While the Family, formerly the Children of God,  has drawn a lot of controversy in its short existence, the group’s  increasing emphasis on the importance of  UFOs in their theology is likely to generate new criticism and controversy, according to a recent report. The Family has been reportedly moving away from its unorthodox  beginnings, which included allegations of authoritarian […]

Many observers were shocked last year when a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks in Britain waged a public campaign against their leader, the Dalai Lama. But this conflict revealed simmering yet sharp differences between more traditional and “modern” Buddhists. In the Journal of  Contemporary Religion (October), David Kay writes that Tibetan Buddhism has long been divided between an […]

From a tradition which has produced the likes of Aimee Semple McPherson and Kathryn Kuhlman, today’s new high priestess of popular religion has become Marianne Williamson. Starting in the early 1990s with best selling books,  “A Course in Miracles” (39 weeks on the New York Times best seller list) and “A Woman’s Wrath” (19 weeks on […]

What once was considered a fad among religious extremists has now become the subject of serious, extended study on American campuses. Across the country scholars and publishers are expanding their investigations of what the appearance of the year 2000 means for the present and future of American religion. At least two major anthologies have already […]

American Catholics dissatisfied with the post-Vatican II modern liturgy are increasingly  moving to Eastern-Rite parishes where the liturgy closely resembles Eastern Orthodoxy, reports the New Oxford Review magazine (October). Eastern Rite Catholic parishes originated in Eastern European and  other non-Western countries that kept their own  cultural traditions and liturgies, such as icon veneration, while maintaining loyalty to the pope. There […]

New immigrants arrving in the U.S. South are changing and in some cases challenging traditional practices of churches in this region, reports the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 21). Jennifer Lee writes that “A flood of immigrants — Jamaicans, Vietnamese, Hispanics and others — are forcing new compromises in the South’s traditionally white, conservative churches. The arrivals are […]

More than such headline grabbers as the Pensacola revival, the Disney boycott, or China’s most favored nation status, the most controversial issue among evangelicals continues to center on new translations of the Bible and whether they should adjust pronoun references and other gender issues to harmonize with current usage in mainline translations and with new […]

New patterns in Jewish immigration, as well as ideological changes among Jewish intellectuals and professionals are likely to accelerate the trend of  American Jews moving to the political right, according to two reports. Moment magazine (October) reports that the large number of Russian, Syrian and Iranian and even Israeli Jews are already changing American Jewish voting patterns. […]

The massive turnout for a world  youth day with Pope John Paul II  signaled to many observers an unexpected and  growing religious hunger among French young adults for religious faith. But such yearnings appear to be far from strictly Catholic devotion, writes Alain Woodrow in The Tablet (Aug. 30), a British Catholic magazine. More than one million young people attended […]