Of the 500 most powerful people in the world selected by the magazine Foreign Policy (May/June), only 24 were religious leaders. The listing compiled by the editors remains heavily populated by Americans and men; in fact, none of the religious figures was a woman. The magazine’s “power map” included several leaders of global religions organizations, […]

The millennial generation is embracing “crypto-Christian artists who claim no particular affiliation and actually seem uncomfortable with institutionalized Christianity. And yet, somehow, their imaginations, instincts and language are deeply informed by Scripture and the person of Jesus,” writes Bill McGarvey in the Jesuit magazine America (May 6). Although surveys continue to show a low rate […]

Psychedelic drugs, never really out of fashion among a segment of alternative health and spiritual practitioners, are “coming out of the drug counterculture and back into the mainstream laboratories of some of the world’s leading universities and medical centers,” according to Utne Reader (May/June). Don Lattin writes that new research programs at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, […]

Tithing and fasting may be a factor in raising the standard of living for poor Dalit Indians, according to a study by Rebecca Shah of Georgetown University. The preliminary study, presented at the ASREC conference, studied the financial outcomes of Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and mixed-faith families of Dalits, or “untouchables”, in three slums in Bangalore, India. Shah interviewed 300 female clients of a microfinance company and found that […]

After years of relative quiet, rabbis working for Israel’s Ministry of Religion have reopened an old controversy by claiming that Karaites are not truly Jewish, reports The Economist (May 18). For many centuries Karaites have lived a separate life: this ancient current of Judaism does not accept the Talmud (oral law) or rabbinical traditions, and its followers only recognize the Torah (Hebrew Bible)—thus they have sometimes been dubbed as […]

The teaching on sexuality in the Orthodox Jewish community inIsrael has undergone a dramatic shift since the 1990s, writes Orit Avishai (Fordham University) in an article published in the newest issue of Fieldwork in Religion (November 2012). While not unique to Orthodox Jews, sexual anxieties tend to be exacerbated in a community where modesty is an imperative, girls are not supposed to touch boys and the female […]

There is increasing division between Orthodox and progressive Jews in Poland over the matter of who will represent the Jewish community in the country, according to the Jerusalem Report (February 25). The magazine reports that there is an “internecine battle for power and prestige—and the vast control of funds” between the Polish Orthodox community represented […]

The shift from “bricks and mortar” campuses to virtual classrooms is being actively pursued by a large segment of American theological seminaries, reports the Christian Century (Feb. 20). As with radio and TV broadcasting, it seems that evangelical seminaries are the most heavily invested in the new learning technology, which could range from a few courses being offered online to new distance learning programs aiming […]