Turkey’s attempt to steer a middle ground between secular nationalism and Islamic revivalism appears to be faltering, threatening both religious freedom and its much hoped-for integration into the European Union, writes political scientist Elizabeth Prodromou in the Brandywine Review of Faith & International Affairs (Spring). With the election of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) in 2002, […]

As more social scientists study religion, there has been a significant growth of new scales and measurements to gauge religious beliefs and practices– enough to make it difficult for scholars to communicate with each other. Science & Theology News (June) reports that it is especially in the burgeoning field exploring the connections between faith, spirituality and health […]

A “new fusionism” linking pro-life social conservatives and foreign policy neoconservatives is taking place based around the common concerns of traditional values and reasserting American moral purpose, writes Jody Bottum in First Things magazine (June/July). When conservatives speak of “fusionism” they usually hearken back to the marriage between libertarians and traditional conservatives in the 1960s over their […]

The public display of religious symbols and mottos has become the most contested church-state issue of recent years, with key battles being fought out in Congress as well as the Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal (May 27) reports that a case involving the display of a cross in a national preserve in California is likely to […]

Popular Internet portals in China were flooded with comments and prayers about the pope on the day his death was announced, but they all had disappeared two days later, reports AFP (April 4). The companies running the website confirmed the censorship, enforced through the use of sophisticated technology, claiming that “religious issues are special” and potential problems […]

The trajectory of radical, “jihadist” Islamic groups indicates that they will increasingly target wider categories of groups, including Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, perhaps limiting their appeal in the Muslim world, writes Quintan Wiktorowicz in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (March). The radicals belong to one segment of the Salafi or Wahabbi movement in Islam, which […]

While religious consumerism is a global force, the mixing of  religion organizations and practices with economic goods and services is no metaphor in Russia. In the journal Religion, State and Society (March), anthropologist Melissa L. Caldwell writes that religion has been divorced from spirituality in an unusual way in Russia; it is not only that seekers have […]