Stricter forms of Islam are being promoted in Albania by young imams who were trained in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the head of the South-East Europe department of Aid to Church in Need reports. According to this international Catholic charity, this creates some tensions with Christians as well as with other Muslims (Catholic News Agency, […]

Immigrants from Iran in Germany are showing a high level of interest in Christianity, despite the serious stigma attached to Muslims converting to another religion, reports Christianity Today magazine (July/August). Journalists Matthias Pankau and Uwe Siemon-Netto report that the small yet growing movement of Muslims converting to Christianity in parts of the Middle East and […]

The ruling of a German regional court against the practice of circumcision has intensified a debate on religious freedom across much of Europe. The ruling stated that the practice of circumcision inflicts bodily harm and infringes on bodily integrity. Hospitals in Germany have suspended the practice until further clarification is obtained, and some hospitals in […]

First-generation immigrant clergy serving racially white congregations are becoming increasingly common in Canada, reports the Canadian evangelical magazine Faith Today (July/August). The experience of foreign and immigrant clergy ministering crossculturally in Canada was relatively rare up until the 1990s. But by 2010, “observers of the Canadian church were talking about this [growing phenomenon] as a […]

The longstanding disparity between men and women in atheist and skeptical groups is being accompanied by recent charges of sexual harassment in at least one quarter of this movement. The Amazing Meeting (TAM), an annual conference in Las Vegas for skeptics, humanists and atheists, has reported a dwindling number of women who attend. The reasons […]

A revival of traditional-looking Catholic churches is under way in the United States, in some cases replacing the “ubiquitous Modernist structures of the previous half-century,” writes Michael DeSanctis in the Jesuit magazine America (May 28). He adds that the anticipation of the conservative liturgical changes introduced by the Vatican in the last year may have […]

A mixture of academic rivalry, journalistic sensationalism and religious concerns is changing the field of biblical archeology, reports the Chronicle Review (June 22). For decades, biblical archeology has been driven by debates over discoveries in the Holy Land, but more recently the field has been split by “maximalist” and “minimalist” camps. The maximalists tend to […]

New technology used to trace one’s genetic makeup is confirming and, in some cases, revealing a Jewish ancestral background for many Catholics, leading some of them to a new interest in Judaism, reports Moment magazine (July/August). Genetic testing, now an inexpensive technique, “has buttressed claims of Jewish ancestry, once solely based on anecdotal evidence such […]

While some Jews harbor lingering suspicions about the motives of the evangelical group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the political support it provides not only for Israel, but also for Jewish initiatives is valued by others, notes Jan Jaben-Eilon in Jerusalem Report (July 30). CUFI, launched in 2006 and led by evangelical minister John Hagee—who […]