My Evangelical 2012 in Review

Another year of news-making has come and gone.  Not to trivialize Kate Middleton's morning-sickness or anything, but as I look back over the headlines of the last 365 days, I'm thinking more about those news items that impacted the Evangelical world, and more particularly Evangelical Canada, in some way or another.  I am, of course, no pundit, so in presenting this list of the "Top Headlines of the Evangelical Year," I am not claiming any expertise on these matters; they are simply the stories that stood out to me as significant.

January 3:  Mark Driscoll publishes Real Marriage.  Nearly everything Pastor Mark says in the public sphere seems calculated to shock his listeners into sending it viral, if not by assent then at least by incredulity, so I don't want to give this tell-all "marriage manual" any more air time than absolutely necessary.  However, the publication of a very explicit and prescriptive book about the state of holy matrimony, by the self-styled guru of locker-room evangelicalism was notable to me for a number of reasons.  (Not least of which was the way it reinforced my commitment to rigorous and christocentric exegesis when it comes to teaching the Scriptures.  Esther is not a housewife's handbook, nor is the Song of Solomon simply a Christian Karma Sutra.)

January 9:  Rob Bell's final service at Mars Hill.  I followed the publication circus that was Love Wins pretty closely (see my review of the book in the sidebar), so the headline announcing Rob Bell's last service at Mars Hill stood out for me.  Whether or not Pastor Rob's decision to leave his church was really due to the fallout from his book (as some suggest), a number of things stand out to me in this dramatic conclusion to the story.  Among other things, it shows how the "culture of celebrity ministers" in the States actually has a pretty dark underbelly.  (Note how Pastor Bell was maligned almost as viciously for leaving his church as he was for publishing the book in the first place.  In celebrity culture, the once the famous have fallen from grace the only thing left to do is devour them whole.)

March 5:  Invisible Children launch Kony 2012 campaign  I have not been able to establish whether Invisible Children should be called a "Christian organization" or not.  They have certainly been accused by their detractors of being "insidiously Evangelical," though nothing in their literature or campaigns is explicitly Christian.  What stood out to me in the Kony 2012 campaign, however, is how black and white the underlying narrative they presented was, and how simplistic the solution they proposed (wear an arm band and throw up some posters).  Even if Invisible Children is not a Christian group, there are lessons for the Church here.  Solutions to world issues are seldom as simple as getting the "good guys" to stop the "bad guys."  And as a side note, we might take the whole thing as a cautionary tale, pointing out how celebrity has become the new source of moral authority in an age of viral videos (what was going to stop Kony, after all, was "fame").  Whatever else we make of the campaign, it illustrates how inconsistent and unstable this particular "source" of authority actually is.

March 21:  Canadian film-maker Kevin Miller releases Hellbound  Kevin Miller's documentary "Hellbound" explores traditional Christian perspectives on the fate of the departed from a number of angles, interviewing pastors, psychologists, theologians and historians alike.  Coming so soon after the aforementioned Love Wins debacle, and from the hands of a Canadian film-maker no less, it suggests that the question of Hell will be the hot issue (no pun intended) for Canadian Christians in the coming years.

August 16:  Dr. Gary Paterson elected new moderator of the United Church of Canada  Realizing that a two or three line mention on a list like this is hardly space enough to unpack the significance of the vote itself, I will simply state that it is extremely significant, that this year the United Church of Canada became the first Christian denomination in history to appoint a practicing homosexual as its leader.

September 27:  Rona Ambrose votes in favor of Motion 312  I mention this one if for no other reason than that it vindicates me in this blog post last month.  Rona Ambrose was the Federal Minister for the Status of Women; Motion 312 was a private member's motion introduced by Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth asking Parliament to review the Criminal Code's definition of when life begins (i.e. does it begin, like the Criminal Code states, only after the baby fully emerges from the birth canal, or does it begin at some point between conception and birth?).  The motion failed, but pro-abortion advocates slammed Ms. Ambrose for being one of the few MPs who voted in favor of it.  Of all people, they claimed, the Minister for the Status of Women ought to have known better than to risk reopening the abortion debate.  Ms. Ambrose's defense:  as Minister on the Status of Women, she felt the issue should be studied, because in some parts of the country gender-selective abortions are being used to terminate girls.

October 30:  Rachel Held Evans publishes The Year of Biblical Womanhood   There were, I am sure, more scholarly books published this year on gender issues and the Christian faith, but I note this one here because A) I suppose if there is such a thing as a yang to the yin of Mark Driscoll's Real Marriage, The Year of Biblical Womanhood would probably be it; and B) as a blogger, the fact that Ms. Held Evan's writing ministry began on the blogosphere suggests to me that there have been some pretty seismic shifts in the balance of power in the Christian publishing industry.

November 21:  The Church of England rejects female bishops  A friend pointed out to me the irony inherent in the fact that the Anglican Church could have accepted a theological canon as loose as John Shelby Spong as bishop for so long, but still vote to reject women (although, to be fair, Spong is Episcopalian, not specifically C of E).  But the point still stands: the Church of England, it seems, missed a golden opportunity to follow the gospel to some logical conclusions here. 

December 26:  President Morsi signs Egypt's Islamist constitution into law  Speaking of inherent irony, I suppose there is some small irony in the fact that Egypt's President Morsi signed the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamist Constitution into law the day after Christmas-- inasmuch as many analysts suggest that a constitution based on Sharia Law bodes very ill for the Coptic Christians in the country, and is likely to result in increased marginalization and persecution of Christians in that part of the world.  As William Dalrymple suggests, the much lauded Arab Spring is turning into a Christian Winter (and by and large the Christian West seems indifferent to the plight of their Middle Eastern Brothers and Sisters).