01: The Twilight of Atheism (Doubleday, $23.95), by historian Alister McGrath, makes no secret of being an evangelical polemic, but the book does provide an interesting account of the rise and decline of organized atheism. McGrath’s thesis is that the heyday for atheism was from the period of the French Revolution to the collapse of communism and […]

01: The July/August issue of the magazine Touchstone is devoted to theIntelligent Design movement, which seeks to replace Darwinian science with a scientific model of origins that makes room for a creator, even if evolution did take place. The magazine ran another special issue on this movement a few years ago when it was largely unknown except […]

01: The tensions and cooperation between religion and politics are as relevant as ever, and not only due to the highlighted concerns about developments in the Muslim world and its relations with the West. As Paul Griffiths writes in one of the essays in The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics (Georgetown University Press, $26.95), […]

01: The Revealer is a new daily Web review on the press and religion issued by New York University’s Center on Religion and the Media. The website (or blog) covers a wide range of media — from conservative evangelical books and magazines to the Jewish press to daily newspapers, radio and magazines. The site takes a postmodern […]

01: A good part of the April issue of the Journal of Democracy focuses on the democratic prospects of Christianity. Although the contributors make it clear that today there is no inevitable link between a particular tradition and democratic culture, there are particular religious tendencies, movements and trends that move in that direction. Robert Woodberry and Timothy […]

01: While it rarely makes the headlines, the old Indian religion of Jainism is quietly becoming acknowledged in the West. Last December, the Religion & Ethics section at the BBC launched a new website on Jainism, reports the quarterly magazine Jain Spirit in its March-May issue. Jainism now takes its place on this reference website along with […]

01: Vital Theology is an ambitious new newsletter that attempts to apply a broadly Christian theological critique to contemporary society and culture. The newsletter, published 20 times a year, seeks to provide theological insights on current events and bridge the conservative/liberal divide by moving beyond contentious “culture war” issues to larger themes. The first issue of the […]

01: In 1993, a group of leading Mormon theologians and scholars (known as the “September six” in the media) were excommunicated for their heterodox views. Ten years later, the independent Mormon magazineSunstone devotes some of its December issue to the religious journeys of these “heretics.” In a singular and unique tradition such as Mormonism, the question […]

01: A discussion about whether sects and denominations exist within Islam sounds esoteric, but this once-academic topic is becoming more pressing in the post-9/11 world. The current issue of Nova Religio (October), a journal of new religious movements, includes several articles that wrestle with finding the right category to describe groups like Osama bin Laden’s Al Qa’ida. […]

01: Most people glancing at the newly-published volume Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement, edited by M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. Esposito (Syracuse University Press $24.95), won’t know who the man is pictured on the cover of the book, but perhaps they should. Fetullah Gülen (b. 1938) is an important figure in […]