c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Here are my choices for the top 10 religion stories of 2006:
1. The Danish publication of newspaper cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad angered Muslims and set off riots in many Islamic countries. Pope Benedict XVI created another firestorm with a speech that included a centuries-old negative description of Islam. While the pope’s visit to Turkey eased the controversy, Muslim-Christian relations remain tense and volatile.
2. At year’s end, the White House announced the war in Iraq had entered a “new phase” of “sectarian violence,” with Sunni and Shiite Muslims engulfed in an intensified campaign of blood and brutality. U.S. troops, caught in the middle of a 1,300-year-old conflict between two religious groups, saw their casualties sharply increase.
3. Overt anti-Semitism continued to escalate, especially among academics and other elites in “enlightened” Europe, more than 60 years after the destruction of Nazi Germany. The anti-Jewish cancer spread in Iran with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s obscene anti-Jewish campaign culminating in the vile Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran. Passive Western leaders seemed unable or unwilling to effectively confront, much less eradicate, the religiously driven apocalyptic polices of Iran.
4. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke, Hamas’ electoral victory in the Palestinian territories, and Hezbollah’s provoked war with Israel were major events in 2006. The failure of Hamas and Hezbollah to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel, along with intra-Palestinian fighting, blocked the already battered “road map” that was intended to lead toward a negotiated peace.
5. The U.S. elections in November, a sharp rebuke of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, also blunted the religious right’s aggressive efforts to impose its theological agenda upon the nation. The departure of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and the electoral defeats of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., removed three prominent religious right leaders from Congress. The unsuccessful campaigns of Ohio gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell and Ralph Reed for Georgia’s lieutenant governor were significant defeats as well.
6. Books highly critical of religious beliefs grew in popularity during the year. Chief among them were Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith” and Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” These best-sellers, and similar works, question the belief in God and the positive influence of organized religion, and describe the clash between reason and religion. It seems books by agnostics and atheists also sell well.
7. Like faltering business corporations, some U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses declared bankruptcy because of the staggering financial cost of the clergy sex abuse scandal. Expenses include both legal fees and settlement with victims. One diocese (Davenport, Iowa) entered bankruptcy while another (Portland, Ore.) is poised to leave it. The largest archdiocese, Los Angeles, said it will pay $60 million to settle 45 cases. Clearly, the fiscal, emotional and spiritual traumas continue for the nation’s Roman Catholics.
8. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) abandoned its 2004 position calling for financial divestment from certain companies that do business in Israel. The successful campaign to scrap the punitive anti-Israel divestment scheme was led by a dedicated group of Presbyterian clergy and laypeople to undo the damage created by their church’s irresponsible vote of two years ago.
9. Three especially notable events took place in 2006. For the first time in history, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori. The Conservative Jewish movement issued a tortured, confusing series of policies that opens the door to gay rabbis and same-sex unions. Germany, the epicenter of the Holocaust, was the scene of three rabbinic ordinations.
10. On a personal note, four wives of longtime colleagues died this year: the Rev. Linda Harter of Chambersburg, Pa.; my former editor Ingalill Hjelm; Ruth Rosenfeld, whose husband was a rabbinic classmate of mine; and Joan Sherman, whose husband was a longtime veteran of Lutheran-Jewish dialogue. My cherished friend Rabbi Howard Greenstein of San Marco, Fla., also left the land of the living before his time.
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
KRE/PH END RUDIN
Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.
