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The text is a review of two books: "Religious Pluralism and Political Stability: Obligations in Agreement" by David Golemboski and "Powerful Devices: Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare" by Abimbola Adelakun. The reviewer provides a brief overview of each book's main arguments and themes. Golemboski's book explores the relationship between political liberalism and religion, arguing for the importance of justificatory stability and the role of constitutional patriotism in addressing conflicts between law and religion. Adelakun's book focuses on the activism of spiritual warriors and their use of prayer to combat evil forces. The reviewer acknowledges the interesting perspectives presented in both books but raises some doubts and questions about their arguments. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the legacy of William Temple and his proposals for rebuilding Britain after World War II. It discusses his belief in the Anglican identity as crucial to social order and reform, as well as his establishment of the Council of Christians and Jews during the war. The article also explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious communities and the need to reconsider traditional social cohesion. The authors argue for the importance of theology and religious faith in addressing current societal issues, while cautioning against reducing religion to a secular theory or using it to support exclusive ideologies. The text also discusses the renewal of interest in the church and the evolution of the Temple tradition, emphasizing the pursuit of the common good and interreligious cooperation. It explores the liberal aspects of Temple's thought, such as religious pluralism and empirical research for policy influence. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of local engagement and practical debates for the betterment of society. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the impact of colonization on Indigenous cosmologies and how they have adapted and persisted despite these changes. The authors argue that Indigenous peoples navigate agency and survival through their alterity and flexibility in incorporating difference. The volume also examines the pragmatic ways in which Indigenous peoples engage with multiple religious worlds, highlighting their agency and strategic choices. However, the article raises concerns about the lack of inclusion of Native scholarly perspectives and the continued framing of Western anthropologists as the primary experts on Indigenous experience. [Extracted from the article]

One thing, however, was certain: the state had decided to intervene in Russia's religious economy to ensure that large, politically reliable, "traditional" religions would have an advantage in post-Soviet Russia. 8 For example, in 2007, President Vladimir Putin denied that Russia was a secular state: "The law states that Russia has four traditional religions. Beginning in 1979, Soviet authorities actively courted the Dalai Lama (the spiritual leader of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhists) who visited the USSR four times, in 1979, 1982, 1986, and 1991.[34] In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and initiated a democratization of the Soviet Union, there were still only two legally recognized Buddhist communities in all of the USSR. [7] Although the law suggested that many religions might be worthy of special consideration based on these criteria, the list of Russia's "traditional" religions was quickly limited to only four: Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism.[8] As a practical matter, religious organizations with a continuous legal existence for the previous fifteen years (i.e. since 1982, when Russia was under Soviet atheist rule) were favored in the new, complex process of registration. [Extracted from the article]

The religious composition of the United States is rapidly shifting. As institutions and their stakeholders negotiate the needs of an increasingly diverse public, leaders of national chaplaincy organizations offer insight into how actors can effectively understand and engage matters of religious pluralism. This article identifies two distinct institutional frameworks ("mandate" and "interpersonal care") that provide chaplaincy leaders with different schemas, tools, and strategies to use when understanding and motivating their engagement with religiously diverse publics. Using interviews with sixteen national chaplaincy leaders working in public and private settings, we delineate how institutional leaders interpret, articulate, and fulfill their roles as negotiators of religious differences within their respective frameworks. Our findings allow scholars and leaders to better understand how institutions and their actors can successfully interact with a diversifying, religiously pluralistic public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consisting of twelve contributions, this collective book deals with a topic that of late has been the object of sustained attention: the use of al-Andalus to talk about other issues, which vary according to the context in which the talking takes place and those involved. I have been outspoken against the "demonization" of al-Andalus undertaken by some both inside and outside Spain,[3] but I Convivencia i - as with any other concept - can and should be discussed seriously, and without such a discussion being misrepresented as an attack. [Extracted from the article]

His critique of evangelical biblicism as intellectually vapid does not reference the nuanced biblical scholarship - and calls for racial justice and social concern - that many evangelical seminaries and colleges are currently producing. But some pockets of evangelical higher education notwithstanding, Hollinger's critique of American white evangelicalism as a whole may not be as far off the mark as many evangelicals (myself included) might wish. But as a whole, he insists, evangelicalism is a threat to American democracy - a threat that is all the more upsetting because evangelicals exercise disproportionate control over American politics in a nation that is increasingly secular. [Extracted from the article]

This document is a collection of book reviews from the Journal of Church & State. The first review discusses Scott Berg's book, "Finding Order in Diversity: Religious Toleration in the Habsburg Empire, 1792–1848." The reviewer highlights how the Habsburg regime expanded religious toleration in pursuit of political stability, defusing tensions between different religious groups. The second review is about Leigh Binford's book, "From Popular Insurgents to Insurgent Intellectuals: Peasant Catechists in the Salvadoran Revolution." The book explores the participation of Christians mobilized through liberation theology in El Salvador's armed popular organizations during the civil war. Both books offer valuable insights into the complex relationship between religion and politics in historical contexts. [Extracted from the article]

This article draws upon and contributes to current discussions in the study of conversion, Muslims in Europe, and gender and emotion by taking media productions as an ethnographic starting point for analyzing the subject position of women who converted to Islam. In contemporary Western European contexts, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam evokes various affective responses, including bewilderment, concern, and fear. This article assesses the frames through which female converts to Islam are represented in the media and particularly explores the existing focus on mother and daughter relationships. Based upon an analysis of the emotions named and generated, this article argues that such affective framings contribute to the shaping of the subject position of female converts to Islam. It moreover demonstrates that emotions such as concern, sadness, grief, and fear are the result of, as well as constructively infuse, contemporary debates on religious and cultural diversity in the Netherlands in which Islam and Muslims are considered to pose a "problem" for Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, as Aziz acknowledges, the subjugation of African Americans remains so deeply embedded in America's history that "African-American Muslims will always be Black regardless of identity performance, levels of religiosity, or political views" (p. 192). The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom. Whether the insurrection that occurred on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol or the US Supreme Court upholding an immigration ban on Muslims from seven Muslim-majority countries, an exclusionary Judea-Christian nationalism prism continues to serve as an indicator of Whiteness - and resulting privileges. [Extracted from the article]

How do American Muslims practice inclusivity and bridge religious differences in U.S. civic life? Sociological research on bridging focuses mostly on bridging efforts on the part of majority groups, leaving unanswered the timely question of if and how inclusivity is practiced by minority groups, particularly religious minorities, in U.S. civic spaces. Drawing on participant observation among two Muslim groups in Los Angeles, this paper identifies two practices of inclusivity that participants adopt to bridge religious difference: the interreligious heritage practice and the shared ethics practice. Both practices simultaneously draw and diffuse group boundaries, emphasize sameness, albeit using different sets of religious meanings, and are grounded in an understanding of civic spaces as implicitly exclusionary of minorities. I find that these practices can create tension points in the pursuit of mutual understanding and create textures of meanings that operate differently depending on the situation and the participants in the interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rāghavāṅka lived in the first half of the thirteenth century, when the Kannada devotional tradition we now call 'Vīraśaivism' or 'Liṅgāyatism' was at a nascent phase; the use of these labels was tenuous and the social boundaries of the local devotional movement less rigidly defined. 1 Unlike a simplistic but common perception of early devotional movement in the Kannada region as being anti-Brahmanical, egalitarian, quasi-democratic, anti-ritualistic, and so on, 2 texts by Rāghavāṅka and others, which are the earliest we have, present a more complex picture of cultural negotiations and religious diversity, not only in relation to entities external to the local Śaiva tradition but also among Śaivas. This divergence is reflected even within the literary production of a single author: while most of Rāghavāṅka's works can be easily read as primarily promoting devotional values that correspond to an inclusive, non-elite, and anti-court agenda, his most celebrated literary work, the Life of Hariścandra (Hariścandra Cāritra), presents a more complex mixture of conservative values associated with Brahmanical orthodoxy and royal power combined with the emerging devotional idiom of the Kannada-speaking region. This article pays attention to ethical complications in the Life of Hariścandra and to how the later tradition negotiated these against a clear set of inclusive, anti-Brahmanical, and anti-court ideals. With this analysis, I wish to suggest a more dynamic understanding of how Vīraśaivism positioned itself in relation to Brahmanical orthodoxy and royal power. As recent studies show, religious identities in the premodern, which today we think of using labels such as 'Vīraśaivism' and 'Brahmanical orthodoxy', were not static but rather a product of a dialectical and historically dynamic process, a process that involved refashioning and self-repositioning in relation to other emergent religious actors. 3 This article reconstructs such a negotiation about social values and religious identity as it unfolded in Vīraśaiva devotional narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For students of Sufism in general, and of Ibn Arabi's school in particular, Fitzroy Morrissey's ground-breaking monograph on Abd al-Karim al-Jili (d. 811/1408 [?]) Although the Christians, so Jili argues, are guilty of I shirk i through their limited and overly literal interpretation of the Trinity enshrined in their revealed book, their very belief in that scripture and their sincere desire to understand it suffice to exonerate them; and in this respect Jili compares their state to that of a Muslim jurist who - according to a well-known adith - will still be rewarded for sincerely striving to arrive at a legal judgement even if the latter proves to be wrong (p. 144). Before embarking on his detailed analysis of Jili's treatment of the scriptures, Morrissey prepares the ground with a general introduction to Jili and his worldview. [Extracted from the article]

A two-day conference was held at Lincoln Cathedral to celebrate the life and works of William Byrd, an influential English composer who lived during the early modern period. The conference consisted of panels that explored various aspects of Byrd's life, including his relationship with Lincoln Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, his employment outside of the official church, his music's relationship with Catholicism, and the experimental and innovative qualities of his compositions. The conference highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of studying early modern music and provided fresh perspectives on Byrd's life and work. [Extracted from the article]

Rather, arguments over the Church of England's nature were more or less contained within the Church until such disputes broke open during the English Civil Wars. Haefeli argues that religious pluralism in America was the result of approximately 160 years of complex developments which were tied inextricably to English colonization, the English Reformation, and English state-building. Haefeli does not claim that after 1662 the English world never engaged with important questions about its religious character, but that following that year America became more religiously diverse while the Anglican Church retained its fundamental character. [Extracted from the article]

That may happen, Wuthnow argues, but religion often is a site of mobilization, and the ends being pursued are not always negotiation or compromise. It is a mix that, for Wuthnow, fosters agonistic religious practice, and makes religion a component part of American democracy as he understands it. Why Religion is Good for American Democracy. [Extracted from the article]

I Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism i is a comprehensive study of religion and politics in three countries over a century. Second, comparing Turkey with the Southeastern cases of India and Pakistan within the context of transition from empire to nation-state is a novel attempt. Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism: India, Pakistan, and Turkey. [Extracted from the article]

Sahlins's discussions of belief could have been clarified and enriched with reference to the voluminous work on the topic in folklore studies. I The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology for Most of Humanity i , the last work of the late, great Marshall Sahlins, focuses on the fairly straightforward argument throughout, illustrating the various points with vivid ethnographic examples, that anthropology must better re-imagine the world of non-modern cultures, which he sees as "inspirited", a worldview that includes non-human spirits, deities, and the like. Sahlins's discussion of gods and spirits, without recourse to the rich scholarly results of folklore and mythology, is therefore rather two-dimensional, missing any sense of temporality either in the narratives or in the cultural traditions themselves. [Extracted from the article]

He argued that the words are historically significant and were an "important reference to the foundation of Christian faith in New Zealand."[35] JFNZ arranged a second protest, again on Parliament grounds, on October 30, 2018, the day before a presentation of their petition was to be made at Parliament.[36] On the same day, the Speaker of the House was interviewed in connection with the protest. Ahdar has previously noted that despite increasing religious diversity and secularism, there are strands of New Zealand Christianity which still hold a mindset that they live in I corpus Christianum i , where Christians should rule.[86] By envisioning a "Christian" New Zealand, groups such as JFNZ promote an exclusive view of the nation. 35 New Zealand Parliament, "Petition of Pastor Ross Smith for Jesus for NZ: Include Jesus Christ in Parliamentary Prayer", Parliament.nz: New Zealand Parliament, December 20, 2019, 2, https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/reports/document/SCR 93629/petition-of-pastor-ross-smith-for-jesus-for-nz-include. 43 New Zealand Parliament, "Petition of Pastor Ross Smith for Jesus for NZ: Include Jesus Christ in Parliamentary Prayer.". [Extracted from the article]

Since the very beginning of the so-called 'refugee crisis' European debates about the reception and accommodation of refugees have circled around religious issues: Some (of the most secularized) post-socialist countries rediscovered their Christian cultural heritage as an argument against the immigration of Muslims, and in Germany, reports on interreligious conflicts nurtured claims for a separation of refugees along with religious lines. The article draws from an extensive case study on religious diversity and practice in refugee accommodation centres in Lower Saxony. It focuses on the administrative staff and the social workers in these centres who face a high degree of uncertainty due to the multi-religious and multicultural constellations they encounter. To cope with this religious illiteracy and to transform uncertainty into certainty, they apply three kinds of strategies, namely Restriction of the scope of legitimate religious expression, Simplification of religious and cultural heterogeneity through culturalist stereotypes, and an Externalization of responsibilities to deal with religious differences, such as dietary needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of cultural expertise in asylum judicial decisions in the UK by focusing on witchcraft-based persecution. The case study highlights multiple challenges to decision-making created by religious and cultural diversity, and the ensuing problems of assessing unfamiliar facts and beliefs against the often lack of corroborating evidence. Drawing on legal sources and a small number of anthropological studies, as well as analyses of judicial decisions, the article discusses how the unique characteristics of witchcraft cases, with their unfamiliar paradigms, are illustrative of the need to analyse and understand asylum claims within their broad cultural, historical, economic, and political contexts. The article exposes how cultural expertise assists judges in appreciating specific contexts and curbing their Eurocentric understanding of culture and religion, and shapes the final outcome of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It could be the beginning of a joke: Clare Boothe Luce, Whittaker Chambers, Sammy Davis Jr. Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, and Chuck Colson walk into a monograph. While sprightly and occasionally wry, however, Rebecca Davis's book I Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics i is no joke. At times in the book, it is unclear whether Davis is more interested in conversions as exemplars of big twentieth-century phenomena (such as Cold War paranoia, varieties of Blackness, and mass-media celebrity culture) or as models of self-discovery. [Extracted from the article]

In 1924, modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk dismantled the Caliphate and replaced it with the Presidency of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, which governs Islamic practice and property. Çinar's image of Turkey as a "military-nation" similarly helps explain the chasm between Turkish and European practices surrounding conscientious objectors. Turkish courts increasingly parrot the dictates of the Diyanet, and prosecutions under Turkey's blasphemy laws are on the rise. [Extracted from the article]

This article considers the practices about 'the special dead' related to the monastery at Pāhāṛpur ('Hill--town') in the Rājshāhī region of North--Western Bangladesh. This Early Medieval community was rich in religious diversity from the Gupta to Pāla periods—dense with evidence of Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist activity. There are a number of stūpa structures throughout the grounds for the burial of revered teachers and leaders such that the living comingled with the dead in an academic and religious setting. The Pāla era monastery was dedicated to advanced learning, meditation, worship, student housing, and burial. At the centre of the monastery is a large stūpa that has been celebrated widely for its diverse imagery in the form of terracotta plaques and relief sculptures with Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain themes. This article focuses on the reception history of this site and especially on its unique role as a mediator of religious voices from the region's past. Under Dharmapāla, the site became branded as Buddhist as part of a broader imperial effort to promote Buddhist networks. Locally, however, the site maintained and promoted relationships to Hindu and Jain communities as well as Buddhist ones. Its endurance as a sacred site through complex interreligious permutations is intriguing though not surprising. Death and learning were not separated. Evidence from Pāhāṛpur raises questions about the communities who lived there as well as our understanding of their approach to death in practice in the Bengal region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edited by Md Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and Darryn Jensen That does suggest, however, that the vaguely optimistic note on which the introduction ends, suggesting that the essays that follow may illuminate "the conditions under which religious beliefs and civil authority can co-exist happily", is perhaps I too i optimistic (p. 9). The newly energized "expressions of religion" that result in turn are "accompanied by the emergence of much more strident expressions of hostility to religion" (p. 2). [Extracted from the article]

In contrast, Jonathan Seglow and Andrew Shorten state in I Religion and Political Theory i that religion has been subject of intense political theorizing in the liberal tradition. Edited by Jonathan Seglow and Andrew Shorten In I Religion and Political Theory i , Jonathan Seglow and Andrew Shorten aim to provide a state-of-the-art account of political theorists' attempts to grapple with questions concerning religion. [Extracted from the article]

Scholars often assert that Marcion believed in two Gods or supported a ditheistic theology. This essay argues that Marcion and his followers avoided calling the creator 'God' in an absolute sense. Instead, they preferred terms like 'creator' and 'cosmocrator'. It is unlikely that Marcion would have described himself as a believer in two Gods (a type of polytheist). He maintained that there was one true God superior to the creator, without independently affirming the creator's deity in an absolute sense. For Marcion(ites), the creator was not truly God, because the creator was not entirely good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As I sat down to read Massimo Introvigne's Inside the Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China, I could feel my sinological snark rising. Introvigne, a leading defender of new religious movements (his detractors often unfairly label him a "cult apologist"), is not surprised to find the members of The Church of Almighty God to be normal and does not belabor the point. In any event, Introvigne does not write as a China-watcher and does not pretend to offer new insights into the motivations of China 's leaders. [Extracted from the article]

This study examines how the religious composition of a local U.S. population shapes an individual's religious involvement. We reconsider Berger's plausibility thesis and unpack its theoretical mechanisms by (1) conceptualizing religious diversity from each religious group's perspective, because a specific local religious environment has different implications depending on one's religion; (2) decomposing the diversity of the population into the religious out group's share and diversity; and (3) including non-affiliated as part of local religious contexts. Furthermore, we adjust for the detailed categories of religious family in a multilevel framework, which addresses the problem of non-substantive correlation and potential heterogeneity among religious groups. Focusing on Protestants, Catholics, and non-affiliated, the analysis reveal s that although religious diversity, especially the share of the religious outgroup, tends to be associated negatively with an individual's religious involvement, there are important differences in how religious diversity is related to religiosity among different religious groups including Protestants and Catholics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under a wider administrative network, "religious attachment to the state is part of an overall ruling strategy."[70] This structure places strong obligations on unregistered churches in particular to dialogue and collaborate with the government in working out an appropriate church-state relationship (as seen in the case of Shouwang Church), even while resisting the official church structure. On the one hand, while Chinese churches maintain a critical posture toward political authority, it is crucial for them to show their responsibility and wisdom in political and civil life as citizens for the greater justice in Chinese society, either in constructive, transformative, or resistive way, particularly concerning both the limited role of government in church affairs and church autonomy itself. The principle of separation of church and state, as well as respecting and obeying the government as a principle of biblical truth, is insisted upon; however, if the government refuses to obey God's will, as indicated in the Bible, then churches must be faithful to God. A Critical Posture: Theological Accounts of Church and State in China In the cases examined above, we see the theological struggle with the state taking place across different churches, both registered and non-registered. [Extracted from the article]

Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools: Rethinking the Role of Law. Here, Dabby discusses the need to understand the relational aspect of religious diversity in public and highlights this challenge for jurists and citizens who are naturally drawn to conclusive judgments, which are typically more prescriptive and tangible. In this book, Dabby presents a rigorous and convincing lesson to prepare and help individuals, like Justice Iacobucci, for cases related to children and the religious diversity in Canadian schools. [Extracted from the article]

In making this shift, Joshi argues, a more meaningful understanding of religion and what it means to different followers can more durably ensue. Joshi astutely calls out how the so-called separation of church and state operates as falsely "religion-blind" dogma precluding meaningful discussion of religions in public domains by deeming such proselytization. In seeking to recognize and affirm a person's lived religion, Joshi recommends a shift from asking, "How Sikh is she?". [Extracted from the article]

They have brought the Archpriest controversy to the center of our attention where it undoubtedly deserves to be, and their invaluable book will be a sure guide for all future historians who can and must now engage with the extraordinary writings that the controversy provoked. When the pope instead appointed George Blackwell as "Archpriest" of England, some of the secular clergy - the Appellants - refused to recognize this and issued two appeals to Rome against this decision. All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England. [Extracted from the article]

Nair's case study is the I Jug Basisht i , a Persian translation of the Sanskrit I Laghu Yoga Vasi ha i by Ni am al-Din Panipati and his two Hindu interlocutors, Jagannatha Mi'sra Banarasi and Pa han Mi'sra Jajipuri. A number of scholarly works in recent years have revisited the Mughal translation of Sanskrit texts into Persian. The translation represents a confluence of both Sanskritic and Arabo-Persian philosophical currents, which Nair calls "jet streams" in the Mughal ecosystem (p. 23). [Extracted from the article]

In recent decades, a new type of room has been established in public institutions in Europe: the rooms of silence. In this article, rooms of silence at three Scandinavian universities are analyzed with focus on intention, materiality, and use in relation to increased religious diversity in the student population, individualization, and ongoing secularization. This is done by using a typology which distinguishes between individual and collective use and use associated with religious, spiritual, and secular practices. The analyses show that plans and policies for the rooms emphasize stress-reduction and spiritual or secular reflection. The chaplains actively facilitate the shift from collective to more individual use of the rooms. The analyses also show that the restricted materiality of the rooms shapes practices in ways that either hinder collective Muslim prayer or force students to perform prayer as an individual "silent" action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the roots of Hungary's Pluralist system of state Churches. It examines Hungary's new church law that reveals continuity between its present pluralist system of churches and the regulation of church-state relations in earlier periods in Hungarian history, as of July 2019. It reports how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) quashed many attempts at construing forms of institutional establishment of religion.

Sociologists argue that religious diversity motivates violent conflict and the embrace of religious tolerance in response. These accounts struggle to explain the histories of two coterminous Puritan ventures: Massachusetts, where religious intolerance became a legal norm, and Providence Island, a colony in the West Indies where religious infighting undercut the church-state. Drawing settlers from the same religious circles, both faced conflicts about the religious state's management of territory and banishment. Existing accounts overlook how the difference in territorial size between the colonies altered these debates. Weakened by a massive frontier, leadership in Massachusetts urged that religious toleration could be avoided through the territorial division of spiritual authority and limited confederation. In contrast, Providence Island's size precluded such divisions, and interaction among the settlers propelled religious conflict. Although frontiers are often theorized as refuge for religious dissenters, this account demonstrates that there are also contexts where frontiers can reinforce religious orthodoxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores one of postwar Europe's most dramatic ideological transformations: the end of prolonged animosities between Protestants and Catholics. It charts how a series of political upheavals between the 1930s and the 1960s led Christian elites to develop new conceptions of religious pluralism and religious freedom, which called for political and legal equality between Christian denominations but simultaneously excluded religious minorities, especially Jews and Muslims. First, the article shows how the crisis of the 1930s, especially Nazism's promise to unite the two denominations in a militarized racial community, instigated the first systematic interconfessional cooperation. Christian thinkers and politicians who sympathized with the regime's fierce anti-Marxism and antisemitism launched joint publications and formed new organizations. Second, the article shows how the unfolding of decolonization in Africa and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s further expanded this early Catholic-Protestant cooperation. The loss of European governments' support for missionary organizations, alongside anxieties about the spread of Islam among newly liberated nations, pushed Christian leaders to solidify an inter-Christian alliance. This entanglement of Christian cooperation and religious conflict helps explain why contemporary European politics and laws continues to accommodate both Christian denominations but often discriminates against non-Christians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Places of worship can serve as an important contact for the police and the police can serve as a vital source of support for congregations. Recent hate crimes and threats against congregations have highlighted the salience of these ties. Little is known, though, about patterns of contact and relationships between places of worship and police. This article presents results from a survey of over 1,300 religious congregations in USA. The analysis shows that two-thirds of congregations report having little or no contact with police, while one-third report having some or a great deal of contact. Over 70% of congregations report having a very friendly relationship with the police. Frequency of contact is positively associated with a congregation being Jewish, being larger, having experienced property crimes, and hosting a shelter or community festivals. Relationship quality is positively associated with contact, but negatively associated with having experienced crime and with a congregation belonging to a liberal–moderate Protestant, black Protestant, or liberal nontraditional denomination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a recent court decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case Osmanoğlu and Kocabaş v. Switzerland dealing with religious diversity and Muslim minority groups. It mentions secular assumptions pertaining to religion and the achievement of social integration of school learners and religious diversity. It also mentions violation of right to religious freedom in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This article reframes the history of religious studies by excavating a central context for its formal consolidation as an academic field: university containment of antiracist student movements. It chronicles this process as it occurred at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) between 1960 and 1975. Student activists appealed to liberation theologies in demanding that HDS take direct, redistributive action against racism and militarism. Administrators responded with rejoinders to a practice of cross-cultural encounter, sympathetic dialogue, and pluralism. Decades before the critique of religion entered a mainstream scholarly lexicon, HDS students attacked this discourse as a technology of racial formation, which separated proper civil subjects from extremists lacking discipline. Meanwhile, as pluralism emerged as the preferred approach to the study of religion at Harvard and around the nation, it circumscribed the field's critical possibilities. No more would religion provide ground for materialist cultural critique; rather it would be a site for the celebration of positive difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on religious pluralism by introducing an Orthodox approach to religious freedom based on Orthodox Trinitarian theology as articulated by thickers John Zizioulas and Professor Christos Yannaras. It argues that Orthodox churches are planning to rectify and deal with the issues of the modern age including religious freedom, religious pluralism and human rights.