Due to fears of Islamic extremism encroaching on its borders, the central Asian nations of Kazakhistan and Kyrgystan are tightening the reigns on religious freedom, reports Frontier (No. 2, 2001), a newsletter of the religious freedom organization Keston Institute. Kazakhistan and Kyrgystan have been the most tolerant of religious pluralism in the region, but recent legislation passed […]

North Korea is gradually becoming more accessible to foreign influence and Christian groups in South Korea are using the opportunity to smuggle in Bibles and aid a network of underground Christians in the north. The Washington Post (April 10) reports that the food shortage in North Korea is leading Christian groups in the south to send in […]

Media coverage of Hinduism in India still tends to reflect a Western perspective that views the religion as pagan, primitive and irrelevant to the modern world, according to Hinduism Today magazine (May/June). The magazine monitored coverage of the recent Maha Kumbha Mela, an annual worldwide pilgrimage to such Hindu holy sites as the Ganga and Yamuna rivers […]

Belief in Christ’s resurrection remains strong among the Church of England’s bishops, according to an unscientific poll conducted by The Spectator, (April 14), a British weekly. The magazine polled every diocese in the Church of England the week before Easter, asking the local bishop, or bishops’ office, if he or she believed in the physical resurrection […]

The phenomenon of priests taking up popular styles of music and ministry to fight the influence of evangelicals is becoming more common in Chile, as in the rest of  Latin America. Catholics adapting the style of evangelicals and Pentecostals as a strategy to counter evangelical growth in Latin America may have started in Brazil, as priests […]

Evangelicals in Canada are increasingly coming into conflict with laws and charging that they face  discrimination for their views, reports Christianity Today (April 2). The growth of anti-evangelical attitudes and a growing cultural and religious divide was revealed in the wake of the defeat of Stockwell Day for Prime Minister. Day’s candidacy “became a lightening rod for criticism […]

Easter is being increasingly commercialized, with merchandisers hoping to make the holiday second only to Christmas for gift- and toy-buying, according to the New York Times (April 13). While the “commercialization of Easter has a long way to go before it comes close to matching the Christmas frenzy,  toymakers are finding the spring holiday as a desirable time […]

The Mikvah bath, once the sole preserve of Orthodox Jews, is being adopted and changed by Conservative and Reform synagogues, reports Moment magazine (April). The bath’s primary function is to ritually purify converts to Judaism, and is also used by Orthodox Jewish women at the end of menstruation as taught by Jewish family purity laws. Reform and […]