01: Religious involvement in the environmental movement receives in-depth treatment in the current issue of Social Compass (September) an international journal of the sociology of religion. Articles in this issue focus on interfaith environmental work, the emergence of environmental concern among evangelicals, the New Age center of Sedona, Arizona (said to be a “vortex” of spiritual energy) […]

01: Over the summer, the number one best-selling book in religion on the list of Publisher’s Weekly has been Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code (Simon & Schuster, $25.00). Endorsed by  some eminent scholars such as two members of the Israeli Academy of Arts and Sciences and members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the work claims to have found […]

01: The emergence of new charismatic and evangelical networks of congregations and seeker-sensitive worship is given in-depth treatment in Donald E. Miller’s book Reinventing American Protestantism (University of California Press). Through survey research and case studies, Miller profiles three movements which he sees as being in the vanguard of change in the shape of American Protestantism: the […]

01: Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (Oxford, $27.50) by Michael W. Cuneo, provides an intereresting  look at the subcultures of the Catholic right. Cuneo, a Fordham University sociologist,  examines such movements as conservative Catholicism; prolife activism; traditionalism (which emphasizes a return to pre-Vatican II Catholicism); and radical Marian-apocalyptic  movements, such as the one gathered  around […]

01: Millennium Rage: Survivalists, White Supremacists, and the Doomsday Prophecy (Plenum, $25.95)  is an absorbing look at the current wave of  militias, white supremacists, and other similar groups. Author Philip Lamy attempts to show how so-called “hate groups” have manufactured an apocalyptic ideology that fits in with their racist ideologies.  Millennium Rage is useful for those with an interest […]