In various places across the Muslim world over the past ten years, Sunni circles have expressed misgivings about the preaching of Shiite beliefs and the conversion of Sunni Muslims to Shiite Islam. Among recent reports, in Indonesia, Muslim leaders from West Java have issued a declaration alerting the faithful about Shiite teachings and their spread […]

The fate of the Arab Spring and its implications for Islamic democracy are far from certain, but Tunisia and its revolution have made substantial progress in ensuring religious freedom and tolerance in the country’s political structure, writes political scientist Alfred Stepan in the Journal of Democracy (April). In comparison to Egypt, the revolution in Tunisia, […]

Even though marriage and dating practices are in flux among Indian-Americans, “Hindu tradition still holds sway through mixers, matrimony websites and matchmakers,” reports the Huffington Post (April 23). While matchmaking and arranged marriages endure in many Indian villages, such arrangements tend to be informal, making use of “extensive kinship networks,” said Connecticut College religion professor […]

The Family International (TFI), formerly the Children of God, continues to transform itself from a countercultural, quasi-evangelical movement to one much closer to the evangelical mainstream, judging by a new report in Christianity Today magazine (April). TFI started out as a movement on the radical edge of the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and […]

Scandals and divisions plaguing the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) have been almost ignored by the media, yet the turmoil surrounding this small denomination has highlighted changes in identity affecting Eastern Orthodoxy, suggests Andrew Walsh writing in the magazine Religion in the News (Spring). The OCA was once hailed as the leader in creating a […]

Mainline denominations and seminaries are borrowing from evangelicals and streamlining their structures to allow for more church-planting efforts led by experienced laypeople in the field, writes Jesse James DeConto in the Christian Century (April 4). Mainline denominations have tended to restrict new church start-ups to trained and ordained clergy, but growing concern over church decline, […]

Just as Hispanic charismatics and Pentecostals are being hailed as the future of American evangelicalism, they are also seen as having the political potential that may have a significant impact on the 2012 presidential elections. But does the growing evangelical clout of Latinos translate into political activism in the way it has for white evangelicals? […]

Renewal movements are playing a greater role in Eastern Orthodoxy throughout the world, although their track record in generating change in churches is uneven, writes Paul Ladouceur in the current issue of St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly (55:4, 2011). The two main structures in Eastern Orthodox churches are the parish and the monastery, but in the […]

An alliance between Muslims and political leftists in Britain during the last decade on anti-war and economic issues has largely dissolved due to a clash of world-views, writes Sarah Glynn in the journal Ethnicities (February 17, online version). Glynn focuses on the founding of the Respect Coalition, an effort that came out of the British […]

Writing on the conflicts in the middle and the Horn of Africa in the Strategic Trends 2012, a newly released report of the Swiss-based Center for Security Studies, researcher An Jacobs admits that competition for resources and ethno-religious differences does often contribute to these conditions, but the crucial factor in most cases is bad governance. […]