RNA members name Donald Trump's re-election and ongoing Mideast war top domestic and international stories of 2024 

The re-election of Donald Trump, along with other dynamics and demographics related to the election, was named the top domestic story and Israel's ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza the international religion story of 2024 by members of the Religion News Association.

Muslim voters in the United States and the United Kingdom were named the top religion newsmakers of the year. Fueled by frustration over their governments' handling of the war in Gaza, Muslim voters broke with the Democrats and Labour Party in their respective countries and opted instead for alternative candidates, impacting election results and signaling potentially historic shifts. Donald Trump was the runner-up for newsmaker after he was returned to the White House with strong support from white and Latino evangelicals and other white Christians following a campaign that heavily featured Christian nationalist imagery and what many supporters considered divine deliverance from an assassin’s bullet. He was followed by conservative Christian leaders like Gene Bailey, Lou Engle, Charlie Kirk, and Lance Wallnau who organized rallies and other efforts with strong Christian nationalist themes in support of him.

Other top U.S. stories included rising antisemitic speech, harassment and assaults, the strain the war in the Middle East is putting on Jews’ and Muslims’ traditional Democratic loyalties and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signing a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public classrooms. 

Other top international stories included a surge in antisemitic incidents in Europe, the resignation of Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the reopening of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.

Members of the Religion News Association, a 75-year-old association for reporters who cover religion in the news media, have been voting on the annual story poll for decades. 

"There is no one who knows religion news like RNA members," said Ken Chitwood, RNA President, "so who better to ask to reflect on the top religion stories of the year?" 

"Many of the results in 2024 -- in the U.S. and across the globe -- are interconnected storylines, mutually impacting each other and the world we live in, and report on," he said. "Looking to the future, I imagine we will continue to be talking about these news stories and newsmakers."

For more information, or to request an interview or statement with RNA board or staff, please send an email to director@rna.org.

TOP 10 U.S. RELIGION STORIES OF THE YEAR

1. Republican Donald Trump is elected president again with strong support from white and Latino evangelicals and other white Christians. Democrat Kamala Harris is supported by a majority of Black Protestants, the non-religious, and Latino Catholics as well as Jews and Muslims – despite grave reservations in the last two groups over Biden-Harris policies surrounding the Israel-Gaza war.

2. Nearly two-thirds of Jews surveyed reported feeling less safe than a year earlier amid tensions over the Israel-Hamas war and reports of rising antisemitic speech, harassment and assaults, including the shooting of a man walking to synagogue in Chicago. Harvard and Columbia university presidents resign following contentious appearances before Congress and accusations that protests made campuses unsafe for Jews. 

3. The Mideast war strains Jews’ and Muslims’ traditional Democratic loyalties, with some of the former questioning how firmly Democrats are supporting Israel, even as they express alarm at Republican Donald Trump’s claims that they’d be to blame if he lost the presidential election. Muslims denounce the U.S.’s continued support and weapons supplies to Israel for its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon.

4. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signs law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public classrooms. Oklahoma’s top education official orders public schools to incorporate the Bible into lessons. The Oklahoma Supreme Court rules unconstitutional what would have been the nation's first state-funded Catholic charter school. Texas’ State Board of Education allows Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools.

5. Election-year debates surge over the definition and influence of Christian nationalism and the related New Apostolic Reformation, with its leaders strongly supporting former President Trump, depicting politics as spiritual warfare, portraying America as a Christian nation and interpreting Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt as a miracle signaling a divine mandate. 

6. Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law – with its chief justice citing Christian doctrine in a concurrence. Amid backlash even from conservatives, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs legislation shielding in vitro fertilization providers from liability. Southern Baptist Convention laments the “destruction of embryonic human life” in IVF. 

7. Advocacy groups cite a surge in Islamophobia in the U.S. amid the Gaza war, with Dearborn, Michigan, going on alert after its large Muslim population was targeted in a prominent commentary. Universities are accused of failing to respond to Islamophobia on campus. Biden administration announces policies to combat anti-Muslim bias and hate crimes.

8. Voters in seven states expand or reinforce access to abortion. Those in three others uphold abortion restrictions, the first states to do so by referendum since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats campaign heavily on abortion rights. President-elect Donald Trump gives mixed signals about his views, while Republicans remove from their platform their longstanding call for a constitutional amendment banning abortion.

9. The United Methodist Church’s General Conference in May repeals the denomination’s longtime stance that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching” and overturns bans on openly LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages. The Global Methodist Church, composed mainly of conservative churches that left the UMC, holds its inaugural General Conference.

10. Major-party nominees reflect America’s fluid religious makeup: Kamala Harris, a progressive Baptist married to a Jewish man and influenced by the religions of her mother’s native India; Donald Trump, a non-denominational Christian with strong support from evangelicals and married to a Catholic; JD Vance, a Catholic convert influenced by post-liberal thinkers and married to a Hindu; and Tim Walz, who was raised Catholic and later joined the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his wife’s background.

TOP 10 INTERNATIONAL RELIGION STORIES OF THE YEAR

1. Israel continues war against Hamas in Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that killed about 1,200 in Israel. Fighting has killed over 44,000 and displaced around 1.9 million in Gaza, where the UN warns famine is imminent, and spread to Lebanon and Iran. Israel kills leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah. Hamas continues to hold about 100 hostages. UN General Assembly resolution demands Israel leave Gaza and the West Bank. The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas’ military chief, alleging crimes against humanity. 

2. Antisemitic incidents surge in Europe following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s military response, according to Jewish groups and researchers in multiple countries. Israeli fans are assaulted after a soccer game in Amsterdam in an apparent coordinated attack. Other incidents range from an arson attack on a French synagogue to a defaced mural in Italy of a survivor of the Oct. 7 attack.

3. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, resigns after an investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.

4. Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral is prepared for a December reopening, five years after a devastating fire, and features new bells, rebuilt ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework.

5. Incidents of anti-Muslim prejudice and crime surge in Europe even before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and continue to rise afterward, according to separate reports from the European Union and the private CLAIM network.

6. Religious conservatives from around the world decry a tableau in the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics that appeared to evoke Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and featured drag artists and other performers. Olympics organizers said the ceremonies intended to show diversity and there was no “intention to show disrespect.”

7. United Nations rights officials warn that the Taliban’s repressive control over women and girls will jeopardize Afghanistan’s future. The Taliban imposes morality laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public, along with sweeping bans on education, most jobs and reciting the Quran in front of other women.

8. An independent inquiry in New Zealand finds an “unimaginable” scale of physical, sexual, verbal or psychological abuse of about 200,000 children and vulnerable adults in institutional care, including programs run by Catholic and Protestant groups. An Irish government report finds almost 2,400 allegations of sexual abuse in more than 300 schools run by religious orders between the 1960s and 1990s – the latest such report to rock once-staunchly Catholic Ireland.

9. Ukraine’s parliament bans activities of groups tied to the Russian Orthodox Church or any other faith group supporting Russia’s invasion — a measure widely seen as targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, despite its claim to independence from Moscow. U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom expresses concerns about the law while stressing that “Russia remains the most profound threat to religious freedom in Ukraine.” 

10. The Synod on Synodality – Pope Francis' three-year consultation on the future of the Catholic Church – disappoints advocates for women’s ordination as deacons, though it recommends expanding women’s roles in other areas, along with calls for greater transparency and lay involvement.

TOP 5 RELIGION NEWSMAKERS OF THE YEAR

1. Muslim voters in the United States and the United Kingdom, fueled by frustration over their governments' handling of the war in Gaza, who broke with the Democrats and Labour Party, opting instead for alternative candidates, impacting election results and signaling potentially historic shifts.

2. Donald Trump, returned to the White House with strong support from white and Latino evangelicals and other white Christians following a campaign that heavily featured Christian nationalist imagery and what many supporters considered divine deliverance from an assassin’s bullet. 

3. Conservative Christian leaders who organized rallies and other efforts with strong Christian nationalist themes in support of Donald Trump’s successful presidential election campaign, among them Gene Bailey, Lou Engle, Charlie Kirk, and Lance Wallnau.

4. Pope Francis, who keeps active at 87, taking his longest papal journey to Asia and a controversial trip to Belgium; convenes a synod that frustrates those seeking a greater role for women but reflects his aim for a listening church; names 21 new cardinals; and issues an encyclical, “Dilexit Nos,” calling for love in a world fraught with consumerism and algorithms.

5. Oklahoma school Superintendent Ryan Walters, who orders the Bible to be incorporated in public school lessons, and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who signs law requiring postings of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms - part of wider Republican efforts, challenged in courts, to incorporate religion in schools.