Predictions for 2011

OK, we are out here on the twig of a one of the smallest branches of a creaky limb of the tree getting ready to make predictions for the coming year. I have no crystal ball or psychic powers and if I did I would not use them because the Scripture forbids us to resort to supernatural means to know the future. What you are about to read is not my wishes for the year (maybe another post?), but my best educated guesses. So here goes . . .

Politics
1. Last year I predicted that the Conservative Party of Canada would win a majority in a general election. Alas, the general election never happened, perhaps because too many Liberals were afraid that my prediction would come true. So, this I think will be the year. I predict that we will either have a new liberal leader or a general election (or both) in 2011 and if an election is held it will be a Conservative majority with Ontario (specifically the 905 belt around Toronto) being the crucial battleground.

2. Quebec will do something stupid. (This one is like shooting fish in a barrel.) Maybe they will legalize infanticide and prohibit the killing of cows for food in the same bill. Maybe they will order all businesses to pay all women 10% more than the highest paid man in the company as "reparations" for past oppression. Maybe the government will remove all babies from the homes of private citizens and place them in government-run orphanages until they go to school at which they will go to boarding schools where they will be brainwashed to forget that they ever had parents. Or maybe they will confiscate all churches and turn Protestant ones into casinos and Roman Catholic ones into state-run brothels. It is hard to be specific about what the left-wing secularists running the Quebec government will do next; but it is pretty simple to predict that it will move the province closer to Brave New World.

3. The Tea Party in the US will continue to grow and expand its influence as the new Congress finds its ability to turn the country away from socialism frustrated by President Obama. The only business he will stimulate in 2011 will be the factory where veto pens are produced. By the end of the year everyone in Washington or who visited Washington or wrote a letter to the President will have one as a souvenir. Tea Party activists will be more determined to defeat Obama after a year of "whiny calls for greater bipartisanship, interpreted as Republicans just letting him spend more money."

4. Obama will be a one-term president. But, of course, we won't actually know if that is true or not until 2012, so let this prediction be that Obama will look more like a one-termer at the end of 2011 than at the beginning of 2011.

Religion
5. The Episcopal Church USA and its Canadian side-kick will do something stupid. (This is like shooting religious fish in a barrel). What will they do? Its hard to say. Maybe they will add a fourth order of ministry to deacons, priests and bishops: Coven Facilitator. Maybe they will ask John Spong to re-write the Apostles' Creed removing all references to the old, superstition known as the sky-god character. Maybe they will buy the Archbishop of Canterbury so they can write all of his correspondence for him. (Oh, wait they already did that.) It is so hard to be specific with the Episcopalians; you just need to know that it will be very stupid and it will drive the Africans around the bend. The Anglican Church of Canada will do everything the Episcopalians do except 10 years later and with less press coverage.

6. The Roman Catholic Church will be attacked viciously by the secular media until it agrees to ordain women and practicing homosexuals, change canon law to recognize the New York Times as equal in authority to the Four Gospels, make the Pope a figurehead with no authority in faith or morals, make contraception mandatory for all Catholics and beatify Margaret Sanger, Joseph Mengale and Paul Erlich. The current pope will stubbornly and unreasonably object to this moderate agenda and continue to live in the 13th century - or even, some would say, the first.

7. Someone will write a book called "Why Conservative Evangelical Churches are Growing," which will explain why churches that still believe in heaven and hell and getting saved do more evangelism than ones that obsess about social justice. It should not be hard to write. Dean Kelley's book has already done the explaining; just update the names of the denominations and leaders. We have seen this movie before and now know how it ends.

8. Barack Obama will go through a showy pretense of "changing his mind" about same-sex "marriage" and will face the consequences with his base of African-Americans. Many ordinary black voters will not be impressed by comparing their ethnic background to a perverted sex act. The secular media will be horrified at their unsophistication and will temporarily suspend their anti-racism rules long enough to attack those who attack the One. Republicans will remind black voters that it was the Democrats who supported segregation too.

General Culture
9. A backlash will arise in 2011 against Facebook. (I'm banking on the "What goes up must eventually come down theory here.) Am I the only person who is sick and tired of people asking me to be their "friends?" I thought I was through with all that after junior high. I don't want to be anyone's virtual friend; I only joined Facebook in order to see the pictures of my grandchildren posted there by my daughters. That is the extent of it. No, I don't want to join the cult. As I say to clerks trying to sell me affinity cards at retailers: "No thanks, I'm Baptist."

10. The European Union will experience a severe financial crisis (already underway) which will lead to either (1) an undemocratic political union cobbled together by political elites in spite of the public will or (2) the EU falling apart. If the first option occurs, the stage will be set for the seizure of tremendous power by determined Muslim minorities down the road. If the second option occurs, the result could be increased liberty and cultural renewal, especially if some countries rediscover their spiritual heritage, which has been crushed by secularist bureaucrats for the past 50 years. Which will occur, I do not know but I predict that the status quo is unsustainable.