Religious Minorities Online (RMO) is the premier academic resource on religious minorities worldwide, reflecting the state of the art in scholarship. It is written by leading scholars and is rigorously peer-reviewed.

 

Religious minorities are part of the social map of many countries on the globe. Some of these are ancient communities, but others are more recent. Some are a minority in one place while a majority in another cultural context (or had been in the past), whereas others have always lived in the shadow of majorities. Most minorities have little power, but others are actively engaged in the wider society and exercise significant political, economic, or military influence.

While religious minorities are relevant as social and religious phenomena in their own right, equally important is how they are viewed and treated by others. Suspicions and fears of minorities as well as admiring and exoticizing them reveal much about the societies they live in.

In the introductory essay, the editors advance a conceptual clarification and provide a critical overview of current debates and theoretical discussions about religious minorities.

RMO articles are divided into four sections, comprising articles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• on key themes in the study of religious minorities,
• on specific countries and regions,
• on specific religious communities and the challenges they face as minorities in different societal contexts, and
• on current research projects, focused theoretical and methodological issues, and relevant case studies.

 

 

Available as an Open Access publication and written in an accessible style, Religious Minorities Online is an indispensable resource not only for students and academics but also to broader audiences that include journalists, politicians and policy advisors, activists, NGOs, among others. New articles will be published online twice a year. A printed version, the Handbook of Religious Minorities, will be available at the end of the project.

This project was supported by the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council under UK-Japan Connection Grant number ES/S013482/1; and The University of Bergen.