Time Magazine’s Top 10 Religion Stories
At the end of each year, Time Magazine boils down the newstories of the past twelve months and creates 10 ten stories for, well, everything. A few of the top religion stories seem relevant for our purposes:
1. “The Economy Tops Religion”: The article notes the large percentage of Catholics who voted for Barak Obama in spite of their church’s insistence that voting Democrat was a sin due to their pro-choice position. This certainly speaks to the American Catholic Church’s relationship with the Vacitin. But it also speaks to a pragmatism that’s a part of our culture. And perhaps its a reminder that all Americans have an inherent distrust of authority, regardless of it’s source.
5. “America’s Unfaithful Faith”: The Pew Foundation reported that 28% of Americans have left their cradle faith for another. 44% if you include jumps across denominational lines. Americans are distrustful of intergeneration faith or ethnic ties that used to root an individual to a religion.
7. “The Rise of New Evangelicalism” Keith and I blogged quite a bit on this. There’s a movement within today’s Evangelicalism that is expanding the social concerns of Christianity beyond the boundaries of the Religious Right. Evangelicalism is still pro-life, but is adding social justice, the environment, and civil rights for homosexuals to it’s agenda.
8. “The Challenge of the Recession”: This may or may not be an emerging story. Church budgets are often strapped; giving to charitable causes to provide relief is up. The need for pastoral counseling is outstripping available pastors (has this ever been in balance?).
A story that I think was missed was death of the Emergent Movement. Dan Kimball introduced the term in 2003. For Dan the word describe churches that were missional and focused on evangelism. However, the meaning of the term expanded to include churches that were reexamining traditional church doctrine. The whole movement began to be looked at with suspicion. Heresy hunters began dismissing every church and any author that self-described as “emerging” (not to be confused with the “Emergent” brand). Confused Yet? So was everyone else. Thus the need to retire the term.
Kimball is forming a new network with Erwin McManus and Scot McKnight that will maintain theological fidelity while embracing the most noble aspects of the now defunct movement. I’m hopeful that this post-emerging expression of church will move us foreward.
What news stories do you believe need to be added?
Regarding emergent, this is spot on. The moment it began sliding toward a brand, it began to miss the point of what many of those involved would call the “conversation.” As with any conversation, there can be many divergent views (theological, ecclesial, etc) carried over from past perspectives and brought into developing alignments. I think in the next few years we will hear a lot less about post this or that (at least I hope so), and a lot more about positive affirmations of cooperation for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But then, I tend to be a wishful thinker.