Welcome to GlobalPlus, a new monthly feature of the Association of Religion Data Archives designed to increase understanding on critical issues in international religion. Each GlobalPlus will examine a key topic in the news and provide an overview from leading international journalists and scholars along with relevant data and links to articles, books and other resources.
GlobalPlus lifts up the voices and contributions of international scholars, researchers and writers to promote accurate, balanced reporting on religion enriched by the diverse, high-quality data being produced throughout the world.
That is our goal at ARDA, increasing understanding by democratizing access to the best data and measures on religion.
New evidence indicates every generation in a modernizing country is on average less religious than the previous one. Since children are not only influenced by society, but very strongly also by their parents, a self-reinforcing process is set in motion in which increasingly less religious former generations create ever more secular later generations. The U.S. may be no different.
Today’s anti-Semitism is significantly more complex to analyze when compared to the pure and simple hatred and persecution toward Jews in the past. The killings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, for example, can be tied back to the anti-immigrant and racially charged rhetoric of the U.S. president. To combat anti-Semitism, individuals must both recognize its historical roots and the various contemporary political, social and religious factors that play a part in its revival.
It came as a shock when a synagogue in my middle-class suburb in Australia recently was desecrated by Nazi swastikas painted over the front and sides of the building. But these are no longer isolated incidents anywhere. The official reports of rising anti-Semitism in Australia, where Jews number less than half of 1 percent of the nearly 25 million population, have kept pace with those in Europe, America and elsewhere. An ancient evil, defined as words and actions that dehumanize, condemn and promote hatred against Jewish people based on deceitful, false stereotypes, continues to be widespread. The question becomes: What can each of us do?
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