For most of recorded history, Isis was an Egyptian goddess who cared for widows and orphans, cured the sick and even brought the dead back to life. In 2014 the world met the other ISIS.
The rise of the so-called Islamic State, variously known as ISIS or ISIL, dominated last year’s headlines as it sowed death and destruction across Iraq and Syria. But the terror of ISIS wasn’t the only source of unrest, according to Religion News Service’s annual review of stories.
The Ebola virus in West Africa put the world on edge, and a bloody war between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza, kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria and the slaughter of more than 100 children at a military school in Pakistan added to the mix.
At home, America wrestled with police shootings as grand juries declined to prosecute officers in the deaths of unarmed African-American men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City. From botched prison executions to a stream of desperate migrant children flooding America’s southern border, things felt troubled and disorienting.
Religion played a large role in those stories and in other major headlines:
- A banner year for church-state court decisions. A string of court decisions paved a way for greater accommodation of religion in public life, dealing a blow to atheist groups that warned the separation of church and state was under attack. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld sectarian prayers at public meetings, and the justices ruled 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts chain, in its bid to refuse a full range of contraceptive services to employees.
- Pope Francis wanted open debate, and he got it. The pope hosted a headline-grabbing Synod on the Family at the Vatican that publicly pitted Roman Catholic conservatives against his reformist allies who want to open communion to divorced and remarried Roman Catholics as well as create more space for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members and their families.
- A whirlwind shift on marriage equality. The number of states allowing same-sex marriage doubled, from 17 to 35 in addition to the District of Columbia, after the Supreme Court declined to review a number of pro-marriage rulings from lower courts. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to allow gay clergy, and a number of United Methodist pastors were vindicated after court battles over marrying same-sex couples.
- Mormon misconceptions. In a series of online essays, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tried to debunk popular caricatures of Mormon beliefs, a remarkable exercise in the real-time evolution of a distinctly homegrown American religion. No, the church said, Mormons don’t get their own planet in the afterlife, and yes, founder Joseph Smith practiced plural marriage — as many as 40 wives.
- America, meet the Satanists. Satanists, curiously, had a big year in 2014. In Oklahoma City, the New York-based Satanic Temple unveiled plans to erect a monument to Satan on the state capitol grounds (next to a Ten Commandments monument).
