Top Headlines of (my) Evangelical 2010

The parenthetical "my" in the above title is my acknowledgement that I am neither knowledgeable nor impartial enough to offer a list like this with any objectivity. That said, I've put together this survey of news items from 2010 that stood out to me as notable landmarks on the evangelical landscape. I post it here IMHO, and welcome any nominations for additions to the list:

January 12:, 2010 Pat Robertson waxes inflammatory on Haitian disaster.

Not that I think his (at best) poorly timed comments and (at worst) cruel drivel about Haiti's alleged "pact with the devil" was even worthy of the attention it got, but it made me sad on a number of fronts: sad that for some, Pat Robertson's comments will just reinforce the tainted view of Christianity they already have; sad that a camera and the celebrity it creates has made a man like this some sort of spokesperson for a certain kind of Christianity (and that this "kind of Christianity" is so often held up as normative by the secular media); and sad, too, that mere "outrage" has somehow become a legitimate and sufficient moral response to ideas we dislike.

April 27, 2010: N. T. Wright announces his retirement as Bishop of Durham and his appointment as Research Professor at St. Andrews University.

This barely made a ripple in the headlines, I admit, but the fact that one of my favorite biblical scholars has taken a teaching post at St. Andrews was news to me, inasmuch as it gave me hope that the eagerly anticipated fourth volume of his Christian Origins and the Question of God series may be along sooner rather than later.

June 30, 2010: Anti-theist Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer.

One of the world's best-known and more vitriolic opponents of religion announced this summer that he's been diagnosed with cancer. While some people (people of Pat Robertson's stripe, perhaps) have taken this opportunity to use vindictive phrases like "what he had coming," and "cosmic justice," others have taken the opportunity to practice pious prayer for the enemy, which, depending on the motive and content of the prayers, may be just as opportunistic.

July 13, 2010: The Canadian Government scraps the mandatory long-form census.

While this made more than a ripple in the secular media, I only noticed it because it hit the fan the week my family was away in Alberta and I was home alone, so I was listening to the CBC more than usual. At the time I didn't give it much thought. The portent of the decision didn't sink in until months later, when I was sitting in a room full of pastors, and a representative from the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada explained to us how we might use statistical data to help us in ministry, and I finally realized how useful a tool we'd lost.

July 31: Author Ann Rice "quits Christianity."

When Ann Rice first became a Christian, it turned heads especially because she was the famous writer of novels that could morph into multi-million dollar Hollywood productions staring the likes of Tom Cruise. Now that she's "left" the church (in her words: "In the name of Christ, I quit being a Christian") this is "news" only for the same reason; the story mattered to me primarily because it seems to illustrate James' wisdom in warning us against giving preferential treatment to the rich and famous (James 2:1-5).

August 15, 2010: Theologian Clark Pinnock dies at age 73.

I've read very little of this somewhat controversial theologian, but parts of his Flame of Love and parts of his Wideness in God's Mercy were helpful to me. I'll refer you to David Guretzki's tribute to him over at Theommentary, and commend him here to the mystery of the divine grace he worked his lifetime to describe.

August 24, 2010: Donald Bloesch dies at age 82.

It struck me as notable that two theological servants of the church-- in many ways so different in their theological bent-- should both pass away within 10 days of each other. I read swaths of Bloesch's work in Seminary, and found him to be thorough and challenging. When I heard about his death, I thought of a line in Barth (a theologian for whom he had a special affinity). I remember it imperfectly, but he wondered out loud once if God didn't laugh to see him pushing around his wheelbarrow full of books. I commend Bloesch, and his own wheelbarrow full of books, to the mystery of God's grace.


September 7, 2010: Florida's Terry Jones threatens to burn thousands of copies of the Koran on September 11.


Not that I believe a guy like this deserves anywhere near the amount of the attention he got, but it illustrated a number of things for me: a) the media's tendency to pour gasoline on a fire so they can write with incredulity about the religious flames; b) again how we've come to value "outrage" as some sort of "moral" response to things we think are wrong; and c) how tribal the notion of god has become in a world of tolerance and wars on terror.

October 1, 2010: Rick Warren speaks at John Piper's national "Desiring God Conference."

Purpose-driven Pragmatism meets Hedonistic Calvinism? This one raised my eyebrow. After all, when one of the most vociferous doctrinal watchdogs of American Evangelicalism invites one of the most effective pragmatists of American Evangliscalism to the party, eyebrows are going to raise. And they did: 40,000 blog-posts worth of indignant eyebrows, apparently; some even invoked 2 Timothy 4:3 and warnings about latter-days apostasy. For my part, I was left musing about how, in the absence of a clear ecclesiology, Evangelicalism in this part of the world looks and feels like a doctrinal clique.

December 13, 2010: Barna survey finds North American church to be theologically illiterate.

For the record, I saw methodological problems with Barna's survey so huge that it was hard to take their conclusions seriously, but at the very least this headline shored up my resolve to preach on the Incarnation the first Sunday after Christmas.