July 2015 (Vol. 30, No. 9)

The global expansion of Mennonite and other Anabaptist churches in recent decades has not come at the expense of their emphasis on peacemaking and conflict resolution; in fact, such values are important in spawning “neo-Anabaptist” networks existing outside of official Mennonite bodies, writes John D. Roth in the current issue of Mennonite Quarterly Review (April). Roth counters the view of some historians that Mennonite missionaries have downplayed their tradition’s pacifism and preached a generic evangelical message. He argues that especially in recent years, the peacemaking dimension of these churches has been an important part of their global appeal. He notes that between 1980 and 2014, membership in the global Anabaptist-Mennonite nearly tripled—increasing from 600,000 to 1.7 million, with the most growth registered in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The globalization of the Anabaptist peace witness has been facilitated by such international relief agencies as the Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite World Conference and various foreign exchange programs with Mennonite colleges.

Recent networks have formed over Anabaptist teachings on peace and conflict resolution among Christians from different churches. For instance, the Anabaptist Network in the United Kingdom has grown to 1,500 affiliates since the 1990s, and holds conferences on issues of peace and social justice. Similar networks and congregations not directly affiliated with Mennonite and other Anabaptist denominations, such as indigenous renewal movements in Korea and China, have formed among hundreds of pastors interested in the historic peace message. New churches that have more formal connections to Mennonites have often developed in settings of regional conflict. While not all Mennonite churches have embraced an activist stance, they have gained a reputation as “honest brokers” in Muslim-Christian conflicts in Africa and trauma healing and reconciliation programs in Latin America, according to Roth

(Mennonite Quarterly Review, https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/)

The growth of children preachers in Latin American evangelical churches is filling a special niche, creating a new kind of charisma based on innocence, reports the New York Times Magazine (July 14). The Assemblies of God has been the main denomination nurturing an estimated thousands child preachers in Brazil, though the phenomena is controversial, “earning scorn from other Pentecostal denominations, and even criticism from within the Assemblies of God…But the Internet and social media have helped young preachers find wide, sometimes international audiences. Today’s most successful child preachers work nearly every day and travel extensively,” writes Samantha M. Shapiro. One of Brazil’s best-known child evangelists is Matheus Moraes, who by the age of 10 was traveling through Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. and filling stadiums with 6,000 people.

Like Moraes, most of the child preachers come from poor and lower middle-class homes where their parents see their gifts for preaching and healing as a way out of the favelas or Brazilian slums. Critics charge that the children are being exploited as a commercial interest on behalf of their parents in receiving donations and selling DVDs. The children both preach and are seen as miracle workers, including two-year-old Alani Santos and 14-year-old Daniel Pentecoste, who crisscross central Brazil leading revivals in new farming communities and drug rehab centers, to 21-year-old Alex Silva, who by 13 had preached to crowds of 500,000. Shapiro finds that many of these child preachers see themselves as helping their families and communities and willingly sacrifice their childhoods and adolescence for their ministries. She finds that these children often preach on the common theme that the church serves as a hospital for sinners and ill people where healing and salvation is offered.

Along with the Czech Republic, surveys show Estonia as being the least religious country of Europe. However, this does not prevent many Estonians from combining a low level of religion with a high level of beliefs in supernatural phenomena, as made clear in several papers presented by scholars from the University of Tartu at the international CESNUR conference, that took on June 17-20 in Tallinn (Estonia) and that RW attended. That Estonia is a secular society was made quite clear by statistical data summarized by Ringo Ringvee: 12 percent of the resident population of Estonia describes itself as “believers” (but this is down to 6 percent among ethnic Estonians) and 27 percent say they are “inclined to belief” (25 percent of ethnic Estonians). Only 2.7 percent are reported to attend religious services at least monthly. Twenty-nine percent of the population is religiously affiliated. While that percentage has not changed between the census of 2000 and the census of 2011, religious diversity has increased. Lutheranism is steadily decreasing (from 152,000 in 2000 to 108,000 in 2011), and the smaller Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Seventh-day Adventist and Methodist denominations have also lost members. On the other hand, the Orthodox Church, with a majority of people from non-Estonian background, had increased from 143,000 to 176,000. Christian-free churches, Buddhists and local neo-Pagan groups have also increased.

But beliefs in a spirit or life force are very strong in Estonia, Ringvee stresses; 20 percent “fully agree” and 45 percent “rather agree” with the statement: “There is some power, life force or energy, that influences people and everything that happens in the world.” The belief that some people can foresee future events is even higher, as is the belief in the healing powers of some individuals. However, another presenter, Marko Uibu, warns that these beliefs express sympathy and openness rather than actual practices: 77 percent of Estonian population say that they believe that psychic healers can cure, but only 12 percent have actually used methods of alternative healing themselves. When it comes to such practices, there is a curiosity for them rather than an embrace. According to figures presented by Atko Remmel, one could still be tempted to speak of “spiritual atheism” in Estonia. Among people stating that they have no religious faith, the level of such beliefs (including that plants have a spirit or that animals have a soul or spirit) is very high and only slightly lower than the average population. Only when it comes to stating that humans have a soul do “atheists” rank significantly lower than the rest of the population (around 22 percent for atheists, compared with 42 percent average).

Registered as an organization in 94 countries of the world, the Buddhist group Soka Gakkai is present in most European countries, where it claimed 105,000 members in 2012 (352,000 in the USA), and probably 120,000 members today. But the movement is especially successful in Italy, where its first meetings started in the early 1960s, growing from nearly 32,000 members in 2003, to now more than 75,000 members, reported Italian researcher PierLuigi Zoccatelli at the CESNUR conference in Tallinn, Estonia. Other European countries rank far behind, with more than 15,000 members in France and about 10,000 members in the United Kingdom. On June 27, the Italian Prime Minister has signed an agreement (intesa, the equivalent of a Concordat) with the Italian Soka Gakkai. The agreement allows Soka Gakkai to join the group of denominations enjoying special status, being allowed to appoint chaplains for the armed forces for instance, according to CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne. It also entitles it to receive taxpayers’ money, based on a free choice made by each taxpayer to affect to a religious group or charity from a selected list a set percentage of taxes paid by the said person.

While the Islamic State (IS) has had the most success in the Arab Islamic heartland of the Middle East, the fact that half of the world’s Muslims are in Asia has caused considerable trepidation among governments in the region, reports The Economist (June 20). The Muslims of Central Asia seem the most open to IS’s message, where political and sometimes radical Islam often serves as an alternative to “nasty authoritarian regimes, and an estimated 2,000-4,000 people are among the 20,000 foreigners who have joined IS,” according to the magazine. Even in China, where only a small number of Muslim Uighur minorities have joined IS, the government’s attempt to root out extremism has fueled resentment at what Uighurs see as “colonial oppression by the Chinese state and its ethic-Han majority.” Even in Southeast Asia, where the numbers of IS recruits is far smaller, the question of how to respond to the threat has had political repercussions. In the Philippines, peace between the government and Muslim rebels on the island of Mindanao is “threatened by extremist groups that have pledged fealty to IS.”

In democratic Malaysia, new anti-terrorism legislation, including the refusal of detainees to have a trial, has angered Islamists and opposition politicians. In a similar way, Australia’s “several dozens” of radicals who have joined IS, as well as a bloody siege by an apparently deranged gunman with IS sympathizers, had the nation to plan to strip citizens with dual nationality who are “known terrorists” of their Australian papers. Singapore, another country with a low number of extremists, there is the fear that the Internet is reaching those with ears to hear the IS message. Because the nation is surrounded by largely Muslim Indonesia and Malyasia, IS has claimed that it wants to establish a province of its caliphate in Southeast Asia, leading Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to speculate that the terrorist state could start a base somewhere in the region. For these reasons, Singapore and Australia are contributing to the anti-IS coalition in the Middle East.

The growth of “online tombs” and other memorial sites for the dead on the Internet is not necessarily replacing traditional graves in Japan, although it is changing beliefs and practices about ancestor worship, writes Fabienne Duteil-Ogata in the Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (No. 8, 2015). Since the 1990s, funeral practices have become increasingly diverse in Japan, one example being the number of the “computer tombs” going online. Ogata finds that there are various kinds of computer tombs. One kind, started by Buddhist monks, still has a physical component at the Buddhist temple but individual memories and information about the deceased are stored in a virtual space accessible by password. Because these tombs fall into the category of collective tombs, and no heir is assigned for veneration or upkeep, they do not involve ancestor worship. Post-mortem rituals resemble more a remembrance service than a religious ceremony. Although associated with the Buddhist temple, these computer tombs use secular imagery, such as landscapes, and make little direct reference to Buddhism.

More recent are the virtual online tombs, with no rituals performed on the subscribers’ behalf. Less popular than that, subscribers to the virtual tomb, called Cyberstone, only have access to a personalized homepage. Although launched by a monk, the religious component of Cyberstone has “completely disappeared… Buddhism plays the part of IT-manager or webmaster,” Ogata writes. “But users of all these computer tombs continue to visit offline graves, especially during the ritual…Online practices are thus added to offline practices, but have not replaced them,” she concludes.

(Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/religions/)