Predictions (link fixed)

One of our favorite blogs is dotCommonweal, by the editors and contributors to this excellent magazine. At the link here, Peter Steinfels predicts some of the big religion stories of 2008:

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.”

February: Controversy swirls around the choice of Ann Coulter as chief speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast. Organizers of the officially nonpartisan event insist they never anticipated her prayer that Democrats be saved from the fire of hell. ”But I only spoke in the spirit of Christian charity,” she says.

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.

April: Pope Benedict XVI, during a brief visit to the United States, stuns reporters and commentators by indicating that he still believes in God, considers Catholic teachings to be true and opposes abortion and same-sex marriages. Consistent with four decades of findings, fresh polls of American Catholics confirm that they still revere the Pope but disagree with him about contraception, ordaining women and other issues. The newsweeklies detect a “deep divide” and “growing rift” between Rome and the American faithful.

The other months of the year provide even more insight.