Brian Pellot is director of global strategy at Religion News Service and Religion Newswriters Foundation. He writes about international hate speech, free speech, religious freedom and media freedom issues in his RNS column On Faith and is based in London and Cape Town.

While nearly 1 in four people identify as Muslim across the globe, a Pew Research survey in 2019 found that only six-in-ten U.S. adults know that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month and that Mecca is Islam’s holiest city and a place of pilgrimage for Muslims.  Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Muslim […]

Jehu J. Hanciles is an associate professor of world Christianity at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. He studies global Christian expansion, especially in Africa.

The Roman Catholic Church, established in the first century, is one of the oldest Christian traditions. One of the primary tenets of Catholicism is the belief in apostolic succession, which holds that the chosen successors of the Twelve Apostles have been granted spiritual authority passed down through the ages from Jesus Christ. This chain of […]

Read an April 29, 2014, story in The Guardian about the fate of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by the extremist group Boko Haram.

The Nigeria Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Centre works to promote and support scholarly research on Pentecostalism in Africa. It is based at the University of Jos in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. It is a project of the University of Southern California’s Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative. Contact Danny McCain, co-principal investigator, at the International Institute for […]

The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers includes indigenous women from the Americas, Asia and Africa who first convened in 2004. Their alliance emphasizes prayer and education to protect the Earth and indigenous ways of life. The group’s office is in Sonora, Calif. Contact using the form on their website.

Read an Aug. 4, 2013, Associated Press story in the South Florida Times about a controversy in Nigeria over whether a proposed constitutional amendment concerning “age of consent” would conflict with Shariah.  

Read an August 2012 research report about the effects of religion on the spread of AIDS in Africa.