Religion Watch Archives

Monitoring Trends in Religion - From February 1990 to January 2016

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Featured Story: Orthodox Judaism’s dearth of new luminaries

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At a time when Orthodox observance and yeshiva study enjoy unprecedented resurgence across the Jewish world, it is difficult to see clear successors to those (often European-educated) rabbis who defined Orthodoxy in the second half the 20th century, writes Andrew Friedman in The Jerusalem Report (June 29). In recent years, several haredi—or ultra-Orthodox—leaders have died, […]

Religious scholars drafted in Egypt’s counter extremist drive

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Egypt is not the first Muslim-majority country to consider using its religious scholars in the fight against radicalized Islam, but the presence of Al-Azhar in such an effort, one of the most prestigious centers of Islamic learning, gives it particular significance. In a report in Reuters (May 31), Mahmoud Mourad and Yara Bayoumy write that […]

From the religious right to the ‘Benedict option’?

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After expecting that their values would finally triumph through an alliance among conservative believers in different faith traditions, the spread of what are perceived as secular norms [see the above article on the conflict between religious and fiscal conservatives] is making some conservative Christians reconsider the political ambitions of the past four decades and rather […]

Tension (but not too much) ahead for Mormon viability?

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“Too much tension with the surrounding culture invites scorn; too little threatens its uniqueness:” Such is the dilemma facing Mormonism after nearly two centuries of existence, writes Peggy Fletcher Stack in The Salt Lake Tribune (April 21), after talking with veteran Mormon sociologist Armand Mauss. The LDS Church cannot afford too much conflict with the […]

Exorcists wanted in the Catholic Church

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A boom in the demand for exorcisms is one of the unexpected consequences of “Pope Francis effect,” Nick Squires reports in The Telegraph (April 13). Several other newspapers have reported on that trend, intrigued by a week-long exorcism conference that took place for the tenth time at the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum in Rome. Pope […]

Atheism coming out of the closet in Arab societies

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Although numbers are in dispute in their own societies, atheism among ex-Muslims is becoming increasingly organized and political, reports Ahmed Benchemsi in The New Republic magazine (April 23). In recent months there have been publicized cases of atheists facing stiff punishments for publicly espousing atheism in such Muslim countries as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Palestine […]

Featured Story: Messianic Judaism attracting more gentile believers

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While the Messianic movement started as organizations for Jewish converts, Messianic congregations attract today on average a majority of Christian-born seekers, reports Hillary Kaell (Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec) in the current issue of the journal Religion (January). Since the mid-1990s, not only has the interest of U.S. Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians in Messianic Judaism grown, […]

Jewish rebirth in Ukraine

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Since 1991, a number of Jewish communities and organizations have reappeared in Ukraine, writes Juliana Smilianskaya, director of the Institute for Jewish Studies in Kyiv, in Religion & Gesellschaft in Ost und West (February). Their number has regularly grown since Ukrainian independence and has enjoyed the support of international Jewish organizations. Currently, 290 Jewish communities […]