Two established churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Orthodox Church of Finland, have an active presence on several social media platforms. In this article, I review their online presence and analyze their Facebook content in...
The Church of Christ is unity in diversity. Around the great centers of diffusion, the rites have been gradually defined as “the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary patrimony, culture and circumstances of the history of a distin...
This article proposes storytelling as a tool to return historic church buildings to the people in today’s secularized society. It starts by recognizing the unique qualities shared by most historic churches, namely that they are (1) different from mos...
The great commission, as traditionally understood in Christendom, has been the core basis for church growth. Passion for the lost, evangelism outreach, conversions, and baptism followed by congregating, have culminated in church establishments. Pente...
Social justice is often identified as a central commitment in mainline Protestant churches in North America. However, it is often approached as a public-facing issue that engages broader society, rather than as a comprehensive value that also informs...
The traditional mainline and evangelical churches in Canada, as in most western countries, are either in decline or static. Taken as a measure of the future, the prospects for Christianity in Canada, and more broadly the West, are bleak. Post-Christi...
Research on migration and religion reports the significance of religion to migrants, particularly those who self-identify as religious. In particular, migrant churches have served as a sanctuary, a venue for social networking, and a community support...
As an early vehicle for the spread of Western architectural culture in China, Catholic churches from the late 19th to the early 20th century exhibited unique Sino-Western fusion characteristics, serving as tangible witnesses to modern cultural encoun...
The Religious Workforce Project is a Lilly Endowment-funded effort to map the nation’s changing Christian religious landscape. A quantitative component identifies broad US trends, while our qualitative work focuses on Christian congregations in...
Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a serious and widespread problem in Australia and across the world, including in faith communities. There are calls for research to assist churches to better recognize, respond to and prevent violence. This study...
28 May 2015
This paper aims to critically assess the state of HIV testing in African American churches. A comprehensive review of peer-reviewed publications on HIV testing in church-based settings was conducted by two independent coders. Twenty-six papers publis...
As the cathedral serving Zuoyun and parts of Inner Mongolia, the Batayizi Church in Datong, Shanxi is the largest surviving Italian Gothic-style Catholic church in the region. The church features a rigorous layout and refined details, making it a sig...
This article presents a historical contribution of African Independent Churches in South Africa, particularly with references to the Ibandla lamaNazaretha of Isaiah Shembe, Zion Christian Church (ZCC) of Engenas Lekganyane and the St John’s Apo...
The present study focuses on seismic damage to 36 masonry churches observed after the 2016 Central Italy earthquake. In the sample, recurrent architectural and structural features were identified and accurately described. In order to classify the chu...
The Byzantine churches built between the 7th and the 15th centuries represent an architectural typology that has been developed along with other architectural styles. The evolution of the interior organization, to be composed of only a single nave fo...
The spillover of the terrorist activities of Boko Haram, a Nigerian jihadi group, into Cameroon’s north has resulted in security challenges and humanitarian activity opportunities for Christian churches. The insurgents have attacked and destroyed chu...
Two significant spaces define the soundscape of worship in a church: chancel and nave. The chancel is a space with the primary function of a sound source, where the preachers and choir are often seated during church services. Church design and layout...
This paper compares two acoustical projects, applied to the S. Dominic church of Foligno and Imola, which are subject to a permanent and temporary conversion respectively, to places dedicated for listening to live music. Sets of measurements have bee...
The seismic sequence occurring in Central Italy in 2016 represents a new test benchmark for historical masonry churches and a chance for a better comprehension of their structural behavior under earthquake actions. The many earthquakes that took plac...
Resonant vessels in ancient and medieval buildings are the subject of some historical and acoustic research today. There have been a number of detailed surveys of European churches, where acoustic pots remain in the buildings. Despite the fact that i...
In this paper, I analyze the contemporary role of the Black Church in the public sphere. Some argue that despite the historical role of the Black Church in addressing racial inequality, it should not be involved in the public sphere, as there should...
The Chinese Christian church was accused of colluding with Western imperialism, and this led to the anti-Christian movement. The Chinese church responded by accelerating a movement of church independence. Discussions of this movement have often been...
Liturgical space represents the embodiment of Christian theology in church buildings, encompassing both physical and metaphysical aspects. This space carries holiness and sacredness through a set of architectural elements that create sacred and profa...
Russia’s war against Ukraine, in which the aggressor has been making use of religion, including theological rhetoric, to achieve its aims, has sparked reactions from Orthodox Churches all over the world. This has led to a revitalisation of soci...
Although at first sight Eastern Christianity is not associated with Africa, the African continent has shaped the establishment and development of three of the four main Eastern Christian traditions. Through a sociological lens, we examine the identit...
Vasco da Gama’s arrival in Malabar on 21 May 1498, would hasten an epoch of social and cultural transformation in Malabar’s history. This article examines one development of this transformative period. Namely, it seeks to understand how t...
The recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2019 sparked a debate in the Orthodox world about the legitimacy of such an act. In the present study, we aim to explain, through the concept...
This paper explores the role of a specific religious actor, namely Christian churches, in the nexus of religion and genocide in Rwanda. Four factors are identified that point to the churches’ complicity in creating and sustaining the conditions in wh...
The objective of this article is to restore the credibility of the church within society by reestablishing its public role. Through the study of the lives and activities of women ministers in early Christianity, the research reveals that early Christ...
8 April 2022
Black churches have traditionally been a haven for Black American families; however, many churches do not currently have programs to support families living with dementia. Alter™ was established to assist faith communities in meeting the needs...
Over the last five years, the EMCHAHE (Early Medieval Churches: History, Archaeology and Heritage) Project has analysed the architecture, archaeology and history of numerous rural churches of the High Middle Ages in Galicia (NW Spain), through its hi...
In this paper, the seismic vulnerability of churches is assessed using different methods characterized by different levels of complexity depending on the accuracy of the results to be achieved. Specifically, we compare the two main types of methodolo...
Knowledge of the link between church and public space remains limited. However, there seems to exist a relationship between the church and the city, dating back to the first foundational temples. This relationship is still present in the churches of...
The present manuscript deals with the seismic vulnerability assessment of existing masonry churches, which is a fundamental process for risk and consequent prioritization analyses, as well as application of effective retrofitting strategies. In the p...
There has always been a conviction in the ecumenical movement that social service is part of the essence of what it means to be the church. The strengthening of social and political witness of churches through church-related agencies and networks in...
Canton (present-day Guangzhou, China) has a long history as a trading port and serves as a window for studying the history of Sino-Western cultural exchanges. Canton was a city built under Confucian orders, leading to significant differences (when co...
This article focuses on the characteristics, causes, and patterns of the anti-demolition actions by churches in Wenzhou. Based on my six field studies from July 2014 to February 2016, I discovered that: (1) these actions are more explicit in Wenzhou...
Gentrification and subsequent displacement are common problems in cities, and result in the removal of poor communities and communities of color from urban areas as they move to cheaper locations in the metropolitan region. Here we describe a communi...
Regarded as important cultural heritage, historic churches have been utilised over hundreds of years for worship and community benefit. Simple on/off space heating systems are installed in many churches to increase human comfort. However, the conserv...
In the last twenty years the Baptist, Methodist, and Waldensian churches in Italy have experienced an important season of migrations, mainly from South America, South-east Asia, and West Africa. This has led to a problem of sharing and mutual influen...
In Romania, there are numerous Orthodox churches, many of which are historical monuments of great cultural value that have suffered multiple degradations over time due to various natural or man-made reasons. In a context that is currently increasingl...
Local collapse mechanisms related to the out-of-plane response of walls are commonly observed in existing masonry buildings subjected to earthquakes. In such structures, the lack of proper connections among orthogonal walls and between walls and floo...
Governments have attempted to contain the COVID-19 outbreak with a variety of regulations, including social distancing, facemask mandates, or limits on gatherings. South Korea was concerned by the “supercluster” case of a sectarian religious organiza...
The spectral space of the Andes has an architectural cultural richness based on the construction of shrines with a Christian tendency from Spain. The purpose of the study is to analyze and describe the historical process of the colonial Catholic chur...
This study revealed a significant reduction in tree growth across northern Fennoscandia following the 1600 AD eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru, the most powerful volcanic event in South America over the past two millennia. In the analysis, we utilize...
New Prophetic Churches (NPCs) are a recent phenomenon within Pentecostalism in South Africa that have gained popularity. Their popularity is arguably due to their syncretism with African Traditional Religion (ATR), especially in its ministry practice...
In the framework of the IH-AT (Invisible Heritage Analysis and Technology) project, a cluster of churches ranging from the 11th to the 16th centuries, located in the Troodos Mountain range of Cyprus, designated by UNESCO as World Heritage monuments,...
When dealing with the indoor microclimates of cultural and historical heritage cult buildings, it is important to know the types of these buildings by their spatial volumes and by the types of enclosing structures, and it is also important to underst...
Romania’s wooden churches, numbering over 1400, represent a unique and valuable cultural heritage. However, their preservation faces challenges due to degradation and insufficient documentation regarding their condition and significance. This p...
The current COVID-19 pandemic has led to the introduction of various epidemiological measures, including the ban on public worship. The problem of closed churches has become an intensely debated subject across several countries and a hotly debated qu...
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