Services offering Hindus “surrogate” pujas (or offerings to a deity) and other rituals as well as streaming webcasts of temple ceremonies from India are becoming more widespread, reports Hinduism Today (April/May/June). Several virtual puja services are run from India with a global clientele. EPrarthana.com allows customers to pay a charge of $9 to order an […]

Since the economic downturn of last year, faith-based investing has shown new growth, reports the Long Island Catholic newspaper (March 3). The recession has “prompted investors to question their financial advisors and the huge mutual fund names they trusted for so long. As result, many are gravitating towards the faith-based investing universe that is made […]

Social conservatives and the Christian right are taking on the rhetoric of the tea party activists, who form the main opposition to President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative and stimulus spending. The Los Angeles Times (March 11) reports that social conservatives are exploring the “morality of debt and the risks to religious freedom posed by growing […]

The health of American religious life benefiting may be under debate, but most indicators from economic downturn suggest that the study of American religion is flourishing. In particular, both the disciplines of history and sociology are drawing new scholars on religious topics as well assigning a more important role to religion, according to recent studies. […]

Faith-based social services are not likely to be rolled back by President Barack Obama, even if he may put a more liberal spin on such policies, writes Lew Daly in the journal Policy Review (October/November). Daly notes that almost year after his election, Obama has not aggressively sought to “restore the pre-Bush status quo by […]

The recent formation of Christian Science fellowships is raising challenges to the standardized practices in Christian Scientist churches. The independent Christian Science newsletter The Banner (winter) reports that two unofficial fellowships that have formed in Chicago and Chesterfield, Missouri have been trying to get formal recognition in the directory of the Christian Science Journal, although […]

A growing number of Catholic schools are opting to become charter schools rather than close their doors permanently, reports Commonweal magazine (Dec. 4). The declining state of Catholic education, particularly in inner cities, is convincing bishops in the dioceses of Washington, DC, Miami and Brooklyn to convert up to 16 parochial schools to charter schools—and […]

A gradual “desegregation of the megachurches” in the US is taking place, reports Time magazine (Jan. 11). While the proportion of American churches with 20 percent or more minority participation has remained at about seven percent for the past nine years, that figure for evangelical churches with over 1,000 attending has more than quadrupled (from […]

The prosperity gospel has been accused of many things, but being a significant cause of the financial crisis has not usually been among them—at least until Hanna Rosin’s much publicized cover story in The Atlantic magazine (December). Rosin found that the areas most affected by the housing foreclosure crisis are often the same places, mostly […]