape to restore the worship trappings and architecture that were removed in Catholic churches after the modernizing influence of Vatican II. The Baltimore Sun (May 21)  reports that the Vatican II-inspired renewal effort to update worship and simplify church architecture, with reformers putting in carpeting over terrazzo flooring and removing tabernacles from sanctuaries, […]

An early May conference of the American Family Foundation (AFF) showed a growing effort to forge a middle ground between “anti-cultists” and so-called “cult apologists,” as well as revealing new divisions on questions of religious freedom for minority religious groups. Anti-cultists have usually been tagged by their concern with “brainwashing” or thought reform and other […]

Due to fears of Islamic extremism encroaching on its borders, the central Asian nations of Kazakhistan and Kyrgystan are tightening the reigns on religious freedom, reports Frontier (No. 2, 2001), a newsletter of the religious freedom organization Keston Institute. Kazakhistan and Kyrgystan have been the most tolerant of religious pluralism in the region, but recent legislation passed […]

North Korea is gradually becoming more accessible to foreign influence and Christian groups in South Korea are using the opportunity to smuggle in Bibles and aid a network of underground Christians in the north. The Washington Post (April 10) reports that the food shortage in North Korea is leading Christian groups in the south to send in […]

Media coverage of Hinduism in India still tends to reflect a Western perspective that views the religion as pagan, primitive and irrelevant to the modern world, according to Hinduism Today magazine (May/June). The magazine monitored coverage of the recent Maha Kumbha Mela, an annual worldwide pilgrimage to such Hindu holy sites as the Ganga and Yamuna rivers […]

Belief in Christ’s resurrection remains strong among the Church of England’s bishops, according to an unscientific poll conducted by The Spectator, (April 14), a British weekly. The magazine polled every diocese in the Church of England the week before Easter, asking the local bishop, or bishops’ office, if he or she believed in the physical resurrection […]

The phenomenon of priests taking up popular styles of music and ministry to fight the influence of evangelicals is becoming more common in Chile, as in the rest of  Latin America. Catholics adapting the style of evangelicals and Pentecostals as a strategy to counter evangelical growth in Latin America may have started in Brazil, as priests […]