France’s Catholic bishops become partners of the state’s anti-cult agency. A Chhattisgarh village invokes tribal self-government law to bar pastors. The Madras High Court rules that conversion by inducement, and ghar wapsi alike, disqualifies a body from foreign funding. Russian courts heard 716 “illegal missionary activity” cases in 2025, up 66%, while the Orthodox Church trains activists in “counter-sectarian mission”. In Israel, Yad L’Achim pushes door-to-door Witnesses out of Petah Tikva; in Iran, a pastor’s wife must serve 13 years for “deviant proselytising”. The common thread: majority institutions joining the regulation of outreach, and money replacing belief as its legal object.
New book: how to study religions that proselytize?
This new book, Missionary Impositions, which we have not yet read, approaches missionary efforts from an unusual angle. It will obviously be relevant for any scholar interested in issues of fieldwork. In this collection of essays, anthropologists of religion examine the special challenges they face when studying populations that proselytize. Conducting fieldwork among these groups […]
Geneva: LWF President Urges Lutherans to Overcome ‘Genetic Resistance’ to Sharing Their Faith
Geneva, 2 September 2004 (LWI) – In a press conference following his Address to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Council, LWF President, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson said that, while evangelical Christians were happy to talk about the experience of God in their life, Lutherans seemed to be “genetically resistant” to the public expression of […]