MORE MAGAZINE WATCHING: Gawd, pick up this month's Atlantic Monthly, there's a really great article about the scientific study of religions and the tracking of New Religious Movements, or NRMs. Or you can buy the article here, it'll set you back two bucks though. Here's a quote from within the article by David B. Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia:

"The main thing we've discovered," he said, "is that there is enormous religious change going on across the world, all the time. It's massive, it's complex, and it's continual. We have identified nine thousand and nine hundred distinct and separate religions in the world, increasing by two or three religions every day. What this means is that new religious movements are not just a curiosity, which is what the people in the older denominations usually think they are. They are a very serious subject."

The article also suggests that the future of Christianity may be in Africa, and we may be approaching a secularized North hemisphere defining itself against a religious South. They also introduce me to Cao Dai, which is a Vietnamese religion whose Three Saints are Sun Yat-Sen, a sixteenth-century poet named Trang Thinh, and Victor Hugo. Cripes, sign me up. Check it out, if you can. The article, I mean. Matt Welch is right about The Atlantic being a fine fine magazine.