Dennis P. Petri, PhD is the International Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom and Founder and scholar-at-large of the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America. He is a Professor in International Relations at the Latin American University of Science and Technology. He is the author of The Specific Vulnerability of Religious Minorities, a book on undetected religious freedom challenges in Latin America.
A wave of crime against UK and French churches does not indicate persecution, but is still revealing. It indicates that the declining moral standing of Christianity in Western European life matters, not as a theological problem but as an increasingly serious sociological one.
Celebration of the UK's "Quiet Revival" may have suddenly gone quiet but the experience has left the Evangelical Church with valuable lessons to learn—no more so than to be cautious of confirmation bias (believing something is true because you want it to be so). We do well to ensure that what we are celebrating is verifiably accurate.
NGO professionals can find themselves traveling from conference to conference, only to encounter the same people and organizations time after time, listen to the same first-year university level talks, and have the same conversations that sound good but effectively go nowhere. Questioning the conference industrial complex.
The religious freedom movement needs to ask broader questions than just whether there was an explicitly anti-religious intent for harm created. Instead of treating motive as the defining criterion, we should examine how religious identity or behavior shapes a community’s vulnerability to harm. This article explains why.
With the Maduro regime in Venezuela suddenly collapsed, what should be our response as people of faith? Dennis Petri, an expert in Latin American religious freedom encourages us to respond to the latest developments with both principle and prudence even as we pray for the Venezuelan people and their journey toward a free and flourishing life.
