- Aid groups rush to help an already-hurting Haiti after its 7.0-magnitude earthquake, raising $750 million in a mere five weeks. But scandal over Baptist missionaries’ efforts to move 33 children to the Dominican Republic becomes a major plot line and raises questions about “amateur” aid.
- Thousands of global evangelical leaders gather in Cape Town to discuss missions, highlight evangelicalism’s global diversity, pray for religious liberty, and build relationships that will likely bear unexpected fruit in the decades to come.
- In a closely watched case, World Vision wins its employment case at the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 2–1 that the organization can fire employees who aren’t orthodox Christians. A loss would have caused turmoil for faith-based organizations’ hiring rules.
- Midterm elections halve the number of pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives. Activist groups say the vote is a backlash against March’s health-care reform bill, which also prompted new state abortion funding restrictions and the rise of the tea party (whose social concerns are still unclear).
- The U.S. Supreme Court rules against the Hastings College of the Law chapter of the Christian Legal Society, saying the school’s policy that student groups must open all positions to all students—even those who oppose the group’s core values—”is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition.”
- The Deepwater Horizon oil spill shifts the creation care debate. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean Russell Moore calls it a “defining moment” comparable to Roe v. Wade, and oversees sbc resolution calling for “full corporate accountability.”
- American evangelicals find themselves at odds with African Christians over Uganda’s proposed anti-gay bill, which would punish homosexual acts with life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
- Prominent Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke resigns from Reformed Theological Seminary under pressure amid debate on the historicity of Adam. “If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution,” he said in a video for BioLogos, “to deny that reality will make us a cult.”
- Christian musician Jennifer Knapp announces she is in a same-sex relationship, spotlighting questions of pastoral response to gay Christians.
- Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Gainesville, Florida, sparks worldwide condemnation when he threatens to burn a Qur’an. He later promises never to burn one.
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