IARF News Digest

Interview with Humanists Malawi director Wonderful Mkhutche on fighting witchcraft belief and violence, February 28 University of Malawi theology lecture urging critical questioning, preventing legal recognition of witchcraft, maintaining secular constitution, Vision 2063 shift from God-fearing to human-centred policy, and growing ties with Humanists International and Leo Igwe across Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria.

Over 100 UK mosques opened for Visit My Mosque weekend amid a mosque attack every five days. The London Islamic Cultural Society, hit by death threats to children and sabotaged gas pipes, joined Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Southend and Cardiff in offering tea, talks and exhibitions. Muslim Council of Britain chief Wajid Akhter blamed algorithms and billionaire-funded hate. Speakers Sufia Alam, Farooq Rafiq, Mohammed Kozbar and president Bibi Khan stressed dialogue with Jewish neighbours including Muswell Hill synagogue deputy Judith Prinsley.

As kidnappings and attacks on churches and mosques surge in Nigeria, Christian and Muslim leaders are building joint peace partnerships against religious division. RNS reports faith leaders uniting around protection of communities and worship, with a Kaduna church kidnapping case pictured. The piece frames cooperation as countering narratives that pit communities against each other.

PRRI founder Robert P. Jones discusses his book Backslide, comparing current US politics to 1933 and citing Martin Niemoller and German churches’ late opposition to Hitler. He argues declining white Christianity, from 54 percent in 2008 to 41 percent today and white evangelicals from 25 percent to 13 percent, with 3 million Southern Baptist losses, made a transactional alliance with Trump for restored power. He says church attendance now correlates with more extreme Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-Black and anti-Muslim views, cites January 6 Christian symbols, Pete Hegseth’s Crusader tattoos and Pentagon worship, and Russell Vought’s Project 2025 plans. He concludes backsliding is reversible and urges pro-democracy Christian voices such as James Talarico and Adam Hamilton.

Interview with professor Andre van der Braak about his book Gnosis East and West, an introduction to Gnostic currents from Greek Dionysus mysteries to Christian divine spark, Taoism, Buddhism, Spinoza and Nietzsche. He says interest grows as traditional authorities lose force and people seek liberating rather than hard knowledge, after 1960s Eastern spirituality renewed Western sources. He sees opportunity for liberal churches to offer new words, images and rituals, noting people become differently believing rather than unbelieving. Van der Braak himself teaches Zen meditation.

UU the Vote, via Side With Love organizing team, holds regional interfaith Solidarity Summits for democracy and justice training ahead of 2026 US midterms. The Tennessee summit September 18-20 at Neshoba Unitarian Universalist Church featured journalist Emily Yellen and director Nicole Pressley. Lead Caitlin Breedlove describes them as antidote to top-down models, building community infrastructure across congregations. Nine summits scheduled including Virginia, Illinois, Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon and Massachusetts.

The Remonstrants’ 2026-2027 annual theme is ‘Being free well – how do you do that?’, based on six essays in AdRem for group discussion and the spring 2027 Remonstrant Day. It treats freedom of belief, thought and speech as a cherished but strained ideal under war, control, AI and acceleration culture. It asks who can call themselves free, whether free will remains, why youth feel less free, and how freedom slides into performance pressure, individualism, exclusion and hyperconsumerism. The Christian answer proposed is freedom for something: love, care, responsibility, justice and making room for others in a polarising world.

Rev. Karen G. Johnston, senior minister of First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, was arrested on September 4 with six other clergy outside ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center in Williston, Vermont. About 150-200 protesters joined the three-hour action, the fourth at the facility, aiming to block data gathering and deportations. Johnston cited UU values of interdependence, equity and justice, plus Thoreau, King and Thich Nhat Hanh. Police charged the clergy with unlawful trespass. She said ICE detentions continue with horrific conditions and announced a Shut Down ICE VT week of action for October 4-9.

In occupied eastern Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church has annexed about 800 Ukrainian Orthodox Church churches. The article explains that before 2022 the ROC formally preserved UOC dioceses for political and canonical reasons, but after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and annexed territories, it moved to take over church structures.