The Year of the Fire Horse

As many of you know, in Japan and China the zodiac consists of twelve animal signs, and each year is named after one of them. This new year of 2026 is the Year of the Horse—but more specifically it is the Year of the Fire Horse, which occurs every sixty years.** 

It was 60 years ago that my family and I arrived in Japan for the first time. Even though we were told it was the Year of the Horse, I can’t remember anyone telling us it was the Year of the Fire Horse.

After two years of language study in Tokyo, we moved to Fukuoka City in southwest Japan. We lived in an all-Japanese neighborhood, and the Shibata family next door became dear friends. Mr. Shibata’s given name was Toraichirō, and since tora is the Japanese word for tiger, it was easy to discern he was born in the Year of the Tiger, the same as I was.

In 1974 when I turned 36, three times around the Japanese zodiac, Mr. Shibata celebrated his 72^nd birthday, having completed six cycles. At some point, we learned that Mrs. Shibata celebrated her birthday on January 1 even though she was born at the end of 1906, which was the year of the Fire Horse.

For the Japanese people who take the “superstitions” entwined with the zodiac seriously, it is commonly believed that “girls born in the Year of the Fire Horse will be temperamental, have bad marriages and be threats to their fathers and husbands.”

Since 1906 was the Year of the Fire Horse and thus seen as a bad year, especially for women born with that zodiac sign, Mrs. Shibata’s family registered her birth as being at the beginning of 1907. She did grow up to be a rather strong-willed woman, but Toraichirō-san was a kind, patient man, and we enjoyed having them both as neighbors during the 23 years we lived next door to them.

What can we expect this Year of the Fire Horse (which has little meaning in the Western world)? At the end of each year, there are always many articles published with what is thought to be the best or worst of whatever in the past year. But I want to think only about 2026 (and beyond) rather than looking back over the past year. I don’t want to walk into the future backwards.

In the Old Testament, the writer of Second Isaiah records these words from the Lord God: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!” (43:18-19a, NIV). We do need to learn from what has previously happened, but it is important not to dwell on the past. Rather, we are encouraged to focus on the future where God is “doing a new thing.”

Despite the negative aspects of the Year of the Fire Horse, especially for women, there are positive aspects also. The Fire Horse can legitimately be considered as a symbol of strong will and forward motion, encouraging individuals, families, and communities alike to pursue important changes and reforms.

 In that sense, the Year of the Fire Horse becomes a metaphor for times when intense pressures and rapid shifts do not just unsettle life but also open the way for renewal, growth, and more authentic directions.

Rather than dwelling on 2025 as a horrible year, let’s look forward to this new year being a year of positive change. I am a regular reader of “The Cottage,” Diane Butler Bass’s Substack newsletter. Her January 1 post was titled “Annus Mirabilis Everybody!”

Bass rightly notes that so many pundits labeled 2025 as annus horribilis, a “horrible year.” That, she writes, is “the 2025 consensus: Horrible. A disaster. Glad that’s done.” But, looking forward, she challenges us readers to name the new year of 2026 annus mirabilis, the “wonderful year,” the “year of miracles,” or the “beautiful year.”

She continues, “We can do this. Together. Let’s name this year Mirabilis. … If we start now, 2026 can be a year of wonder, a year of miracles, or maybe even a beautiful year.”

Among other things, with Fire Horse energy, may we USAmericans of goodwill work together to change the direction our nation is heading by voting to change the political leadership of the nation come November.

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** As mentioned in my previous (12/31) blog post, Japan has long used the “Western calendar,” with the new year beginning on January 1. But the traditional Chinese-style calendar (generally referred to as 旧暦 (kyūreki, “old calendar”) is still often used when referring to the zodiac, which was borrowed from China. Thus, the “Chinese” Year of the Fire Horse doesn’t begin until February 17.

The Biggest Theological Changes I’ve Seen in My Lifetime

Perhaps this needs to be seven posts rather than one, but at this point I am just listing and briefly describing what I consider to be the biggest theological changes I have seen in my lifetime—and these are not my personal shifts but what I’ve observed in the broad spectrum of Christianity. 

#1 – Widespread rejection of Hell. I list this first because of its impact on the following changes. Emphasis on Hell was not only long the emphasis of Protestantism but of Roman Catholicism as well.

One of the most well-known Protestant sermons was Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” And early in the 19^th century, revivalist preachers in the U.S. became known for their “fire and brimstone” sermons. That was still quite common when I was a boy/youth.

The Roman Catholic Church also taught for centuries that everyone who was not baptized as a Catholic was bound to go to Hell when they died. That position was drastically changed by the Second Vatican Council (1962~65).

And while emphasis on Hell is still much a part of conservative evangelicalism, in Protestant Christianity at large that emphasis has been quite widely rejected, or at least conspicuously ignored.

#2 – Growing de-emphasis on Heaven. For far different reasons, but related to the above, is what seems to me to be a significant decrease in the emphasis on Heaven in 21^st century Christianity. Heaven isn’t particularly denied, it just isn’t talked about nearly as much as it used to be.

The Great Awakenings and evangelical preaching of the 18^th~20^th centuries was about being “saved” from Hell in order to go to Heaven after death. In the early decades of my life the “afterlife” was of primary concern in most of Christianity, but that no longer seems to be the case.  

#3 – Drastic decrease in world mission activity. Although it was never just for that purpose, the desire to save people from Hell in order that they could go to Heaven was long a major motivation for world mission activity of most Christian denominations.

When I went to Japan as a Baptist missionary in 1966, there were not only conservative missionaries of various denominations, many of which were more conservative than Southern Baptists then, but also many from the more “liberal” Protestant denominations as well as Roman Catholics.

Some of the most prominent Christian schools in Japan were founded by Catholic, Anglican, and “mainstream” Protestant missionaries. But by the time I left Japan in 2004, there were hardly any Christian missionaries left other than Southern Baptists and other conservative evangelicals.

#4 – Emphasis on life in the here and now. Closely related to #2 above is the growing emphasis on the importance of life in this world now. Even the understanding of the Kingdom of God has broadly changed from being focused upon the world to come to a feature of the world we live in now.

Contemporary Christianity seems to have increasingly embraced the traditional Jewish position of “salvation” not being “about going to heaven after death but about the flourishing of life in the present.”*

For example, emphasis on flourishing in the present has for many years now been a part of the reflections of two popular theological thinkers I greatly respect, “emergent” Protestant public theologian and author Brian McLaren and Catholic (Franciscan) priest Richard Rohr.

5) De-emphasis and even rejection of substitutionary atonement. Since the blog post I made six years ago today was about that doctrinal belief (see here), I won’t elaborate on this point more now.

6) Change in views related to sexual ethics. Because of the perceived clear positions of the Bible and the teachings of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic Christianity long-held negative judgments against divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality.

While there were always many “deviations,” Christianity long held to a strong belief in the sanctity of marriage, which meant lifetime monogamous marriage of a man and a woman with no intimate sexual relations condoned outside of such a marriage.

In spite of strong emphasis on the traditional position by some Christians, broadly speaking, to a large extent Christianity now seems no longer to speak out against divorce or pre-marital sexual relations, and there continues to be greater acceptance of the rights of LGBTQ people.

  7) Growth in ecumenical relations, including deep ecumenism. There is a long history of Christian ecumenism—but an even longer history of Christian denominational “tribalism,” which is what I mostly saw in my younger years.

But during my lifetime there has been not only an ever-increasing move toward Christian denominations working together, a movement from exclusivity to inclusivity, but also an increase in what is sometimes called “deep ecumenism,” Christianity working with other religious traditions.**

What would you readers add or subtract from this list? And which of these do I need to write more about?

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* These words are from Jeorg Rieger in his book Theology in the Capitalocene (2022), which I plan to introduce more fully in the last blog post planned for this month.

** According to Chat GPT, “deep ecumenism” is a term coined by Wayne Teasdale (1945~2004), a Catholic lay monk. His book The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (1999) “is considered a seminal work in the field of deep ecumenism.” (I think I heard that term before 1999, though.)

Matthew Fox, former Catholic and now Episcopal priest, posted a “daily meditation” entitled “What Is Deep Ecumenism? Why Now?” on Oct. 18, 2021. 

Things Change

Things change, and in order to live successfully we generally have to accept even unwelcome changes and move on.

Sometimes things change because of tragic fires. The three-story school building where I was a student from 1945-55 was destroyed by fire in 1956. The farmhouse in which I lived during those same ten years was struck by lightning and burned down in the early 1960s. Last month a large portion of the west side of the square in my home town, Grant City, Missouri, completely burned down. (The picture of the latter fire is from the files of the St. Joseph News-Press.)

Things change, and we have to accept new realities and move on. A fine new school building was constructed in Grant City after fire destroyed the old one; the community moved on and was better off after the fire. My folks built a comfortable new house up the road from where the old house had been, so they, too, recovered from the shock of forced change and moved on to better things. And now those who owned the buildings and operated the businesses on the west side of the square in Grant City have to deal with unwelcome change and move on.

Things change in other ways. For example, the United States of America is much different now than it was when it was formed nearly 235 years ago. While this country was founded largely by Protestant Christians (although some of the “founding fathers” were not at all “orthodox” Protestants), gradually more and more Catholics and Jews came to this country.

There was considerable animosity toward the Catholic immigrants for decades, but fifty years ago this month, despite considerable (prejudicial) opposition by Protestants, a Catholic was elected President. Since then, for that reason and because of the impact of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), there have been increasingly cordial relationships between Protestants and Catholics.

There have also been pockets of prejudice against Jews in the U.S., but as the percentage of Jews has not been nearly as large as that of Catholics there has not been as much animosity toward them for the most part. Now there are sizeable numbers of Jews in most large U.S. cities—so much so that along with Christmas and Christian holidays, Hanukkah (which begins on Dec. 1 this year) and other Jewish holidays are commemorated even by some public schools.

Things change, and now there are large numbers of American citizens who are Muslims, Buddhists, and people of other religious faiths, a larger number of such persons than could have been imagined when I was a boy. As citizens, their religious freedom must be recognized and protected.