Please note: This issue is our annual roundup for use as you prepare your year-end homilies. The next new issue of Preaching in Light of the News will be posted the week of January 4. Nearly two years ago, in April 2007, an undergraduate art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago unveiled a papier-mache sculpture of Barack Obama as a messianic figure, titled "Blessing." David Cordero, 24, made the sculpture for his senior show after noticing all the attention Obama had received since first hinting he might run for the presidency. Run Obama did, and win he did, and his election was overwhelmingly voted the top news story of the year by U.S. editors and news directors polled by the Associated Press. But as we prepare to celebrate the Savior's birth, Obama must contend with the almost messianic-like hope that many people hold for his presidency....

Just before Hanukkah and Christmas a handful of Jerusalem postal workers leave the post office for a few hours and head to the Western Wall. ...

"In elevating to a level of demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation. We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring."

For the first time people from minority ethnic groups form more than half the population of the U.S.'s largest cities. The percentage of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other nonwhite people is a little over 50 percent in major cities, up 2 percent since 2000.