(RNS) — The year’s news in religion was dominated by a war already in progress on Jan. 1 between Hamas and Israel. Though not at root a religious war, as the months went by the conflict supercharged American-Jewish divisions over Israel, fractured some Jewish-Muslim alliances and made antisemitism on campus a rallying cry for the right. It also exposed, in the view of many who sympathized with the Palestinians, new depths of Islamophobia.
The top religion stories also reprised familiar themes of the 2016-2020 Trump administration, as Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign returned him to the White House. We also saw the end of a three-year-long Vatican synod and the opening of a Hindu temple three decades in the making.
But if several of this year’s biggest stories were holdovers from previous years, there were, as ever, surprises nobody could have predicted. Here are the developments in faith, politics and culture that defined 2024 for us at RNS:
1. Israel-Hamas war’s spiritual reckoning
People organized by Halachic Left demonstrate against the Israel-Hamas war outside the 96th Street subway station on Tisha B’av, Aug. 13, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Gili Getz)
As Palestinian casualties in the war that began with Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7, 2023, raid on southern Israel passed 48,000 in Gaza, the fighting caused spiritual reckoning far from the combat. Many American Jews felt deeply that critiques of Israel’s actions on campus amounted to antisemitism. The war also gave voice to growing ranks of anti-Zionists on the left. By year’s end, campus protesters, some of whom had sought solace in Jewish sabbath and Christian Communion celebrations, had largely dispersed, while in Israel and the occupied territories, Jewish parents mourned children who died as hostages in Gaza. Muslims, Christians and some Jews lamented that the world remained indifferent to the Palestinian plight.
2. Trump returns
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at Atlanta’s McCamish Pavilion, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
The reelection of Donald Trump braided so many narratives of politics and religion together it’s difficult to know where the strands begin or end: Historically Catholic and Democratic Latino voters show …