A fledgling pro-life movement in Russia is borrowing strategies from its American counterpart, as well as creating strange bedfellows between Russian Orthodox and evangelical believers, reports Sophia Kishkovsky in the New York Times (June 9). The article reports that Russian activists have adopted the English term “pro-life” as their own and American-style pickets of abortion […]

In accounting for current state of new religious movements (NRMs) in Britain, George Chryssides notes that the growing globalization of these groups tends to make national developments or even leadership less important. In a paper presented at the CESNUR conference in Taipei, Taiwan, Chryssides says that growing internationalization of NRMs in Britain could be seen […]

Catholic conservatives in the U.S. are engaged in an attempt to spread their views among potentially sympathetic circles across Europe, assessing that the situation there is more critical than in America, said Blandine Chélini-Pont (University Aix-Marseille III) at the ISSR conference in Aix-en-Provence. Chélini-Pont describes conservative Catholicism as the ideological source of today’s American conservatism. […]

While a number of observers claim that Scientology’s membership has stagnated in several European countries, a different view comes from the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. According to the 2010 security report of the Ministry of Interior of the state, Scientology has registered a strong increase in the area, both in members and in […]

A controversy about the place for atheists in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has been spreading throughout the recovery organization, according to The Fix (June 14), a newsletter reporting on America’s drug and rehab culture. The controversy started when two AA meetings that cater to atheists and agnostics were expelled from Toronto’s official directory. The meetings in […]

Megachurches are setting up multi-site campuses that are crossing state lines and, in the process, facing criticism that they are establishing churches as franchises, reports Christianity Today (July). A recent trend among megachurches is to extend “their brand of church to new communities,” often featuring live music and sermons piped in from the main campus, […]

A dissenting movement has mushroomed in the Baha’i religion thanks to the Internet and the way it  disseminates “reformist” proposals, according to Bei Dawei of Hsuan Chaung University in Taiwan. In a paper presented at a June conference in Taiwan organized by CESNUR, a research center on new religious movements, Dawei noted that the Baha’i […]

A fast-growing and influential network of technological thinkers and groups borrow concepts from religion and spirituality while often seeing themselves in competition with traditional faiths, according to Abou Farman of the City University of New York. At a Columbia University conference on spirituality in late May attended by RW, Farman presented a paper on what […]

Anti-Islamic sentiment has recently crossed the line from being confined to a largely apolitical and conservative Christian subculture to gaining a more active place in Republican politics and the conservative media, according to the libertarian magazine Reason (August/September). The magazine reports that the recent spate of campaigns against the building of mosques and efforts to […]

Following the July 22 attacks in Norway and first analyses of the writings of accused killer Anders Breivik, a discussion has started regarding his religious beliefs and whether such labels as “fundamentalist” and “Christian terrorist” apply to his actions. While the media and some scholars described him as a “Christian terrorist,” other scholars dispute suggestions […]