World Religions

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Thinking about religion in Russia: Orthodox Christianity has declined, but also grown?

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Thinking about religion in Russia: Orthodox Christianity has declined, but also grown?

“Religion” is a complicated word, as I have noted many times at GetReligion.

Put the word “Byzantine” in front of “religion” or “Christianity” and things get really complicated, as in this secondary definition of that adjective: “ … excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

Frame Byzantine Christianity with the history of Russian culture and the complications are compounded. Toss in centuries of history — complex, bloody, mysterious and sacred — shared by the Slavic giants Russia and Ukraine and, well, you get the picture.

This weekend “think piece” comes from the Orthodox Christianity news website. This is an information source that, from the American point of view, is extremely conservative. This doesn’t mean that mainstream journalists should ignore it.

Why is that? Because it consistently offers direct links to online sources — documents, speeches, quotable analysis — that the vast majority of reporters and editors would not know about otherwise. This includes, for example, lots of material representing the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. That’s the historic church of Ukraine that is current caught up — along with millions of its Ukrainian members — in a violent collision between the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s current government, which is backed by the United States, the European Union and the tiny, but symbolic, Orthodox church in Istanbul led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

It’s easy, these days, for journalists to get government approved material from Moscow and Kyiv. The ancient Orthodox church being crushed by the two armies? Not so much. Thus, it helps to follow the Orthodox Christianity feed on X (the digital platform previously known as Twitter).

Consider the complex realities represented in this recent post: “Percentage of Orthodox is Down in Russia, but Percentage of Practicing Orthodox is up — Survey.” Read this carefully:

According to a new survey from the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the overall percentage of Orthodox Christians has decreased in Russia in recent years, while the percentage of those who actively practice the faith is up.


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Time to dig into World Religions 101: Does Vivek Ramaswamy's Hinduism shape his politics?

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Time to dig into World Religions 101: Does Vivek Ramaswamy's Hinduism shape his politics?

Vivek Ramaswamy — and his Hindu background — is the hot new flavor in religion reporting this week, with pieces coming out in Rolling Stone and Religion News Service. The New York Times did a piece earlier in July.

Yet, the outlet asking the best questions on this relevant topic may be Globely, a website that tracks international news. We will get to that in a moment. Ramaswamy

For those of you who don’t yet know, Ramaswamy is running for president — the second Hindu to do so since Tulsi Gabbard ran in 2020. In terms of interviewing actual Hindus, RNS came out on top.

Their numbers in this country are about 1% of the populace — 3 million maybe — and they are overwhelmingly first-generation immigrants, educated and majority male. According to this Pew Research data, they aren’t particularly observant religiously and they tend to be well-off.  

Let’s dig in.

First, a gripe: As someone who’s studied the false, independent Christian prophets who swore up and down that Donald Trump would be re-elected president in 2020, it’s beyond annoying when publications choose those folks to represent the beliefs of mainstream Christianity.

Not only did RNS do this in Monday’s story, but sadly, Rolling Stone does the same in their recent story.

Quoting Omaha, Neb., pastor Hank Kunneman — one of the prophets who got it wrong — and applying terms like “Christian nationalist” to anyone to the right of President Joe Biden is giving a big megaphone to this extreme wing of Christianity.

Rolling Stone proclaims:

VIVEK RAMASWAMY IS getting a hard look by Republicans willing to entertain alternatives to Donald Trump, especially as Ron DeSantis continues to flounder. The 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur has surged into third place in several national polls, ahead of prominent Republicans like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Tim Scott.

Ramaswamy is also a practicing Hindu, and though he has been campaigning as an anti-abortion religious conservative, his non-Christian faith is a major stumbling block for many in the GOP’s evangelical base. He’s been on a charm offensive with these evangelical audiences, but the outreach appears to be backfiring, at least among the Christian nationalist set.


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After all of the miracles he has seen in his life, why doesn't Indiana Jones truly believe?

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After all of the miracles he has seen in his life, why doesn't Indiana Jones truly believe?

By the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," archaeologist Indiana Jones had learned enough to know that he should close his eyes when facing the wrath of God.

Apparently, that kind of power can melt Nazis -- without changing the hero's soul.

"Why won't Indiana Jones convert? We aren't insisting that he convert to our faith or to his father's faith or really to any faith in particular," noted Jack Bennett, in a Popcorn Cathedral video marking the "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" release.

"What we want to know is why he is always back to square one at the start of every adventure -- a skeptic, or even a scoffer. I mean, think about it: He has seen the Ark of the Covenant opened and the destroying angels pour out God's vengeance on his enemies. He has seen the sacred Hindu stones come to life. …He has seen the true cup of Christ heal his own father from a fatal gunshot wound -- on screen, with no ambiguity."

In what the 80-year-old Harrison Ford has promised is the finale, Indiana Jones remains the archaeologist who risks everything to keep supernatural, even holy, artifacts out of the bad guys' clutches.

This is a war between archetypes of Good and Evil -- with capital letters. The Nazis are on one side, fighting with a brave skeptic who careens through scenes based on Saturday-matinee classics. Miraculous stories from the past are mere fairy tales, until he learns that Higher Powers are at work. Then again, maybe it's just aliens or generic supernatural forces.

In the new film, Jones confesses: "I don't believe in magic, but a few times in my life I've seen things, things I can't explain." But after a life wrestling with sacred mysteries, he concludes: "It's not so much what you believe. It's about how hard you believe it."


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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

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Podcast: Culture Wars 2023 -- As it turns out, traditional Muslims have children too

Gentle readers, please allow me to start with a short anecdote from about 15 years ago, during the years when I was teaching journalism a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

I attended a typical off-the-record think tank forum in which lawyers from church-state groups were talking about rising tensions in public, taxpayer funded, institutions. At one point, someone asked a question that sounded something like this: What should public-schools leaders do when approached by parents who want opt-out choices for their children when faced with class activities that clash with the teachings of their faith?

The question, of course, was linked to tensions between public-school leaders and evangelicals, and maybe traditional Catholics (“traditional” in the FBI meaning of the word).

One lawyer gave an answer that was way ahead of its time: School administrators should look at these people and do everything they can to pretend that these parents are Muslims. In other words, pretend these parents are part of a minority faith that public officials respect (Muslims), as opposed to part of a larger faith group that administrators distrust, fear and possibly even loathe (evangelicals).

This was one of two Beltway anecdotes I shared during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a Washington Post story that I have been thinking about during the past week or two. That headline: “Hundreds of Md. parents protest lessons they say offend their faiths.” The Post team appears to have worked hard to keep the main news hook out of that headline and even the lede.

Hundreds of parents demonstrated outside the Montgomery County Board of Education’s meeting … demanding that Maryland’s largest school district allow them to shield their children from books and lessons that contain LGBTQ+ characters.

Still in the dark, right? Keep reading:

The crowd was filled largely with Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox parents, who say the school system is violating their religious rights protected under the First Amendment by not providing an opt-out. Three families have filed a lawsuit against the school system.


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Still news? Media silent on pronouncements from World and National Councils of Churches

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Still news? Media silent on pronouncements from World and National Councils of Churches

Who is listening?

Preachers face that question every weekend and it’s vital for strategizing by religious organizations -- or should be. The Religion Guy has lately been pondering a long-running religion-beat puzzle that possibly warrants some analytical articles, or at least reflection on the part of journalists.

Why do U.S. power-brokers, and journalists themselves, pay little or no heed to ardent pronouncements by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC)? After all, the WCC says it represents 352 church bodies in 120 countries that encompass 580 million Christians. The NCC reports its 37 American member bodies include more than 30 million members in 100,000 congregations.

Last year, a Religion Guy Memo promoted media attention to the WCC’s upcoming global Assembly in Germany at the start of its 75th anniversary year. 

Journalists could not have asked for a stronger news peg. Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine was proceeding with hotly disputed blessings from the Moscow leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, by far the WCC’s largest member body, which created a vast humanitarian crisis for fellow Christians in Ukraine.

(That Memo put special focus on the plight facing Metropolitan Hilarion, the Moscow patriarchate’s well-known ecumenical officer and foreign envoy. There were signals that his views on the invasion were quite different than those of Patriarch Kirill, and was soon abruptly “released from his duties” and reassigned to Hungary. Follow-up, anyone?)

The September Assembly stated that it “denounces this illegal and unjustifiable war” and (without naming Russian Orthodoxy) that delegates “reject any misuse of religious language and authority to justify armed aggression.” The meeting also called for “an immediate ceasefire” and “negotiations to secure a sustainable peace” — though at the time some critics figured that stance would undercut Ukraine’s position.

The situation facing the WCC and its Orthodox members surely counts as news, and still does.


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Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

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Podcast: Can journalists imagine 'mirror' cases in which 303 Creative protects liberals?

If you follow Robert P. George in social media, you probably know several things about this legal scholar.

(1) He is a political philosopher and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.

(2) George is a doctrinally conservative Roman Catholic.

(3) He is a skilled Americana musician (think folk, gospel and bluegrass) who plays the banjo and a 12-fret acoustic guitar (I’m a big fan of the latter).

(4) In the public square, he is relentlessly irenic, seeking ways to view issues through the lens of those with whom he disagrees. This approach has been demonstrated during years of joyful and informative pro-tolerance dialogues with his close friend Cornel West, a liberal’s liberal known for decades of provocative classroom work at Princeton, Harvard and Union Seminary.

From a GetReligion point of view, it’s also important that — based at Princeton — George lives right on the edge of what could be called the Archdiocese of The New York Times and he pays close attention to mainstream news coverage of religion and public life.

This is why George played a key role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which was a follow-up to my recent post with this headline: “After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?”

After the latest wave of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, George posted a Mirror of Justice commentary in which he noted that Times editors seemed remarkable unaware of the actual contents of the majority opinions. The headline on the Gray Lady’s initial 303 Creative story was, in GetReligion terms, a classic: “Web Designer Wins Right to Turn Away Gay People.”

The problem was that Justice Neil Gorsuch — author of the court’s landmark Bostock decision (.pdf here) backing trans rights — said the opposite of that in his 303 Creative majority opinion (.pdf here).


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Double-thinking about atheists: What's up with their role in America's hot public square?

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Double-thinking about atheists: What's up with their role in America's hot public square?

I live in Southern Appalachia, which is in Bible Belt territory on anyone’s map of America.

Then again, I live near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — a place where the nerdy PhD’s per-square-foot count is the same or higher than, well, the California Institute of Technology or the University of California, Berkeley. In other words, it’s surprisingly easy to run into local atheists and agnostics just about anywhere one engages in conversation (take the gym, for example).

Are these unbelievers hostile? Let’s just say that the real people I meet in this niche religious group (#ducking) are different from those I encounter in cyberspace. Maybe there’s something about the Southern Highlands that attracts friendly atheists-agnostics?

I thought about this phenomenon when I saw this recent Graphs about Religion headline from political scientist (and GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge: “Just How Much Do Americans Dislike Atheists?”

This new Burge piece reminded me of his earlier piece: “No One Participates in Politics More than Atheists — Even White Evangelicals.” Remember these reflections on the Cooperative Election Study question: “Have you done any of the following activities in the previous month?”

The group that is most likely to contact a public official? Atheists.

The group that puts up political signs at the highest rates? Atheists.

HALF of atheists report giving to a candidate or campaign in the 2020 presidential election cycle.

And while they don’t lead the pack when it comes to attending a local political meeting, they only trail Hindus by four percentage points.

Anyway, I stashed these Burge URLs in my growing “Thinker piece” file — along with a very interesting (and I would argue, related) Pew Research Center post with this headline: “One-in-six Americans have taken steps to see less of someone on social media due to religious content.”

Let’s try to connect a few dots.


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Notable Muslim angle in that Wall Street Journal survey of religious changes in Africa

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Notable Muslim angle in that Wall Street Journal survey of religious changes in Africa

The New York Times “Sunday Opinion” section, a consistent source of valuable news analysis by journalistic pros in its former incarnations, has oddly transmogrified by indulging in off-the-news features, self-absorbed memoirs and random social psychology musings, often running at considerable length.

By contrast, the “Review” section of the weekend edition at The Wall Street Journal’s has maintained its customary serious mix of news analyses, book reviews and snappy little running features.

In particular, the in-depth articles that lead off each Journal section have emerged as must reading. In particular, religion writers and the news consumers that follow the beat should note that the first two pages in the June 24-25 edition offered an important survey under the capitalistic headline “The Competition for Believers in Africa’s Religion Market (yes, this is behind a paywall).”

Much of the Journal scenario in this essay — written, in part, by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca (who frequently covers other religion news and trends — will be familiar to those who closely follow international religion news, but The Guy will spotlight one notable news angle here regarding Islam.

We’re told that the African continent, apart from its Muslim northern tier and south of the Sahara Desert, is “one of the world’s most active and contested religious markets.”

The Guy would amend that to say it’s clearly the single most contested market, one where shrinking indigenous faiths have given way to strong and all-too-often violent religio-political competition between Christians and Muslims.

The experts at the World Religion Database say the region had 7.4 million Christians in 1900 and is projected to have 1.3 billion by 2050, by then making up 38% of the world’s Christians. The team at the Pew Research Center figures that by 2037 the region’s Muslims will outnumber those in their religion’s historic heartland of North Africa and the Mideast.


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