After years of ignoring or downplaying the effect of AIDS in Africa, missionary organizations and churches are joining forces in the prevention and treatment of the fast-spreading disease. Charisma News Service, (June 27) reports that those attending the United Nations General Assembly’s special session on AIDS in New York in June found many representatives from worldwide […]

Militant Jews and Hindus living in New York are forming a new alliance, based largely on their common antagonism toward Muslims, reports the New York Times (June 2). The unusual bond was seen recently when a Web site run by militant Hindus in the New York City borough of Queens was shut down by its service provider […]

The New Age movement has found a solid foothold in the South and is also finding a new tolerance for its unorthodox spiritual practices, reports New Age magazine (July/August). The Asheville, North Carolina area hosts up to 50 retreat centers, and the city has more massage therapists per quarter block than most other places, writes Lauren Winner. […]

The Unitarian-Universalists are undergoing new divisions about the church’s pluralistic and non-dogmatic teachings, but it appears that politics is also playing a large role in the conflict. A small group of dissidents who recently planned to start a rival Unitarian-Universalist society in order to restore a more central place for God in the religion received […]

Americans interested in Buddhism are being fed the more esoteric, high level teachings while missing  the basics, often under the instruction of visiting lamas and other spiritual teachers, reports the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Summer). In an interview, Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace says that the dilemma is most evident in Tibetan Buddhism, where Tibetan lamas visiting the U.S. […]

The campaign for faith-based social services is “opening up a new front” as religious and political leaders press businesses to drop their common practice of restricting donations to religious groups. The evangelical newsweekly World (June 16) reports that six of the 10 largest corporate givers in the U.S. explicitly rule out or restrict donations to faith-based groups. […]

There is a new interest among scholars in the relationship between the brain and spirituality, and it appears such scholarship is appealing to a popular readership. Publisher Weekly’s Bookline newsletter (June 12) reports a “bumper crop” of new books finding that people may be “wired for God,” as spiritual impulses are being gauged and studied in laboratories […]

Festivals are an increasingly prominent venue for spirituality and worship among Christians, but are they becoming a substitute for church involvement? In the U.S., Christian rock concerts have become  religious festivals, filled with pageantry, camaraderie, teaching, worship, not to mention music. The evangelical magazine Prism (May/June) reports on the mushrooming variety of Christian music festivals that bloom every […]