Several workshops at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Toronto, held Nov. 23-26, dealt with the changing relationship between scholars and law-enforcement.officials on new religious movements after Sept. 11. Only a decade ago, the threat level from new religious movements (NRMs) was perceived as so low that actions committed in the […]

The November joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religion Research Association in Salt Lake City had as as its official themes “Practicing Religion in the 21st Century” and “Theory and Applied Research.” Along with the usual conversations and debates about data, both themes revealed an ongoing concern about the […]

On Oct. 31, the 234-member Tamil Nadu assembly in South India approved a controversial bill banning forced religious conversions. The new law imposes penalties of up to three years in prison for converting someone by force or inducement.There have been heated debates during the entire month of October about the decision taken by the authorities […]

Throughout the former Soviet Union, opposition has emerged against “nontraditional” religions. But Georgia is the only country in Eurasia where officially-condoned, organized mob violence against adherents of nontraditional faiths has developed as a continuing problem — and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been the primary target of that campaign, reports Michael Ochs, staff advisor at the […]

As rumors of war heat up, Saddam Hussein has intensified the public and unifying role of Islam in Iraq, reports the Toronto Star (Oct. 13). Since the Gulf war of over a decade ago,  Hussein has sought to build ties to the different Muslim groups and unify the country under a single, and loyal Islam, drastically challenging the […]

While the recent attack in Bali has put Indonesia and its extremist Muslim groups in the spotlight, there are also increasing instances of Christian-Muslim clashes in some areas and attacks against Christian churches around the country. Christians — Catholics and Protestants all taken together — make up about 10 percent of the Indonesian population. In […]

On Oct. 27, Brazil elected a leftist president, Luiz Inacio da Silva, widely known as Lula, but there were few signs that the growing number of evangelicals in the country formed a voting bloc either for or against the candidate. He garnered 61 percent of the votes, while the candidate of the ruling coalition, Jose […]

Catholic theology is facing a new challenge as young theologians are often more conservative and are often bewildered about the polarization in the church today, writes Thomas P. Rausch. In America magazine (Oct. 14), Rausch writes that young academics in Catholic universities and seminaries are at odds with older theologians on matters of feminism, religious pluralism and […]

The priest sex abuse crisis is turning out to be as much an impetus for conservative activism as for liberal protests and challenges to the church structure. The Washington Post (Oct. 13) reports that when the  scandal broke last January with allegations of sex abuse cases and cover-up in the Boston Archdiocese “liberal groups were the first to […]

It has usually been the less ethnic Eastern Orthodox churches (such as the Orthodox Church in America) rather than Greek churches that have attracted converts, but that situation seems to be changing. A report in the Los Angeles Times (Oct. 19) notes that Greek churches are gradually opening their doors to non-Greeks. Since the early 1990s, “Introduction […]