Following the controversy over the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latterday Saints), the LDS Church—commonly called “Mormon”—is facing what has been described as a “PR nightmare” (NPR, June 30). The April raid on the FLDS compound in Texas was widely reported in the US and international media. In many reports, the FLDS group was described as a “breakaway […]

The changing ethnic composition of Seventh Day Adventism will likely decide the future of the church in the US, write Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart in Spectrum (Spring), an independent Adventist magazine. Adventism’s change from a predominantly white to a multicultural membership (with significant numbers of Caribbean and American blacks) has been taking place for […]

There is a small, yet clear increase of younger students choosing the ministry as a vocation, a trend that is largely generated by church-related colleges encouraging students in this direction. The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 4) reports that in the last few years, seminaries have begun to see an increase of students in their […]

Opposition to illegal immigration is gaining a new place on the agenda of the Christian right, reports The Public Eye (Summer), a newsletter of the Political Research Associates, a left-oriented group monitoring conservative groups. Judging by 2007 Values Voters Summit, which is sponsored by such key Christian right groups as the Family Research Council, proposals […]

A new survey by the Paul Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College shows continuing divisions within as well as between faith traditions on political preferences. The survey, based on a sample of 3,002 respondents and funded by the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation, found that evangelical Protestants continue to […]

While there has been a growth of Catholic and Protestant retreat centers, the impact of religious individualism and experiential spirituality is challenging their traditional functions. The National Catholic Reporter (April 27) notes that in the case of the Catholics alone, there are over 600 retreat centers in the U.S. and Canada. But they are facing new competition […]

Two Islamic banks, Cham Bank and Syria International Islamic Bank, launched their services to the public in Syria in 2007, and more banks are set to start operating this year, John Dagge reports in The Middle East magazine (March). Islamic banking started to blossom in the 1970s and has been enjoying wider recognition in recent […]

The recent disaster caused by a cyclone in Burma has once again highlighted the repressive nature of the regime: facing such circumstances, some Buddhist monks have felt justified to join violent resistance, Anna Sussman and Jonathan Jones report in the online magazine Inthefray (April 6). The two reporters visited 67year old monk Saw Wizana, who […]