A long-expected split within the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavich Jewish movement over messianic beliefs may be in the wings, and politics as much as religion may be the most immediate cause of such a schism, reports Forward.com (Jan. 9). A long-standing conflict in the Chabad-Lubavich ranks over the status of its leader, Menahem Schneerson, with a group […]

Frustrated with the refusal of the Vatican to discuss the ordination of women, a growing number of women are taking matters into their own hands and ordaining themselves as priests, and in the process are drawing disaffected and marginal Catholics to their ministries. The National Catholic Reporter (Dec. 7) notes that the organization sponsoring such […]

The rise of blogs and websites and the decline of print media tends to favor amateurs and volunteers over professionals—a tendency that may eventually have a significant impact on religious institutions and their public image. Writing in the conservative Catholic magazine New Oxford Review (December), journalist Tom Bethell mainly focuses on Catholic publications when he […]

A hate-crime trial taking place in California may also be revealing a new and more global front in the culture wars. The trial concerns the assault and eventual killing of a man by Slavic immigrants that prosecutors charge was motivated by anti-gay sentiment. The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 4) reports that gay leaders in Sacramento […]

South African churches, including the Dutch Reformed Church, are perceived as playing a greater social role since the fall of apartheid, even if they may be ill-equipped to serve such a function, according to recent research. South Africa has remained a strongly religious nation in the 13 years since apartheid was dismantled, with a recent […]

Expectations and pressure from German authorities and society are increasingly forcing Muslims in Germany to coordinate and create representative organizations, reports the Muslim newspaper Islamische Zeitung (November). This follows the pattern observed in several other European countries, though Islam in Germany is unique in several ways. According to some estimates, there may be up to 3.4 million […]

The Missionaries of Charity is enjoying steady growth even though it was widely predicted that the order might shrink after the death of its founder Mother Teresa 10 years ago The Catholic World Report (November) notes that the number of Missionaries of Charity homes, which stood at 594 in 1997, now total 757, spreading to 134 countries […]

Since the 1990s, the New Apostolic Church (NAC) has initiated a cautious process of change and engagement with other Christians, writes a German Protestant scholar, Andreas Fincke, in a new report in the German publication EZW-Studien (No. 193). While it has been given relatively little attention by scholars, the NAC is the third largest Christian denomination in […]