The Christian Century

Cinema has long been a critical medium for exploring religious themes in mainstream culture. Today, filmmakers continue to find a distinctive religious voice.

The story of Pentecostalism and social change is now familiar. What's surprising is how closely it echoes trends in modern Islam.

Cuba possesses the conditions often cited to explain Pentecostal growth: rapid social change, economic turmoil, and excluded ethnic groups.

Anastasios is first and foremost a scholar. Yet it's hard to imagine any religious leader accomplishing so much practical good so quickly.

In Catholic Europe, Romani have long been faithful Catholics. They are devoted to the dark-skinned St. Sarah, believed to be a companion of the biblical Three Marys.

Every Sunday, more people attend Assemblies of God churches in the Sao Paulo area than in all the U.S.

I once presented Africa as a region of extreme poverty, but we now have to take account of economic development. We can only begin to outline the religious consequences.

Any account of Asian Christianity must deal with minority peoples. One large and diverse region has more than 100 million people—many of them Christian.

As we remember the Reformation over the next couple of years, we should also recall its global context.

In religious terms, the emerging South Africa looks at once thoroughly African and surprisingly European.

Alec Reid’s heroic story sounds as if it comes from a Catholic suspense novel. But it really did happen—in Belfast in 1988.

For decades, Western human rights groups sounded the alarm about East Timor. Rarely did they note the religious dimension.

Since the 1970s, Ethiopia has seen something like what Europe saw around 1520: a movement based largely on growing access to the vernacular Bible.

Portugal no longer sends out missionaries on any scale, but Brazil has taken up that mantle. Worldwide, one in 11 Christians speak Portuguese.

Most of what westerners know about the Caucasus region is negative. But the South Caucasus has a different history, and Christianity plays a central role.