Religion Watch Archives

Monitoring Trends in Religion - From February 1990 to January 2016

You are here: Home / Archives for Archive

Church constructions decline but not necessarily church planting

by

While church construction has fallen 80 percent since 2002, now down to its lowest level since record keeping began in 1967, new congregations are being established at a rapid rate, reports the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 15). Rob Moll reports that the $3.15 billion spent in the construction of religious buildings is half the level […]

The ‘motherteresafication’ of Albania?

by

Mother Teresa has become a national symbol of Albania, even though it is a Muslim dominant and secular nation, writes Cecilie Endresen in the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (26:1). Since her beatification in 2003, Mother Teresa has been embraced by Albania’s ruling party as a national symbol, with her name, statues and portraits appearing […]

German-speaking atheists more organized, visible

by

While the number of people belonging to atheist and other secularist organizations remains low in Germany and Austria, representatives of atheist views have managed to gain more media attention in recent years, and atheism is on the rise, according to the current issue of Weltanschauungen – Texte zur religiösen Vielfalt (No. 101), a Catholic publication […]

Interfaith groups growing, seeking direction in UK

by

The last 15 years have seen a burgeoning of interfaith organizations in the UK, writes Abdul-Azim Ahmed, a UK-based researcher on contemporary Islam in Britain in On Religion (Winter 2015), a new independent magazine on religion and society. According to Ahmed, there are today “hundreds” of interfaith organizations in Britain. Some of the early interfaith […]

Baltic Lutheranism faces challenges inside and out

by

In comparison with Lutheran Churches in Germany and Scandinavia, the Lutheran Churches in the Baltic States have become more conservative, and those in Latvia and Lithuania moved closer to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), writes Priit Rohtmets (University of Tartu, Estonia) in Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West (January). Both in Estonia and Latvia, […]

Blasphemy enforcement expands on the Internet

by

More governments, as they pursue violators on the Internet, are newly enforcing blasphemy laws. Voice of America (Jan. 13) reports that many of these governments are most notably majority Muslim nations and are turning to anti-blasphemy laws to punish transgressions against Islam that move beyond targeting public offenses to ones expressed over the Internet. The […]

Evangelical student activism sparked by university crackdown on gay rights

by

A growth of evangelical student activism may be one unintended consequence of the hard-line that universities have taken against conservative religious groups on campus on the issue of gay rights, according to the conservative scholarly journal Academic Questions (December). The simmering conflict between conservative Christian campus organizations and university administrations over gay rights broke into […]

New religious coalition making for Northern Ireland’s moral majority

by

In the religiously divided society of Northern Ireland, an unprecedented coalition of conservative religious groups—ranging from Catholic to Protestant to Muslim—is taking shape on moral and social issues and targeting rising secularism, reports The Economist (Dec. 11). The movement toward a “pan-religious ‘moral majority’” developed out of recent controversies over religious objections to gay rights, […]