One of the things I do to mark the coming of the New Year is to first look back on the old year, reflecting on what happened and then wondering what might happen next.
Newspapers and websites are doing that, compiling lists of the top ten stories in news, politics, entertainment, or whatever their purview is. We’ll survey some of those here.
It’s also good for us to review the year in our personal lives. For me, this was the year my mother died. My wife and I bought a place in St. Louis. We are settling into our lives here, getting more involved in our new congregation and enjoying what the city has to offer. Two of our granddaughters are doing college visits! Tempus fugit. In the words of my fellow St. Louisan T. S. Eliot, “I grow old … I grow old …/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
But let’s look at the bigger picture. . .
News of the Year
Politico‘s Jonathan Martin is calling 2024 “the most extraordinary year in modern American politics.” The consensus biggest story of the year has to be the re-election of Time Magazine‘s Person of the Year, Donald Trump. He barely won in 2016, lost in 2020, was vilified by the nation’s elite, dragged through the criminal justice system, was nearly assassinated twice. . . .And then was re-elected to the presidency, winning the popular vote with his coattails winning the legislative branch for the Republicans!
To add to the most extraordinary year, after President Biden swept his primaries, the Democratic Party nominated someone else! Having covered up the president’s impairments throughout his term of office, the Democratic establishment decided he could not beat Trump and pressured him not to run after all. Instead, they anointed Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden beat in the previous Democratic primary because she was such an ineffective candidate. And extraordinary things keep happening, with the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, being put in charge of cutting the deficit and the health iconoclast Robert Kennedy, Jr., being put in charge of the government’s health programs! Next year may shape up as the most interesting year in modern American politics.
Another big story is that the wars drag on. Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, since February 24, 2022! Hamas invaded Israel over a year ago, on October 7, 2023!
For overviews of the year’s news, sports, entertainment, pop culture, etc., etc., all illustrated with great photos, see this Year in Review hub for the Associated Press.
I like to live over again the past year month by month. The Wall Street Journal offers that with a timeline of 2024’s Biggest News Stories. That one, behind a paywall, is serious. More fun to read is Dave Barry’s “Year in Review,” which is also serious while being hilarious.
Top 10 Religion Stories of the Year
The Religion News Association polled its members to come up with the Top 10 religion stories of 2024, my comments in brackets:
1. “Former President Donald Trump won a second term in the White House with the help of many white Christians.” [Trump even wins the top position in surveys of different topics! Yes, many white Christians voted for Trump. So did many black Christians, many Hispanic Christians, many Muslims, many Jews, many Nones, and many evangelicals who no longer go to church.]
2. “Jews raised concerns about facing higher levels of discrimination and harassment.” [I think this should be the top religion story. Anti-semitism is back in vogue around the world. What started as opposition to Israel’s retaliation against Hamas for its invasion, hostage-taking, and atrocities, has become old-fashioned conspiratorial-minded Jew-hating.]
3. The war between Israel and Hamas caused American Muslims to turn against the Democrats and vote for Trump, “complicating Vice President Kamala Harris’ path to victory.” [One of many political turn-arounds. Note that even religion reporters have a bias for Harris. She didn’t get very far on her “path to victory.” I’d say it was more than “complicated.” It didn’t materialize.]
4. Louisiana passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in the states’ public schools. [I want to know what text they used. Do they have two commandments against “coveting”? We Lutherans, like Catholics do, and there are lots of Catholics in Louisiana.]
5. Christian nationalism gets attention because of the election. [Many Christian nationalists voted for Trump. So did many non-Christian nationalists and many non-nationalist Christians.]
6. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children. [And rightly so!]
7. “Islamophobia surged across the U.S. amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.” [Islamophilia more like! On university campuses, Islam is the one religion that gets respected. You can even oppose extramarital sex and homosexuality if you are a Muslim, though not if you are a Christian.]
8. In the election, seven states voted in favor of abortion. [Of these, also four voted for Trump. The bigger story is that the Republican Party dropped its pro-life platform.]
9. The United Methodists dropped their ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage. [Well, of course they did, after 7,600 more conservative congregations left the denomination, leaving the progressives unopposed and firmly in charge.]
10. “The Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz campaigns put a spotlight on candidates’ unique religious backgrounds.” [A non-church going Presbyterian and a devout Catholic convert up against an “inter-faith” candidate who as a child went to both a Hindu Temple and a Black Baptist church, where she currently is a member, and today has an “inter-faith” family with her Jewish husband plus a liberal Lutheran. Their backgrounds are not so much unique as all too common.]
Most Influential in the Media
Mediaite put out its 2024 list of the 75 most influential people in new media. I won’t bore you with all 75, since you probably haven’t heard of most of these people who are influencing you, but the #1 selection was interesting: Elon Musk, for what he has done with Twitter–sorry, X–making him “the single most powerful person in all of media this year.”
And, what with DOGE, his project for cutting the costs of the federal government and his evident influence over Trump, “Musk is poised to become the most powerful civilian in American history – if he isn’t already – and augment his already vast fortune in the process.”
Illustration: Tom Lehrer’s album, That Was the Year that Was. The cover art can be obtained from Reprise/Warner Bros. Records., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2489390
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