The health of American religious life benefiting may be under debate, but most indicators from economic downturn suggest that the study of American religion is flourishing. In particular, both the disciplines of history and sociology are drawing new scholars on religious topics as well assigning a more important role to religion, according to recent studies. […]

Faith-based social services are not likely to be rolled back by President Barack Obama, even if he may put a more liberal spin on such policies, writes Lew Daly in the journal Policy Review (October/November). Daly notes that almost year after his election, Obama has not aggressively sought to “restore the pre-Bush status quo by […]

The recent formation of Christian Science fellowships is raising challenges to the standardized practices in Christian Scientist churches. The independent Christian Science newsletter The Banner (winter) reports that two unofficial fellowships that have formed in Chicago and Chesterfield, Missouri have been trying to get formal recognition in the directory of the Christian Science Journal, although […]

A growing number of Catholic schools are opting to become charter schools rather than close their doors permanently, reports Commonweal magazine (Dec. 4). The declining state of Catholic education, particularly in inner cities, is convincing bishops in the dioceses of Washington, DC, Miami and Brooklyn to convert up to 16 parochial schools to charter schools—and […]

A gradual “desegregation of the megachurches” in the US is taking place, reports Time magazine (Jan. 11). While the proportion of American churches with 20 percent or more minority participation has remained at about seven percent for the past nine years, that figure for evangelical churches with over 1,000 attending has more than quadrupled (from […]

The prosperity gospel has been accused of many things, but being a significant cause of the financial crisis has not usually been among them—at least until Hanna Rosin’s much publicized cover story in The Atlantic magazine (December). Rosin found that the areas most affected by the housing foreclosure crisis are often the same places, mostly […]

Europeans outnumbered other cardinals recently elected by Pope Benedict XVI, making it look “more and more likely that his successor will be a European, if not an Italian,” reports the British Catholic magazine The Tablet (Oct. 30). In late November, Benedict gave the red hat to 11 new European cardinals, as well as four Africans, […]

A recent visit to eastern Turkey by the dynamic Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has given some hope of progress for the Syriac Christian minority in eastern Turkey. Davutoglu, a former university professor, who had presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Houston in the […]

Atheists are usually very discrete in the Middle East, reports the Café Thawra blog (Jan. 13), published by Joseph Daher and Paola Salwan. There are rare cases of open expressions of atheism, such as the Syrian philosopher Sadik Jalal al Azm, who claims to be “the only atheist intellectual in the Arab world” and dares […]

Although there are still few Orthodox clergy able to develop a ministry in Spanish or Portuguese, Archbishop Jonah, metropolitan of the Orthodox Church of America (OCA), said in an interview with Miguel Palacio in Pravoslavie.ru (Dec. 21) that there are more and more people from Latin America, especially of local Indian descent, feeling called to […]