Liberal American Catholics may have to take a few lessons from their conservative counterparts if they want to reach more sympathizers in the church. American Catholics involved in such liberal caucuses as  Call to Action planned a drive 2 years ago called “We Are the Church,” where they planned to collect more than one million signatures […]

Crime specialists and enforcers are targeting far right religious groups, and particularly what is called “leaderless resistance” in such movements,  more than foreign-based terrorists, according to U.S. News & World Report (Dec. 29/Jan. 5). Since the Oklahoma city bombing, law enforcers have successfully attempted to open lines of communications with militia groups and other organizations with conspiracy-based views […]

Futurologists are paying new attention to religion — a departure from previous times when they consigned faith to having a minor and fading role in a technological future. In the Futurist magazine (January/February), respected futurologist, Ronald Sellers identifies nine major trends among religions of the world. 01: Despite critics’ predictions that secularization would overcome religious faith, we […]

The Catholic-evangelical  alliance discussed above may be experiencing some strains due to emerging divisions in the pro-life movement. World magazine  (Jan. 17) says that new drugs and techniques “threaten to blur the line between contraception and abortion — and in the process, perhaps, split evangelicals from their Catholic allies in the fight for the unborn.” Medical advances that […]

In its long history, Roman Catholicism has  assimilated different philosophies and spiritualities as it expanded worldwide. Is evangelical Protestantism next in line for such assimilation? That is the intriguing question asked by  sociologist Gustavo Benavides in pondering the future of Catholicism in Latin America in the current issue of Social Compass (December), an international journal of the sociology […]

Months after after her death, observers are still asking whether the mass mourning over Princess Diana’s signifies signs of spiritual stirrings or  an absence of traditional religious feeling in Britain. Quadrant (November), the newsletter of the London-based Christian Research Association, reports that many Christian leaders believe Is the mourning of  DianaAmong the innumerable laments and analyses of those […]

Japan is beginning to create its own brand of liberation theology, known as the “crown and thorn” theology, reports The Tablet (Nov. 22). From its birthplace, liberation theology (or theologies) has been exported and adapted to Africa, India, Korea, as well as to feminist and American black contexts In the case of Japan, the liberation theme is […]

Europeans becoming increasingly pluralistic in their beliefs and practices, mixing tradition with innovation, reports the Washington Post (Dec. 24). An in-depth article on new patterns of religious belief and identification in Europe finds  that the “Spaniards are creating a national patchwork of local, Christian-inspired but overtly secular religions. The French are sampling Buddhism and massing on  pilgrimages to shrines […]