Point of personal privilege. "Things to Come" is the title of a Religion Guy favorite, Dizzy Gillespie's jazz pulse-pounder from 1946 that's ever contemporary. Check out this remarkable high school performance just last year.
Turning to our beat's things to come in 2021 and beyond, here are some savvy thumbsuckers and backgrounders you might have missed.
Evangelicals and the ineludible Donald J. Trump — The outgoing President, who told Religion News Service this year he's "a non-denominational Christian," hopes to control the Republican Party through 2024 with attendant media visibility. His politically crucial following among white Catholics may well fade, but what will his digital dominance mean for those ultra-loyal white evangelical Protestants?
GetReligion contributor and political scientist Ryan Burge, who emerged as never before this year as the go-to guy on religion and U.S. politics, says the evangelical "brand" is not as tarnished by Trump as many suppose. Two major surveys show little variation in Americans identifying with the movement -- currently 34.6% -- over the past decade. Another Burge opus reinforces The Guy's observation on Trump-era political and moral chasm between evangelical leadership and the grassroots.
Speaking of evangelical leaders, none has done more significant work than attorney David French in two decades defending freedom for religious groups and individuals, especially on secular campuses. He says he's seen up front the "astonishing intolerance and even outright hatred" that a relentless "illiberal left" is aiming against good-hearted believers. (Did that help the Republicans in November?)
French's weekly religion column for TheDispatch.com has become a must-read, though few fellow conservatives will cheer when he turns to fiery anti-Trump sermons. One column branded "Christian Trumpism" as "idolatry" that threatens American law and order. Another contended that evangelicals bring hostility upon themselves over issues like race and immigration that face the U.S. in the 2020s.
An election eve reflection by Christianity Today's new CEO Timothy Dalrymple took a more temperate approach to these issues.
American Christianity in “free fall”? — Last year's big Pew Research report on the decline of U.S. Christianity provoked historian Philip Jenkins to respond that those "nones" who tell pollsters their religion is "nothing in particular" are surprisingly religious. They just "neither like nor trust" religious institutions any longer. Can you say that familiar old “Sheilaism” mantra, “Spiritual but not religious”?
This year ended with a broad look in National Review from New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a conservative Catholic. He assesses what's left when U.S. mainline Protestantism "evaporates" in mere decades. Result: "a country without any clear religious center, any culturally established faith," as conservative believers lack the needed influence to overcome intense anti-traditionalism in education, politics, and the media.
Religious commitments also suffer from western culture's resistance to marriage, family ties and child-rearing, a growing trend examined by Eastern Orthodox writer Rod Dreher here.
Then this. In USAToday, Jon Gabriel observes that devotion to politics fills the vacuum left by religious decline, and "politics is a terrible religion." If you disliked the "Christian right, you're really going to hate the post-Christian right," he warns (echoing a Dreher theme over the past decade or so).
What hath COVID-19 wrought? — Through the pandemic, the media have provided regular coverage of its impact on religious congregations' gatherings, charities, finances and morale. What we learn about longer-term effects through 2021 will be a commanding storyline.
The Economist's year-ender offers a really intriguing case (paywalled but accessible through email registration) that pestilence doesn't just bring short-term ruin but can literally redirect history. Examples: Choosing which pope led the Thirty Years' War, why Cromwell's Protestant semi-dictatorship in England fell and how economics trumped morality to undergird slavery.
QAnon and on and on — This Internet-driven conspiracy theory about anything from COVID to child-molesting Satanists has surprising popularity that alarms thinkers who see it as a direct assault on Christianity. The best survey appeared in The Atlantic, known for pertinent religion articles. Also note coverage in Baptist Press, Christianity Today and World magazine. Ever-handy ReligionLink weighed in on sourcing. Here’s a quick link to the wave of GetReligion material — including podcasts — on this topic.
Will there be a 15th Dalai Lama? — The 2020 news hurly-burly ended with that incomprehensibly massive COVID-19 relief bill. Among the surprises tucked into it was background on the oppression of Buddhists in Tibet and a U.S. demand that China's atheistic rulers allow them to freely determine the reincarnation of their next spiritual leader.
The current Dalai Lama, the 14th in this line of divine bodhisattvas, turned 85 this year and speculation inevitably swirls around whether and how there can be a 15th. During six decades of exile in India, the incumbent Tenzin Gyatso has surrendered claims to the post's worldly rule, but China sees him as a threat and spurns negotiations. For background when death occurs, keep this on hand from TheConversation.com.