2011: A year of taking it to the streets
c. 2011 Religion News Service
(RNS) 2011 was supposed to be the year the world ended. Twice.
But after evangelist Harold Camping's doomsday predictions failed to materialize, all eyes are now on 2012 when, according to an ancient Mayan calendar, we need to once again prepare for the end of the world as we know it.
Jesus was pretty clear: the wars and rumors of wars, the earthquakes and uprisings, are just the beginning of the end. Indeed, 2011 had enough tumult, anxiety and unrest to make people think maybe the end is nigh after all.
For the Arab world, the Arab Spring upended longstanding regimes in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and could do the same in Syria and Yemen. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake left more than 21,000 dead or injured in Japan and literally tipped the earth off its axis, while a smaller Aug. 23 quake along the East Coast sent finials and angels tumbling from atop Washington National Cathedral.
Frustrated demonstrators occupied Wall Street, and a damning sexual abuse scandal ricocheted through the Roman Catholic Church and Penn State's football program. To top it all off, the Crystal Cathedral went belly-up.
And that's not even counting the 2012 presidential campaign.
Here's a quick tour through the topsy-turvy world of religion in 2011:
Taking it to the streets
From Tahrir Square to the Wisconsin Statehouse to Zuccotti Park, 2011 was the year of taking it to the streets as popular anger -- against despots, union-busting politicians and Wall Street tycoons -- coalesced into (mostly) peaceful protests. Religious leaders voiced concern for religious minorities swept up in the turbulence of the Middle East, as well as support for the Occupiers' goals of fairness and equity in the global financial system.
'Do not rejoice when your enemies fall...'
The street celebrations that followed the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, left a bad taste in the mouth of many Americans. "In obedience to Scripture, there can be no rejoicing when our enemies fall," said David Gushee, a Christian ethicist at Mercer University. Americans, however, had fewer qualms about bin Laden's eternal fate: a poll after bin Laden's death found that two-thirds of Americans think he's paying for his sins in hell.
