Egypt is not the first Muslim-majority country to consider using its religious scholars in the fight against radicalized Islam, but the presence of Al-Azhar in such an effort, one of the most prestigious centers of Islamic learning, gives it particular significance. In a report in Reuters (May 31), Mahmoud Mourad and Yara Bayoumy write that […]

Clergy couples have become increasingly common in the Church of England, with one result being the loss of the role of vicar wives, especially in rural parishes, reports Tablet magazine (April 4). Although uncounted in the Church of England, clergy couples are estimated to be in the hundreds, with the most prominent being all three […]

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is leading the world Anglican communion through a combination of charismatic-personal authority and managerial culture that departs from the more traditional leadership styles of his predecessors, writes Oxford University theologian Martyn Percy in the Journal of Anglican Studies (online May). Percy credits Welby as managing to avoid the gridlock […]

Men’s ministries in American Catholicism are multiplying and inspiring fervent devotion and even activism, writes Dwight Longnecker on the Catholic news website Crux (May 27). At the turn of the millennium there were 16 Catholic men’s conferences; today there are more than 100 nationwide. The renewal of Catholic men’s ministries is also taking place at […]

After expecting that their values would finally triumph through an alliance among conservative believers in different faith traditions, the spread of what are perceived as secular norms [see the above article on the conflict between religious and fiscal conservatives] is making some conservative Christians reconsider the political ambitions of the past four decades and rather […]

A conference on new religious expressions in Mexico and the rest of Latin America in New York finds the growth of both syncretistic and transplanted faiths. RW attended the Columbia University conference in early April where Graciela Mochkofsky, a visiting scholar at New York University, presented the case of a rising new Judaism in Latin […]

A new variant of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, is finding mainstream recognition in Britain, writes Edward Anderson in the journal Contemporary South Asia (Vol. 23, No.1). What Anderson calls “neo-Hindutva” is different from “orthodox” Hindu nationalism, represented by the Rashtiya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in that the former is less tied to Hindu majoritarian politics and […]

Although numbers are in dispute in their own societies, atheism among ex-Muslims is becoming increasingly organized and political, reports Ahmed Benchemsi in The New Republic magazine (April 23). In recent months there have been publicized cases of atheists facing stiff punishments for publicly espousing atheism in such Muslim countries as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine […]

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Central Asia has become fertile ground for Middle Eastern Islamic influences, but Muslim movements from the Indian subcontinent are also gaining inroads in this region, likely carrying its own geopolitical impact, writes Bayam Balci in the journal Religion, State and Society (Vol. 43, No. 1). For the past […]