Peter Steinfels, the co-director of the Fordham Center for Religion and Culture, has a fun post on the Commenweal website that “predicts” the big religion stories in 2008. Here are some highlights:
January: Retooling his successful Iowa campaign for New Hampshire, former Baptist pastor Michael Huckabee expresses previously unnoticed interest in becoming a Congregationalist. Congregationalist Barack Obama, looking toward a tight race with Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, begins referring to his “inner Baptist.”
. . .
March: Two weeks before Easter, CNN broadcasts a special report on a newly unearthed “Gospel of Joseph” revealing that Jesus was a troublesome teenager. Princeton University expert on early Christianity, Elaine Pagels, hails the document for making Jesus appear more human. Other scholars complain that the ancient manuscript appears to be written with a ball-point pen.
. . .
May: Dismay fills the ranks of atheists at news that Richard Dawkins has been seen lighting votive candles and fingering a rosary at a small church near Cambridge. Witnesses challenge Mr. Dawkins’s initial protests that he was merely “doing research.” He promises to undergo therapy and later declares himself cured of belief.
. . .
July: Fears that the Episcopal Church’s consecration of an openly gay bishop might disrupt the world’s Anglican bishops at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Canterbury are completely eclipsed by word that the Vancouver diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada intends to begin ordaining whales. Fierce debate breaks out over the meaning of five biblical passages about “the Leviathan.”
Read the entire post here. Hat tip to Melissa Rogers.