In the wake of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, secularism has advanced among both Protestants and Catholics, according to David Porter, director of the Center for Contemporary Christianity in Belfast. Although Northern Ireland has always been at the top of the charts on belief and church attendance (both among Protestants and Catholics) and the […]

The Danish cartoons caricaturing Muhammad that enraged Muslims around the world in 2005 may also have started a Christian backlash in Europe. Historian Philip Jenkins writes in the conservative magazine Chronicles (January) that since the cartoon controversy, “the prospects for Christianity in Europe seem better than they have for decades.” It wasn‘t so much that […]

A new breed of therapist is seeking to heal “the mentally ill not with talk and drug therapy but by releasing troublesome or malevolent spirits who have attached themselves to their victims,” writes California State University professor Stanford Betty in the National Catholic Reporter (Dec. 28). These therapists are not religious healers, but secular and […]

A long-expected split within the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavich Jewish movement over messianic beliefs may be in the wings, and politics as much as religion may be the most immediate cause of such a schism, reports Forward.com (Jan. 9). A long-standing conflict in the Chabad-Lubavich ranks over the status of its leader, Menahem Schneerson, with a group […]

Frustrated with the refusal of the Vatican to discuss the ordination of women, a growing number of women are taking matters into their own hands and ordaining themselves as priests, and in the process are drawing disaffected and marginal Catholics to their ministries. The National Catholic Reporter (Dec. 7) notes that the organization sponsoring such […]

The rise of blogs and websites and the decline of print media tends to favor amateurs and volunteers over professionals—a tendency that may eventually have a significant impact on religious institutions and their public image. Writing in the conservative Catholic magazine New Oxford Review (December), journalist Tom Bethell mainly focuses on Catholic publications when he […]

A hate-crime trial taking place in California may also be revealing a new and more global front in the culture wars. The trial concerns the assault and eventual killing of a man by Slavic immigrants that prosecutors charge was motivated by anti-gay sentiment. The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 4) reports that gay leaders in Sacramento […]

South African churches, including the Dutch Reformed Church, are perceived as playing a greater social role since the fall of apartheid, even if they may be ill-equipped to serve such a function, according to recent research. South Africa has remained a strongly religious nation in the 13 years since apartheid was dismantled, with a recent […]

Expectations and pressure from German authorities and society are increasingly forcing Muslims in Germany to coordinate and create representative organizations, reports the Muslim newspaper Islamische Zeitung (November). This follows the pattern observed in several other European countries, though Islam in Germany is unique in several ways. According to some estimates, there may be up to 3.4 million […]

The Missionaries of Charity is enjoying steady growth even though it was widely predicted that the order might shrink after the death of its founder Mother Teresa 10 years ago The Catholic World Report (November) notes that the number of Missionaries of Charity homes, which stood at 594 in 1997, now total 757, spreading to 134 countries […]