Trump’s Path to Victory Still Runs Through the Church

The former president held on to the white evangelical vote while making gains among Catholics and Hispanic Christians.

Donald Trump 2024 campaign sign in front of a church

Samuel Corum / Getty Images

The 2024 presidential election may have been Donald Trump’s best yet.

While white evangelicals’ strong support for the former president didn’t budge, he made sizable gains among Catholic and Hispanic voters that helped him sweep battleground states.

Projections show Trump may be the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote, beating out Democrat Kamala Harris.

Vice President Harris improved upon President Joe Biden’s numbers with white Americans, though a 55-percent majority continued to back Trump. The Republican candidate also improved among non-white voters; in 2016, Trump got 21 percent of the non-white vote, compared to Biden’s 74 percent. This year, the gap narrowed: 32 percent to Harris’s 65 percent, political scientist Daniel Bennett noted.

Trump’s win comes in part thanks to improved performance among Catholic voters, who make up about a quarter of the electorate and went for Trump by a 15-point margin. A Catholic himself, Biden won his fellow faithfuls in the 2020 contest, but 58 percent of Catholics voted for Trump over Harris this time, according to The Washington Post’s exit polls.

“Exit polls aren’t perfect, but they show that large majorities of the country are deeply concerned about the economy and inflation, and those voters went heavily for Trump,” said Caleb Verbois, political science professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, a key swing state with a sizable Catholic population that went for Trump this year.

The Trump campaign chose Ohio senator and Catholic convert JD Vance as Trump’s running mate. Vance will be the second Catholic VP behind Biden. In an op-ed last month, Vance suggested that a Harris administration would be biased against Catholics after Harris said she would not support faith-based exemptions for health providers on abortion legislation.

While Verbois said much of the evangelical landscape appeared unchanged, one of his takeaways is that abortion may be less motivating than in previous years.

“For pro-life Christian voters, abortion is just not as salient of an issue as it used to be,” Verbois said. “Trump has made it very clear that he does not really care about abortion and has moderated on it, and that didn’t keep pro-life voters away.

“There has never been a time in the last 50 years when there were fewer legal barriers to pro-life legislation, and yet politically the pro-life movement is on life support. Seven states just voted to enshrine abortion rights into their laws, and Florida only failed to do so because the measure needed a super-majority to pass.”

A survey from Lifeway Research found in September that voters with evangelical beliefs ranked abortion as their fifth issue, behind the economy, immigration, national security, and personal character.

Exit polls from The Washington Post found that even voters who believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases voted for Trump by nearly 30 percent.

Meanwhile, Democrats bet that their voters would turn out due to concerns over abortion access.

“Harris’s team seemed to assume that abortion and democracy concerns were all that mattered. But groceries cost 25 percent more now than they did in the fall of 2020. That mattered to voters,” Verbois said.

A survey by the Associated Press found that the economy and jobs were the top issues for voters at 39 percent, followed by immigration. Abortion came in next at only 11 percent.

“The fundamentals matter a whole lot,” Ryan Burge, a religion researcher and political science professor, told Christianity Today, referencing James Carville’s campaign line: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Voters motivated by the economy led to a strong showing for Republicans in rural areas and generally among men, voters without college degrees, and young voters, as well as in some minority demographics. Harris was unable to make up that support in urban areas, despite having more support from Black voters and women.

Trump captured the majority of men under 30, a group Biden won last time. The campaign expended substantial energy seeking to appeal to younger male voters and earned endorsements from podcasting giant Joe Rogan and tech billionaire Elon Musk, both of whom got shoutouts during Trump’s election night celebration.

With Trump on the ticket, Republicans have seen major improvement among Hispanic voters, the majority of whom are Catholic or evangelical.

In 2016, Trump won 17 percent of Hispanics. By 2020, 32 percent. With Hispanic voters this year, he narrowed the gap. Trump won 45 percent while Harris won 53 percent. Trump was also able to win among Hispanic men for the first time.

“These numbers show a growing trend—the Latino vote is conservative in essence and vote for what is best for the country they live in and love,” said Javier Chavez, pastor of Amistad Cristiana Church in Gainesville, Georgia.

“And just like that, Latino voters become the belles of the ball, becoming an electoral asset for the GOP, and a liability for Democrats in many states across the country,” said Daniel Garza, president of the Libre Initiative. Activists at Libre have worked for months to encourage more Hispanic voters to get engaged politically and vote Republican.

White evangelicals remained the strongest religious group for Republicans, voting for Trump by almost two to one.

White evangelicals’ margin of support for Trump stayed at 81 percent, exit polls found. That percentage hasn’t budged the last two cycles, and they have been stalwarts of the Republican base for years. “That’s the norm at this point, going all the way back to 2004,” Burge said. “This is exactly what you would expect. Nothing’s changed.”

Still, there have been shifts in who chooses to identify as evangelical. After 2020, more Trump supporters began calling themselves evangelicals, even if they hadn’t previously used the label and weren’t going to church.

White evangelicals supported George W. Bush in 2004 by 79 percent, John McCain in 2008 by 73 percent, and Mitt Romney in 2012 by 79 percent.

They voted for Trump by 81 percent in 2016 and 76 percent in 2020 (other 2020 estimates placed the number closer to 81 percent).

In a concession speech Wednesday, Harris said her team would work with Trump’s to peacefully transition to the next administration.

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she said. “At the same time in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God.”

Harris encouraged Americans disappointed by the outcome to continue to engage politically.

“Here’s the thing. Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win,” she said. “The important thing is don’t ever give up. Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place.”

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Ideas

What to Do After the Election

Bonnie Kristian

CT Staff; Columnist

Prudence from Ecclesiastes and exhortation from Hebrews for the jubilant and disappointed alike.

Bloomberg / Getty / Edits by CT

Neither outcome of this presidential race would’ve surprised me. I don’t like to make predictions, but in my capacity as my former roommate’s mom’s personal, text-on-demand pundit, I did venture back in August my instinct that Donald Trump would take my state of Pennsylvania and, with it, the victory. And so he has.

Neither outcome would’ve pleased me, either. I know that’s the kind of thing for which partisans have no patience, especially while the win or loss is so fresh. But the truth is, I don’t want Trump or his rival, Kamala Harris, to be president of these United States. I believe he will do (and she would have done) a bad job. In some matters, it would’ve been the same kind of bad job in either administration; elsewhere, I think one or the other is worse.

I don’t want to parse all that here. The decision is made, and there will be plenty of time for policy and poll analyses later. Here, I want to speak to fellow Christians from my spot outside each camp but friendly with people in both. I keep returning to two passages from Scripture as I mull this result and consider what has not changed in and for ourselves and our neighbors.

“There is a time for everything,” Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, and this week is a time for Ecclesiastes, especially its eighth chapter, which is brimming with prudence and equanimity in the face of political and social turbulence.

“Obey the king’s command,” advises 8:2—but not, apparently, because he is a good king. Act instead out of duty to God (v. 2), refusing to “stand up for a bad cause” while recognizing that, realistically, the king “will do whatever he pleases” (v. 3).

Don’t spend too much time on worries and anticipations, whether your concern is the Trump administration or backlash against it: “Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come?” (v. 7)

For all we may hope or fear now, we do not know what will happen next. Sometimes, “a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time” (v. 12). Sometimes, it is “the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve” (v. 14).

But sometimes, “a man lords it over others to his own hurt” (v. 9). And sometimes, “because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow” (v. 13). Sometimes, even, “it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him” (v. 12).

In any case, our business must be the state of our hearts before God, for “wickedness will not release those who practice it” (v. 8). We cannot always keep its claws off others, but with God’s help we can tear them off of ourselves.

Yet rejection of wickedness and a bad cause is not enough. We don’t want to be houses merely swept clean (Luke 11:25) but filled with the likeness of Christ, rebuilt as little outposts of his kingdom, recognizable as his claims.

Add, then, to the prudence of Ecclesiastes 8 the exhortations of Hebrews 13. This is the chapter that declares, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (v. 8), and that is a timely word right now. But so too are the chapter’s many instructions for the Christian life under duress.

First and foremost, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters” (v. 1). Show “hospitality to strangers” (v. 2), and “remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (v. 3). Never is that advice more needed than if we find ourselves in power. The first readers of Hebrews were a poor and powerless minority in their society, yet they had a duty to the stranger, the prisoner, and the suffering. How much more, then, do we?

Beyond that, heed church authorities (v. 17) and avoid “all kinds of strange teachings” (v. 9). Honor marriage and reject sexual immorality and love of money, two of our culture’s greatest idols (vv. 4–5). Be content, “because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (v. 5).

It is in this context that we can “say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’” (v. 6). It is in this context that we recall that “here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (v. 14).

And yet, the present city is unmistakably, unignorably before us. Maybe you are happy with its new direction, or maybe you are mourning. In either case, all the above remains the same—and so do we.

Contrary to some sensational election responses, America is not different than it was on Monday, and neither are our duties as Christians. The family members, friends, and fellow congregants who voted differently from us all thought differently from us a few days ago, too. What we love about them is the same. The kindnesses they have done us still happened. And what we find misguided or incoherent or annoying about them is the same, too. They were sinners then and are sinners now. We all are.

“Pray for us,” as the author of Hebrews pleads in 13:18. “We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way,” but so often we are weak. We err. We sin. We strain harder to see tomorrow than to see Christ. There is a time for everything, and this is a time for humility, grace, and prayer.

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

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Culture

Spain’s Oldest Protestant Publishing House Began Underground 100 Years Ago

Hernán Restrepo

Now Clie celebrates a century of equipping the church through dictatorship and secularization.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Courtesy of Editorial Clie

It was another dark day during the Spanish Civil War. Two nuns were fleeing a group of Communist guerrillas who had threatened to rape them. Running through the streets of Tarrasa, a small town in Catalonia, they took shelter in the small house of Protestant pastor and publisher Samuel Vila.

One of these two nuns turned out to be a relative of the Spanish general, whose forces won the war. Francisco Franco subsequently ruled Spain with an iron fist as the head of a military and ultra-Catholic dictatorship that lasted 36 years.

But Franco made one small concession. As an act of gratitude for protecting his family member, he issued Vila a safe conduct permit that allowed him to travel freely inside and outside the country. A permission that few were granted in those nearly four decades, it allowed for a small evangelical publishing house to build the partnerships it would need to survive a religiously hostile Spain—and to celebrate its centennial this year.

Today, Editorial Clie is Spain’s largest Protestant publisher and has distributed or published nearly 3,000 titles since its founding in 1924. But during the dictatorship (1936–1975) and the years leading up to it, its work existed primarily underground.

Except for a brief respite in the 1930s, for decades Spain was ruled by a monarchy that did not separate church and state. In this environment, the Catholic church controlled schools, hospitals, and social services, and its leaders were vehemently opposed to any movement that might challenge its authority, be it secularism or Protestantism.

“We [evangelicals] were considered heretics,” said Antonio Cruz, a biologist who has published numerous books with Clie. “Children were taught at school that Luther was a rebellious monk who abandoned Catholicism because he wanted to marry a nun.”

Born in 1902, Vila grew up in this environment as the son of a prosperous family of Catalan merchants who converted to Protestantism due to the ministry of English missionaries. Despite the centuries of repression that Protestants had experienced during the Inquisition (which began in 1478 and lasted for centuries), there was slightly more tolerance at the start of the 20th century for expressions of faith other than Catholicism, at least in Catalonia.

As a child, Vila received a toy printing press with movable rubber type from the Methodist church the family attended. He began to print Bible verses on pieces of paper that he threw out of the train window on his regular trips to Barcelona, in the hope that someone would read them and find Jesus.

As Vila continued with his studies, his love of printing was soon rivaled by his passion for writing essays, in which he defended his Christian faith from Catholics who called it a heresy. These essays became his first book, A las Fuentes del Cristianismo (To the Sources of Christianity), in which he sought to give pastors tools to defend their beliefs.

In 1924, Vila opened Clie, or Comité de Literatura para las Iglesias Evangélicas (Literature Committee for the Evangelical Churches), a publishing house that would print books helping Protestants to defend their faith under the premise that “a reasoned faith is a solid faith.”

Courtesy of Editorial Clie

Samuel Vila and his wife, Lidia Vila Campderrós, in front of Clie in the early 1960s.

After an ugly civil war devastated the country, Franco established his nationalist regime, a 40-year rule characterized by human rights violations and oppressive censorship. During the harsh years of persecution under the dictatorship, Clie had to operate primarily in secret since publishing any book by a Protestant author was prohibited by the state. The number of people who could gather for a Protestant service was limited by the police.

For decades, Clie printed its books at the workshops of two friends of the Vila family, who had become Protestants. It was not until 1965 that Vila was able to import an industrial printing press from the United States that had been discarded as scrap metal and install it in his home to create the printing workshop for his publishing house.

“Samuel Vila was a courageous man. He never hesitated to write letters to regional governors to complain about the many forms of discrimination against evangelicals at the time. He was also clever,” said Cruz, noting that Vila evaded state censorship of Protestant books by registering them as if they had been printed in the United States.

After Franco’s death in 1975, the 1978 Constitution officially recognized freedoms of religion, conscience, assembly, and expression, which had historically been denied to Protestants.

“We were hoping for a great revival after Franco’s death,” said Cruz. “But this just did not happen.”

On the contrary, the secularization of Spain accelerated after the dictator’s death. Today, only 19 percent of the population consider themselves practicing Catholics.

New millennium, new editorial approach

When the philosopher Alfonso Ropero became an evangelical Christian, he faced the challenge of explaining his new faith to his family. Originally from La Mancha, the region that inspired Miguel de Cervantes to write Don Quixote, Ropero was surrounded by uncles and cousins who were dedicated to the occult arts of spiritualism and divination, popular among the gypsies in central and southern Spain. In the midst of this dilemma, he came across El Espiritismo y los Fenómenos Metapsíquicos (Spiritism and Metaphysical Phenomena), which Vila had published in 1978.

“After reading it, I was able to use theological tools to debate with my relatives who were mediums and believed they had the power to communicate with the dead,” Ropero told CT. “That was my first contact with Clie.”

After publishing several of his own works on theology and philosophy, Ropero became Clie’s editorial director in 2001, only retiring earlier this year. In his two decades leading the publishing house, he initiated the creation of multiple biblical encyclopedias, including the Gran Diccionario Enciclopédico de la Biblia, Historia de la Filosofía y su Relación con la Teología, Biblia de Estudio del Mensaje Profético Escatológico, and the Diccionario Enciclopédico Bíblico Ilustrado.

During this time, Clie also began to publish more female Spanish speaking theologians, including Mexico’s Elsa Támez and Costa Rica’s Irene Foulkes, who grew up in America. They were included in the publishing house’s catalog, and the number of Latin American authors also increased, such as the Colombian Arturo Rojas, the Paraguayan Marcelo Wall, the American Juan Valdés, and the Guatemalan Rigoberto Gálvez.

Another of Clie’s great contributions to the theology of the Hispanic world has been the translation into Spanish of great academic works that at that time were only available in English or German. Of the 413 active books in their catalog, 35 percent are translations and include titles such as The Matthew Henry Study Bible, Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology, Keil and Delitzsch’s Commentary on the Old Testament, or Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics.

The next 100 years

Even though the number of evangelicals in the country has been slowly increasing due to immigration from Latin America, protestants make up just under two percent of Spain’s 47 million people. Clie is interested in reaching them all—as well as the country’s Catholics.

“My father’s idea was that we had to serve everyone,” said Eliseo Vila, who took over the publishing house after his father died. “That is why Clie never discriminated denominationally or theologically in terms of what it published.”

Alfonso Triviño, who has been Clie’s CEO since 2006, has further broadened the publishing house’s portfolio, publishing titles that feature potentially controversial takes on social justice or feminism.

Clie published a Spanish translation of American historian Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood, which challenged the idea that gender hierarchy is biblically mandated. It also published Exclusion and Embrace by Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, a deep dive into reconciliation and forgiveness.

“We have always sought to be a bridge between academia, the pastoral world, and society based on the values of our faith,” Triviño told CT. “Many call us conservative. But the truth is that we have always pursued balance by bringing to market books that only a progressive publisher would dare to publish.”

Paradoxically, piracy has been one of the biggest problems that this Christian publisher has had to deal with today. Triviño has been surprised to frequently find PDF versions of Clie’s (and other competitor Christian publishing houses like Editorial Vida or Verbo Divino) books circulating openly in WhatsApp and Telegram Bible study groups or uploaded on the Bible seminar portals of some churches.

“Piracy has slowed us down slightly in our goal of making our entire catalog available in digital format,” he said. “It’s a shame that this happens in the Christian world.”

Reaching new audiences, especially younger ones, is another of the publisher’s challenges in this new century. Besides expanding to audiobooks and e-books (when possible), Clie has also sought out younger writers, including Argentine singer-songwriter and YouTuber Lucas Magnin, who has authored 95 Tesis para la nueva generación (95 Theses for the New Generation) or Teología Pop (Pop Theology).

“To get through over a century, an institution needs the capacity to adapt to all circumstances. Hence, we have been, for example, the first Spanish Christian publisher to have a website, and later, the first on social media,” said Eliseo Vila. “The Lord has brought us this far. If it had not been for the will of God and his hand constantly urging us, we would not exist today.”

Hernán Restrepo is a Colombian journalist. Since 2021, he has been managing Christianity Today’s social media accounts in Spanish.

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Theology

Paul’s Prescription for a Polarized Church

Julien C. H. Smith

The apostle’s ethic of welcome challenges our personal, social, and political instincts.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

If you have recently witnessed an instance of intolerant contempt, the telltale symptom of our increasingly polarized society, you may find yourself wondering, “Why can’t we all just get along? If only we could learn to at least tolerate one another.” Toleration is an important civic virtue, but it may not be enough.

We have probably all prayed for toleration on our way to one of those awkward Thanksgiving family reunions where the political divides are so sharp all we can talk about is football (and even here we must be careful). But even if we escape the day without argument, we may be left with a hollow sense of sadness on our way home. Yes, we may have succeeded in tolerating our “enemies,” but our hearts yearn for something more: love.

When our enemies are distant, the question of loving them can be conveniently ignored. But when the enemy is across the table, in the same committee meeting, or in a group project, the countercultural wisdom and necessity of Jesus’ commands—love your enemy, who is your neighbor (Matt. 5:43–44)—becomes apparent.

For help in parsing out practical instruction of neighborly love, I turn to the apostle Paul in the closing chapters of his letter to the church in Rome. We often think of Romans as a densely argued theological treatise, but it is also—perhaps even primarily—a pastoral letter seeking to reconcile Jewish and Gentile Christians.

In Galatians, Paul insisted, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile … for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). Roughly a decade later, this claim was still being put to the test in the Roman church. It wasn’t so much that the essential truth was being challenged (Paul no longer had to argue against circumcision as a requirement) but that the truth of the gospel was being challenged by a myriad of small grievances that threatened to turn neighbors into enemies.

One such grievance arose from cultural differences over food shared at communal meals (Rom. 14:1–3). At stake seems to have been whether Jewish dietary laws should be observed at communal meals within the church. In the early years, before Claudius’ expulsion of Jews from Rome in AD 41, the largely Jewish Christian church would have seen these regulations as normative and even essential, but they grew irrelevant as the church became more Gentile.

Far more than preference or habit, food practices—like circumcision, Sabbath, festivals, and so on—marked the Jews as God’s covenantal people. Such practices outlined identity and boundaries, marking who was part of the community and who was not. In such a polarized situation, where lines between groups are drawn too sharply, Paul’s rhetorical strategy is to blur them by substituting the labels weak and strong for the words Jew and Gentile.

Initially, this decision seems liable to further antagonize the parties by giving one a pejorative label with respect to the other. Yet the genius of Paul’s strategy lies in its intentional ambiguity: It is rather difficult to ascertain who in the community is “weak” and who is “strong.” Even today, there is no scholarly consensus on the matter. In either case, Paul leaves room for individuals in both groups whose beliefs and practices don’t align with their larger group’s identity.

His essential strategy is to define an ethic of welcome: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (15:7 NRSV). Broadly applied to the church as a whole, the “strong” have a duty to welcome the “weak” (14:1)—to “bear with [bastazein] the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (15:1).

Paul is not merely calling for toleration, for enduring undesirable behavior for as long as one is able. Toleration can only ever be an interim strategy to keep peace until genuine reconciliation is achieved. Paul’s radical exhortation is to “bear with,” or support, the weak.

As Paul indicated earlier in the argument, this support entails significant behavioral change for the strong: “Therefore let us stop passing judgment (krinōmen) on one another. Instead, make up your mind (krinatē) not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister” (14:13, emphasis added. See also vv. 14–15).

This sentence makes a subtle pun on two different forms of the verb “to judge” (krinō), so as to say essentially, “Don’t judge one another, but judge how you can avoid tripping up another.” In other words, instead of judging others, we’re supposed to judge ourselves.

Although both sides in the conflict are urged to welcome one another, Paul goes on to exhort the strong to support the weak by accommodating their food preferences—he asks them to change their behavior even though it is warranted and correct, as he admits.

Paul’s larger goal is to inculcate a new kind of moral reasoning modeled after the self-giving love of Christ. Just as Christ gave up his life, the strong are to give up their food preferences for the sake of the weak. This is what it means, in this particular context, to “walk in love.”(2 John 1:6)

Behind this respect for conscience lies a further recognition that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Ultimate significance belongs to the kingdom of God manifested in his church. Preserving this greater good requires relinquishing penultimate goods—in this case, eating what one wishes to eat.

This argument challenges us to carefully reconsider several cherished values and entrenched habits in our society: first, our concept of freedom; second, our habit of painting our enemies with a broad brush; and third, our tendency to sacralize politics.

According to the seminal political philosopher John Stuart Mill, freedom in democratic society is conceived as personal autonomy. Unless I am causing physical harm to my neighbor or to her property, I ought to be free to pursue my own tastes and interests as I see fit.

Mill’s so-called harm principle informs our foundational notion of freedom and its limits in democratic society. It hardly needs to be added that freedom thus defined is widely perceived to be the highest good in our culture. To curtail one’s freedom in deference to the religious scruples of a neighbor would constitute for Mill—and I suspect many Americans today—an affront to the very notion of civic liberty.

Paul’s definition of freedom is radically different—we are to be free from the enslaving power of sin, and its end result is not personal autonomy but righteousness. The choice, as Paul sees it, is not between slavery and freedom but between two different kinds of slavery: “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (6:18).

When Paul later contrasts “eating and drinking” with “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17), he is making the point that freedom is not simply about getting our way but about living a new kind of life in which the Spirit frees us to love our neighbor.

By contrast, personal autonomy—limitless desire restricted only by harm against others—leads to polarization. When autonomy is seen as the highest good, conflicting desires create division. People form tribes to protect their interests, seeking power through majority rule. And in a system where (ideally at least) the majority wins, it is an obvious advantage to be on the “strong” side, not the “weak” one.

But Paul’s idea of freedom-as-righteousness through neighborly love challenges this logic. Freedom from sin’s control, entering God’s kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy, promotes unity over division. Paul’s vision is a communal one—Jew and Gentile worshiping God together (15:7–13)—which polarizing autonomy cannot sustain.

Second, we often mischaracterize our enemies, creating monolithic and inaccurate stereotypes: “If you believe X, then you must also believe Y.” Alan Jacobs characterizes such unfair oversimplification as “in-other-wordsing.” Rather than working to understand the nuance of our opponents’ views, we reduce our opponents’ views to unflattering sound bites like “In other words, my opponent thinks we should harm the vulnerable.”

By contrast, Paul’s vision of freedom calls us to view our enemies as ourselves. His strategy in Romans 14–15 blurs the lines between conflicting groups, countering our tendency to misrepresent our opponents and their motives. He exhorts both sides to act out of embodied devotion to Christ, whether they observe certain days or not, choose to eat or abstain (14:5–6).

This approach is not rhetorical but rooted in a fundamental value: We belong to the Lord in life and death (14:7–8). Paul likens believers to household servants, who should not judge each other since we all serve the same master (14:4). This shift in perspective encourages seeing enemies as fellow servants, which is a crucial step toward loving one’s neighbor as oneself.

Third, Paul’s ethic chastens our habit of sacralizing politics—of our prideful assumption that God thinks and judges as we do and that his will is aligned with our own agendas. When we sacralize our political agendas, we effectively domesticate God and invoke his authority in judging our neighbors.

Writer Anne Lamott warns against assuming God hates the same people we do, a mindset that fuels violence like the First Crusade’s slogan, Deus vult (“God wills it!”). This is the danger of identifying our penultimate goods with God’s ultimate good—and yet we so often defend them as such.

Paul emphasizes that God is above our divisions and that we all face God’s judgment equally: “Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (14:12). Our ultimate answerability before God cannot but chasten our impulse to weaponize him and to hold our enemies accountable to our own (imperfect) standards of judgment.

Julien C. H. Smith is professor of humanities and theology at Christ College, the honors college of Valparaiso University. His most recent book is Paul and the Good Life: Transformation and Citizenship in the Commonwealth of God.

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News

Donald Trump Takes the White House Again

Harvest Prude in Northern Virginia

In his late-night victory speech, the former president says God gave him a mission to “save our country.”

Donald Trump speaks on election night in West Palm Beach.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

After courting evangelicals throughout his campaign and claiming God spared him from an assassin’s bullet to be president again, Donald Trump has won reelection.

Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night, edging out the Democratic contender in key swing states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina as much of the country shifted to the right.

Trump took the stage with his family and campaign team in West Palm Beach, Florida, and gave a victory speech around 2:30 a.m.

“Many people have told me that God saved my life for a reason,” the former president said. “The reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness. And now we are going to fulfill that mission.”

Earlier, at a watch party in Arlington County, Virginia, dozens of Republicans cheered each time another state was called for Trump. Even after a close race, the Trump supporters felt the momentum swinging their way.

“People have experienced four years of Biden-Harris, and they’ve seen the economic negative that has occurred, and they’re going to be eager for a change,” said Harry Moedinger, the faith outreach director for the Arlington GOP.

An exit poll by The Washington Post indicated 81 percent of white evangelical voters once again backed Trump, though fewer voters identified as “evangelical”—22 percent this year compared with 28 percent in 2020.

With President Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic, out of the running, Trump also gained ground with Catholic voters. They backed the Republican candidate over Harris by a double-digit margin.

Many evangelicals, similar to Republican voters overall, ranked the economy and immigration as their primary issues in this election.

According to Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, Trump’s victory could indicate that “economics swamped other social and cultural factors,” such as abortion, which was a key mobilizer in the Democratic campaign.

With the crowd chanting, “USA! USA!” at his event Tuesday night, Trump called the campaign “the greatest political movement of all time,” while Vice President–elect JD Vance said they would herald the country’s “greatest economic comeback.”

“We are going to help our country heal,” Trump said. “It’s time to put our divisions behind us and unite.” Trump concluded his 25-minute remarks by saying, “God bless you, and God bless America.”

Though the businessman-turned-politician faced skepticism from some evangelicals in his first term, Trump went on to gain their loyalty by prioritizing religious freedom and the appointment of conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

A minority of conservative evangelicals continued to reject Trump’s candidacy due to concerns around his character, tone, and rejection of the 2020 election results.

Some “Never Trump” evangelicals shifted to third-party or write-in candidates, and some aligned with the Democratic candidate under Evangelicals for Harris.

On Tuesday night, the group posted on social media that it was grateful for its supporters. “And just to be clear, we won’t be going away,” the account added.

While Trump’s moderating stance on abortion disappointed committed pro-lifers, he promised religious voters they would have a seat at the table of a second Trump administration. He also appointed Ben Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist surgeon and 2016 presidential aspirant, to head the campaign’s faith outreach.

The campaign also had plenty of reinforcement from conservative religious groups. Evangelical supporters like Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, the American Family Association, My Faith Votes, and the National Faith Advisory Board mobilized voters in swing states. Lance Wallnau, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation who prophesied Trump’s election, has also held revival-laced political events.

While election turnout was lower among Black and Hispanic voters, Republicans saw their numbers improve among Hispanics. Harris’s margins with Hispanics in swing states were narrower than Biden’s, and Hispanic voters who were concerned about the economy favored Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. Hispanic Christians told CT earlier in 2024 that during the Trump years, Republicans did more to earn their support.

Trump won the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he’d survived an attempted assassination, spurring ardent supporters to see the narrow miss as divine intervention and to pray for his protection on the campaign trail. Vance said, “I truly believe God saved President Trump’s life that day.”

Trump returned to the shooting site a few weeks ago amid the enthusiastic welcome of thousands of supporters, including young, first-time voters, like a pair of Grove City College students in Trump T-shirts. (One shirt read, “The Founding Fathers were Felons Too.”)

“It’s too early to know the particulars, but it seems like Trump’s appeal to men, especially disaffected young men, may have been successful,” Smith said.

As both the 45th and future 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump will be only the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms since Democrat Grover Cleveland in the 1800s.

While there still are returns outstanding, Republicans won the Senate thanks to pickups in West Virginia, Ohio, and Nebraska. Democrats previously held a 51–49 majority, but Republican incumbents and challengers benefitted from a strong showing at the top of the ticket to reverse the majority. It’s unclear which party will win control of the House of Representatives, and it could take days to tabulate final results.

Moedinger in Arlington prayed for Trump to win, but he’s also prayed that God would change the former president’s heart, noting that Trump has said in the past he isn’t someone “who needs to ask God for forgiveness.”

“Whatever comes to pass, God works it for the good,” Moedinger said. “Preserving his life and having a plan for his second administration, I think that’s possible.”

- More from Harvest Prude

News

Florida’s Abortion Amendment Becomes the First to Fail Since Roe’s Reversal

Kate Shellnutt

On election night, pro-lifers cheered the news that a 6-week ban enacted under Gov. Ron DeSantis will get to stay, with further wins coming in South Dakota and Nebraska.

Rebecca Blackwell / AP

Pro-life evangelicals across the country celebrated the defeat of Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment on abortion on Tuesday night and thanked Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose 6-week ban will remain in effect.

Florida’s Amendment 4 is the first abortion-rights ballot measure to fail since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and sent the issue to the states. The proposal required a 60 percent majority to pass but fell short, with 57.4 percent approval, The Hill reported.

“That is an incredible victory for the pro-life movement and ends the abortion winning streak!” said Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

South Dakota and Nebraska also voted against state ballot measures that would have expanded access to abortion, while seven states passed amendments or propositions that protected abortion rights.

Florida’s Amendment 4, officially the “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” would have barred any laws that “prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

“The pastors and churches of Florida worked and gave money and spoke up and voted. And Amendment 4 went down,” wrote Jimmy Scroggins, pastor of Go Family Church in the Palm Beach area. “Well done to all the Jesus people in the Free State. And thanks @GovRonDeSantis.”

Florida is one of ten states with abortion on the ballot this year. Another half dozen states—California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont—had abortion amendments on the ballot over the past two years, and voters in each state went in favor of abortion access.

DeSantis broke the news that his state had voted down the abortion amendment, as well as another amendment that would have legalized recreational marijuana, in a post on X.

God bless @GovRonDeSantis. What an example of making the case for life based on truth and relentless persistence!

Strong message; strong messenger. https://t.co/YoCMYD2mc6
— Kristen Waggoner (@KWaggonerADF) November 6, 2024

Florida’s defeat of Amendment 4 is the first state post-Dobbs win.

Despite being outspent by pro-abort groups by 8:1, the courageous leadership of @GovRonDeSantis and the intense focus of thousands of pro-life Floridians have writtten a new playbook for how to fight and WIN!
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) November 6, 2024

Pro-lifers were excited to see an early victory in Florida, which reported results before ballot initiatives or races had been called in other states. Voters in Maryland, New York, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona went the other way, voting in favor of abortion protections, some of which overruled existing abortion bans.

“The ten 10 state abortion initiative results reflect a divided and an uneven sentiment regarding the sanctity of life in America. We celebrate pro-life wins in Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska,” said Focus on the Family president Jim Daly.

“Special thanks and congratulations to Governor Ron DeSantis who boldly, courageously, and successfully campaigned to defeat the Florida abortion initiative. He demonstrated strong and confident leadership in the face of angry and well-funded opposition. Governor DeSantis modeled the way to advocate for a principled position by leaning into the issue and not slinking away from it.”

Life wins in Florida. Governor DeSantis put his political muscle behind defeating this anti-life amendment and deserves our respect and gratitude for it.

Also have to throw an attaboy to my guy @deaninserra who did not shy away from speaking out about this issue. https://t.co/NkpahiPjwG
— Eric Teetsel (@EricTeetsel) November 6, 2024

Whatever else happens tonight, Amendment 4 losing in Florida is a tremendous source of encouragement for the pro-life movement nationally. It needed a victory and this provided it.
— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) November 6, 2024

Florida enacted a 15-week abortion ban after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling, and then DeSantis signed the 6-week abortion ban into law the following year. The 6-week ban, known as the Heartbeat Protection Act, went into effect in May 2024.

A pro-life Catholic, DeSantis rallied evangelical supporters nationwide during his run in the presidential primaries and fronted Florida’s abortion restrictions.

During the campaign, Trump had called DeSantis’ 6-week ban a “terrible mistake,” and the former president faced some backlash from evangelical voters who were disappointed as he and the GOP softened their messaging on abortion.

In the presidential race, Trump won Florida, his home state, for the third time in a row and went on to decisively win the election on Tuesday night.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

News

Conservative Anglicans Call for Archbishop to Repent Over Same-Sex Relationships Stance

Kate Shellnutt

As the issue continues to divide the Church of England, Justin Welby spoke on a popular podcast about how his views have “evolved.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

Leon Neal / Getty Images

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s recent remarks affirming sexual activity in same-sex relationships have disappointed conservative Anglicans and British evangelicals who want to see the Church of England retain a traditional sexual ethic.

Last week, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon) rebuked Welby for “promoting the sanctification of sin” in breach of Scripture and of church teaching. Gafcon primates asked for him to repent. Other conservatives have called for his resignation.

Welby was asked about his stance on same-sex relations on a popular political podcast in the UK last month and said that “all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship … whether it’s straight or gay.”

@restispolitics
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s views on same-sex relations
♬ original sound – The Rest Is Politics – The Rest Is Politics

Welby’s position as leader of the Anglican Communion puts him in a precarious position when it comes to LGBTQ issues. Many Anglicans around the world, including the Global South, oppose efforts for the church to affirm same-sex relationships, yet the Church of England is moving forward with blessings for same-sex couples.

Welby’s answer about same-sex sexual activity marks another point of division and deep concern.

Gafcon addressed the archbishop’s position in a statement issued on Reformation Day.

“In response to his public comments, we solemnly repeat our call for Archbishop Justin Welby to personally and publicly repent of this denial of his ordination and consecration vows, where he promised to, ‘teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it.’”

Evangelicals in the Church of England have also accused the archbishop of contradicting the church’s current position on sexual activity.

“This is a clear departure from CofE doctrine on marriage and sexual ethics, and from the Global Anglican Communion, and from the historic position of every other Christian denomination across the world, and the clear teaching of the Bible,” wrote Tim Dieppe, head of the UK ministry Christian Concern.

Lambeth Palace, the archbishop’s home in London, said that Welby’s thinking around LGBTQ inclusion has evolved through prayer and reflection but that his comments on the podcast reflected “a personal view.”

“His answer does not indicate a changing of teaching from the House of Bishops,” the palace said.

Peter Lynas, the head of the Evangelical Alliance UK, said that’s part of what makes Welby’s stance so frustrating. “In that moment, he redefines the Church of England’s sexual ethic. And yet, he does and he doesn’t, because he can’t,” Lynas said. “The doctrine isn’t ultimately changing.”

On October 20, Welby was asked about the issue of “gay sex” on one of the biggest podcasts in the country, The Rest is Politics, cohosted by a former Conservative Party politician and the spokesman for former prime minister Tony Blair.

Welby told them that the bishops were “by no means unanimous” and the “church is deeply split over this.”

The archbishop went on to say that he has come to believe that sex belongs in a “committed relationship” and that same-sex couples should be able to have their relationships, whether marriages or civil partnerships, blessed by their local churches. He said that such services of prayer and blessing are “a long way” from a church performing a same-sex marriage.

The position he describes—which the Church of England’s General Synod approved last year—has frustrated both sides. Proponents of same-sex marriage want to see full inclusion rather than just prayer services, and those defending traditional marriage believe the proposed blessings for same-sex couples go too far.

Welby has said that he will not perform same-sex blessings, as a way to mitigate the global body’s animosity over the issue. He acknowledged that the clashing views have already resulted in “an enormous breakdown of relationships.”

Gafcon represents 85 percent of the Anglican Communion, and last year, the body officially rejected Welby and the Church of England for failing to guard the faith from leaders who embrace practices that are “contrary to Scripture.”

Evangelicals worry about their future in the church if it continues to move toward LGBTQ affirmation, despite repeated caveats that they still belong.

Some reflections on that interview that Justin Welby did with Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart and @TheRestIsPots pic.twitter.com/R5h7O3cVQJ
— ＰｅｔｅｒＬｙｎａｓ (@peterlynas)
Some reflections on that interview that Justin Welby did with Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart and @TheRestIsPots pic.twitter.com/R5h7O3cVQJ
— ＰｅｔｅｒＬｙｎａｓ (@peterlynas) October 25, 2024

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>October 25, 2024

“Reconciliation requires honesty, and it requires honor,” said Lynas. “I don’t think [Welby] is being honest at all, and I don’t think there’s any honor in the way he’s talking, particularly around the conservatives, and said, ‘Oh, there will still be a place for them.’”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

Ideas

Go Slow and Repair Things

Tish Harrison Warren

Contributor

We’re facing huge problems in our culture—problems an election alone can’t solve. But by God’s grace, we can do the small, daily work of repair.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

As someone who has written hundreds of thousands of words about faith and culture over the past decade, who has strained to understand this contradictory and baffling movement called evangelicalism, who has studied and dialogued about the rise of Christian nationalism in America, I’ve still found myself, again and again, at a total loss for words as the election drew near.

In my mind, the lyrics of an old Over the Rhine song play nearly constantly, like a heavy sigh: “I just don’t have much left to say. / They’ve taken their toll, these latter days.”

We are facing huge problems as a culture. Stories of violence and war blare from the headlines. Human life—of an embryo, a refugee, a Jewish or Palestinian child, or an immigrant—is devalued and left unprotected. It feels like we’re all exhausted by the past decade and the noise, chaos, polarization, and vitriol it has brought.

We are also facing huge problems as Christians. The evangelical movement has become unrecognizable to me, as many evangelicals hold seemingly inexhaustible loyalty to the MAGA movement. My theology hasn’t changed, but I am more confused by, alienated from, and concerned about American evangelicalism than I have ever been.

More broadly, I’ve never been as discouraged as I am now by the state of the American church, which often reflects the same polarization we see in American culture. And as I look around and speak to other writers, pastors, and leaders, it seems no one quite knows what to do. No one knows how to fix a culture and church that are so broken.

We are not in control of what happens in the election. We are not in command of international events. We cannot wave a wand and solve the problems facing the church. Many days it feels I can barely get dinner on the table, much less understand and help heal our hurting, complex, and multipolar world. But as I’ve sat with my own grief and anxiety about this stark reality, I’ve found hope and inspiration in the strangest of places: turtle rescuers.

I have slowly been reading Sy Montgomery’s Of Time and Turtles, which explores the lives of those seeking to rescue and rehabilitate what she calls “the most imperiled major group of animals on earth.” The book centers on Montgomery’s work at the Turtle Rescue League in Massachusetts, but it also touches on larger themes of patience and repair.

Many species of turtles, she explains, are at extreme risk of extinction. The dangers they face are nearly endless: dog or raccoon attacks, climate change and light pollution, cars and trucks that flatten slow-moving wildlife, development of nesting areas, and a black market where certain species go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The problems are so big it feels almost pointless to try to help these creatures. Any response we can muster seems so paltry. Yet Montgomery finds a merry band of people, networked together across the world, who go to breathtaking extremes to save and rehabilitate turtles, one by one, shell by shell.

As odd as this connection may seem, this book has renewed my commitment to the local church. The problems these turtle rescuers face are huge—the threat of extinction! Global black markets! Climate change! Industrialization! Their cause seems almost entirely lost. Yet with fortitude and defiance, they take up their small works of repair and rescue every single day, with joy and a sense of purpose.

Each story of a turtle released into the wild reminded me: Often, in the face of huge problems, all we have are small solutions, but that is where we start. That is how all creation can be restored, day by day, life by life.

As we face huge problems as a culture and a church, it’s tempting to look to big things for big solutions: national elections, mass movements, revolution, a spectacular revival, some intensely viral online message. I want something obvious and epic to bring a speedy resolution. I am impatient for change.

But Montgomery has reminded me of the virtue and necessity of change wrought by smallness, patience, and time. “Time,” she writes, “is what turtles have.” In his review of the book for The Washington Post, Jacob Brogan wrote that Montgomery’s rescue work demonstrates how “solid, slow things can endure.”

There’s a saying that began as a mantra in Silicon Valley but increasingly applies to our culture more broadly: Move fast and break things. This past year, as we’ve planted a small church and grappled with our bewilderment at how to be faithful in this cultural moment, my husband and I have adopted a mantra of our own: Go slow and repair things.

I don’t know how to solve the big problems of the world. I wish I did, but I don’t. And I don’t know how to repair a church in America that has become politically idolatrous and does not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit.

But I know we can go slow and repair things in the ways that we can, in the places where we dwell, in the institutions we inhabit, with the people around us. We can serve the needy and the disadvantaged in our cities and towns. We can seek faithfulness in our small, local congregations. We can help form churches that are humble, accountable, and a radical alternative to the world, to both the political right and the political left. We can think and read deeply, learn from the saints who’ve gone before us, and teach and embody a more robustly biblical, orthodox political theology. In our work, friendships, homes, and neighborhoods, we can take up the challenge of building something solid, slow, and enduring—something that can witness to Jesus and his kingdom, a kingdom not captive to American politics in any way.

This essay ends a series by the Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy project, and in some sense, nearly everything about that project is small. It consists of people coming together in person to sit around a table, to pray, to debate ideas, to cry, to laugh, to eat. It involves forming friendships and shifting opinions. It is cultivating curiosity about how to better equip those in our pews, in our schools, and under our roofs to live faithfully and confidently in a world that we do not control.

This project assumes that a healthy community, especially one seeking to faithfully follow Jesus, does not resort to violence, coercion, or belittling of those who are different from us. And, therefore, it assumes that the enormous task of reknitting a healthy society and a healthy church is often slow, small, organic work.

This essay also comes on Election Day, a day when our country makes a big decision. I voted. And if you choose to vote, I hope you will vote for whomever you believe will best uphold democracy and seek justice for those who are vulnerable. I believe Christians can seek the common good and promote justice and mercy through American politics.

But even in this pivotal presidential election, voting cannot be the climax or sum of Christians’ political mission. It is likely not even the most important thing you will do today. The first social task of the church, as theologian Stanley Hauerwas often reminds us, is to be the church—an alternative community formed by Jesus that embodies a different sort of kingdom.

Allegiance to that kingdom is our truest political and social responsibility. Taking up the radical calls of the Sermon on the Mount to meekness, mourning, forgiveness, and love for our enemies will feel small and ineffective in the face of a convulsive world. But this, Jesus shows us, is the way of repair and renewal.

On the evening of January 6, 2021, just a few hours after rioters—many wielding Bibles, crosses, and other Christian symbols—stormed the Capitol, threatening violence and seeking to overturn a fair election, my editor at Christianity Today asked me to write out my thoughts. At the end of my essay, I said:

We have to take up the slow work of repair, of re-forming our churches around the deep, unchanging truths of the light of Christ. We must reconstruct communities where we can know and speak truth, serve the needy and the poor, love our neighbors, learn to be poor in spirit, rejoice in suffering, and witness to the light of Christ amid darkness.

This work will be frustratingly small and local, under the radar, and away from the headlines. It will feel paltry and unimportant in the face of the raging nations and widespread ecclesial and national decay. It will be long, risky, and uncertain.

Right now, I don’t have much left to say. But I can still say that.

The work we need to do is still the slow—and long, risky, and uncertain—work of repair. And we cannot accomplish this work merely through a vote. Rescue and redemption will not be won through any political party.

The daily work of becoming a new kind of people, a people marked by the mercy, grace, love, and humility of Jesus, is the work that must start again today and tomorrow and the day after that. It must go on day by day, shell by shell, life by life, whatever the results of the election. We must, by God’s grace, go slow and repair things.

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest, the author of several books including Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night, and the artist-in-residence at Immanuel Anglican Church in Austin, Texas.

Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.

Ideas

In a Polarized World, but Not of It

Matt Beech and Bruce Wydick

On Election Day and beyond, conservative and liberal Christians can better understand each other and be ministers of reconciliation.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

The political polarization of American society, impossible to ignore on Election Day, cuts across state lines, through families, and even into local congregations. Polarized America has polarized the American church.

The average American Christian can’t do much to reduce that polarization on the national scale. Yet Christians should be able to reduce polarization-induced tensions within the body of Christ. Understanding the causes and consequences of this division can help us move toward cures.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is currently best known for his work on childhood screen use and social media. But in his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, Haidt discusses six elements of what he calls the human “moral matrix,” the set of moral foundations that act as guides to our moral decisions.

Backing this concept with careful research, Haidt lists six such moral foundations, or values:

Care for the vulnerable in society
Equality for everyone
Proportionality in reward and punishment
Loyalty to one’s family, country, or other groups
Authority and respect for it in our leadership and institutions
Sanctity as a sense of respect for the sacred

The root problem of American polarization, Haidt contends, is that political and social liberals tend to base their moral judgments on the first two of these—care and equality—while conservatives, like most people elsewhere in the world, tend to hit on all six.

This is all on average, of course. But on the national scale, these deep moral differences make it nearly impossible for liberals and conservatives to understand each other.

Arguments that hinge on sanctity or authority make little sense to liberals, for whom these are not high values. Meanwhile, views grounded solely in care and equality—to the exclusion of proportionality, loyalty, authority, and sanctity—will seem wildly imbalanced to conservatives, to the point that they begin to discount care and equality in elevating the other four values.

Inside the church, the consequences of this often-unnoticed moral divide are serious and numerous. Chief among them is radical self-selection. Self-selecting behavior begins outside the church, where we sort ourselves into different careers, neighborhoods, and social groups based on our politics. But it flows into the church too, and we self-select into fellowship with people whose social and political views are close to our own.

Some may argue that this self-selection is nothing more than Christian discernment. It’s true that any meaningful movement to counter polarization and move toward Christian unity must inculcate a deeper, purer Christian faith. But by sorting ourselves into groups with people whose politics are just like ours, we close off opportunities for relationship, dialogue, understanding, and healing.

Christians are not to live in fear (Luke 12:4–5, 1 John 4:18). But when the church becomes polarized like the world around us, we become fearful. We monitor who’s on our side and who isn’t. We fear admitting others from the wrong side into our congregations, small groups, and other institutions. We may even engage in ugly speech and actions toward those on the other side—or excuse sin on our side because we fear moral isolation and ostracism.

So how can we choose faith over fear? What do we actually do with knowledge of Haidt’s moral matrix? And how can we be ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18) after this Election Day?

We call American Christians to make two commitments: (1) to embrace a full Christian orthodoxy that includes addressing the blind spots in our own moral matrices and (2) to love and understand our political enemies.

Each of the six moral foundations has strong biblical underpinnings found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, in the teachings of Jesus himself, and in the rest of the New Testament church. And that means we as Christians can and should value all six of them, not only those that resonate with us or synchronize with our life experience.

With respect to equality, for example, Genesis 1:26–28 says all people are created in God’s image. Proverbs 22:2 states that the rich and poor are equal in the eyes of God. And Paul states clearly in Galatians 3:28 that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Likewise, the mandate of care for others is ubiquitous in Scripture. Both testaments demand care for society’s most needy and marginalized, including the hungry, wounded, sick, and oppressed (Isa. 58:10, Ps. 147:3, Matt. 10:8), as well as the elderly (Lev. 19:32, James 1:27), the foreigner (Lev. 19:34, Ex. 22:21), the orphan (Ex. 22:22, John 14:18), and the poor (Zech. 7:10, Ps. 82:3, Luke 14:13).

Politically conservative Christians must understand: The equality of human beings and care for the marginalized cannot be discounted within Christian orthodoxy.

But the work on the other side is equally difficult. Politically liberal Christians must understand that proportionality, loyalty, authority, and sanctity cannot be ignored. Social scientists tell us these virtues are upheld nearly universally by humankind—it’s Western liberals who are the oddity here. More importantly, these virtues deeply matter to God and are also ubiquitous in Scripture.

Liberals have made it their business to question authority, but any productive human endeavor is virtually impossible without some type of authority structure, as the Bible repeatedly recognizes (Mark 6:7, Rom. 13:1, 1 Pet. 2:13). Scripture often speaks to loyalty, too (e.g., Ruth 1:16–17, 1 Sam. 18, Prov. 17:17). Jesus even taught us that true love looks like extreme loyalty: laying down our lives for our friends (John 15:13).

Liberals tend to emphasize God’s grace, but Scripture always holds grace in tension with proportionality, the congruence of reward with merit (Rom. 2:9–10), which is the foundation for all notions of justice. Indeed, Matthew 25:31–46, a passage frequently cited by politically liberal Christians, strongly links the judgment of God to proportionality, as does the rest of the chapter.

Likewise, in conflicts between equality and sanctity, politically liberal Christians will gravitate toward the former. But Christian faith frequently demands deference to the latter (Ex. 20:11, 2 Sam. 6:3–8, John 17:17), sometimes even when we don’t fully understand the rationale. As part of reconciliation, politically liberal Christians must reassess their reliance on secular social movements as a basis for understanding goodness, beauty, and truth.

Grasping the full scriptural witness will help conservative and liberal Christians alike seek understanding across divides.

That requires listening to those on the other side, taking in their stories and seeing how that background has shaped their values. For some politically conservative Christians, for example, this may mean recognizing the existence of genuine injustice—past and present—in America. Across the political spectrum, it will mean remembering that our own moral foundations would likely be different if we had different upbringings and communities.

The earliest Christians were an extremely politically mixed group. They ranged from Simon the Zealot, who was bent on expelling the Romans from Israel, to a community of conservative fisherman, to tax-collector-for-the-Romans Matthew. Yet they came together and “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). And they changed the world.

By choosing the comfort of radical self-selection in a polarized time, we not only forgo the kind of fellowship embodied by that first community of Christians. We also miss the opportunity to worship and pray with believers across our own political divides. And if prayer is the Christian’s most powerful instrument for healing and reconciliation (James 5:16, Eph. 6:18), that is a grave loss.

On this Election Day and beyond, we can pursue reconciliation while holding true to our political convictions and even seeking to persuade our siblings in Christ to share them. We can be people of grace, truth, and prayer no matter how polarized our world becomes.

Matt Beech is reader in politics and director of the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull (UK) and senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley.

Bruce Wydick is professor of economics at the University of San Francisco and research affiliate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action.

- More from Matt Beech and Bruce Wydick

Ideas

Gen Z Is Turning Online for Spiritual Guidance

Jenna Mindel

My generation is spiritually curious. We’re just looking in the wrong places.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

As faith increasingly declines in American culture, Gen Z is left with fewer resources or people to ask about identity, belonging, and purpose. So it is no surprise that we are turning to the internet.

I’m a Gen Zer, and I’m familiar with this inclination: I’d rather check my Target app to locate an item rather than bother an employee. Turning to the internet for answers may read as antisocial on the surface, but it is a reflection of both America’s highly autonomous culture and Gen Z’s copious internet usage.

And of course, this translates to church. With dwindling numbers of Gen Zers attending church, it’s unsurprising that young adults are flocking to virtual spaces rather than physical ones for answers to their big questions.

I believe Gen Z’s religious “nones” are more curious about faith than the data leads us to believe. It’s easy to measure religious affiliation, but it’s harder to measure spiritual curiosity and openness. Online, we can see what questions younger generations are asking and who is stepping up to answer them.

One good example is Girlscamp, a podcast for post-Mormons to process their faith transition out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The host, Hayley Rawle, interviews post-Mormons, shares anonymous stories from her listeners, and shares her insights about different aspects of the Mormon faith.

On Girlscamp, Rawle encourages listeners to construct a new worldview outside of high-demand religion. She offers listeners a secular philosophy of relative truth as a solution for the rigid boundaries of highly demanding religions. I discovered Rawle’s podcast roughly a year ago. While her content is focused on Mormonism, she also openly critiques the Christian church and Western Christianity. Her podcast is just one example of how Gen Z engages with spirituality without the obligations of embodied community.

In my experience, many Christians my age are taught that religion is largely absent from Gen Z lives. There seems to be a mindset that people used to be religious but are no longer. But this is not the case.

On paper, Gen Z is becoming increasingly nonreligious because many identify as “nothing in particular” in religious affiliation surveys. With half of Gen Z identifying as nonreligious, it seems like a fair assumption that Gen Zers would not be interested in spirituality. However, our spiritual seeking just takes on a different name than previous generations.

Ryan Burge, associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, points out that the rates of “atheist/agnostic” identifiers have increased several percentages between each generation until the transition from millennials to Gen Z, when the category “nothing in particular” has continued to grow over time.

Talbot School of Theology philosophy professor Timothy Pickavance sees the growth in the “nothing in particular” category as an indicator of Gen Z’s open posture toward spirituality rather than a cynical atheistic one.

“This data points to Gen Z’s sensitivity to spiritual things and their longing for a deep spiritual life,” he said in an interview.

Gen Z’s participation in religion can be encapsulated by the term faith unbundled, coined by Springtide Research Institute, which describes the way people construct faith by combining elements such as beliefs, identity, practices, and community from a variety of religious and nonreligious sources, rather than receiving these things from a single system.

Podcasters and influencers—such as Rawle, who functions in some ways as a digital pastoral figure or spiritual director for her followers—are now one of those nonreligious sources. Guests and listeners are taught a secular “gospel,” where the good news is that they can tinker with their religious beliefs, keeping the doctrines they agree with and shirking restrictions or teachings they do not.

Nonreligious people can tune in weekly to the podcast, just as religious folks may tune in to Sunday service messages and learn something new about how to operationalize their spirituality. On an episode of Girlscamp, one guest spoke about keeping Sunday night dinners and having family members go around and share one thing they are grateful for in place of prayer. Instead of sharing a story from Scripture, this guest teaches his or her children a secular lesson about love or acceptance.

Christians and others who are religiously affiliated may find this ambiguous religious engagement inauthentic. But this openness of twentysomethings toward the immaterial world is fertile ground for meaningful conversations and engagement.

While Gen Z is abandoning traditional religious institutions, it is not abandoning spirituality. In the 1990s, a shift began from using the term religious to using the term spiritual to describe an individual’s moral and spiritual framework. Now, it has changed to “meaning making.”

God and community used to be at the center of religious life, but for Gen Z, those are no longer prerequisites for intentional, spiritual living. As Pickavance noted, “There’s still a longing and a clear intention toward spirituality that is not being brought into some specific tradition.”

Eliza Smith DeBevoise, a chaplain at Converse University, often counsels students asking big life questions. She thinks Gen Z is incredibly spiritual. “Whether Gen Z is religious or not, they are doing hard, hard work in spiritual formation,” she told me, “that, to be honest with you, I have not seen in older generations before who were more devoutly religious.”

DeBevoise affirms that students struggle with identifying with one religion, even if they have strong personal beliefs. She said even these devout students worry they will come off as closed-minded.

Like every generation that has come before, Gen Z has eternity set in their hearts. But this longing for something beyond oneself cannot be satiated on an individual spiritual journey. We need the church.

As Henri Nouwen writes in his book Spiritual Formation, “Spiritual formation is not an exercise of private devotion but one of corporate spirituality. We do have personal experiences of God, but together we are formed as the people of God.” The religious impulse humans feel is best fulfilled in the context of a faith community, and it is an impulse that the church can be poised to answer.

Digital guides like Rawle can guide individuals on their spiritual journeys without ever knowing them. This makes the stakes low for people who are interested in navigating religious deconstruction. While meaningful exploration of our spirituality can occur online, we were not made to answer these questions on our own and in a vacuum.

Young Christians, too, can be tempted to engage solely online with their faith. But podcasts, influencers, or Christian books should be catalysts for in-person community, not replacements.

While church communities are imperfect, the embodied community that comes with gathering week after week, month after month, and year after year is an essential aspect of spiritual life. When spirituality is practiced independently, it is incomplete.

Teenagers are spending on average about 9 hours a day on screens. While being a part of primarily online communities may be the norm for Gen Z, that should not be where the church should focus our energy. There are plenty of good online Christian resources to counter the secular or deconstructing ones, but what young people need more than just information is community—and that starts with embodied relationships.

I can speak to how authentic friendship can be a catalyst for faith because that was my story growing up. Because of the adults who invested in me, I had a safe place to navigate my questions about God. I knew no matter what that I would be loved and accepted.

Now, as Young Life leaders for high school girls, my fellow leaders and I are learning to pursue relationships inside and outside the church. We are tasked with creating alternative spaces outside of church where young women can encounter Jesus, such as joining them at school for lunchtime, taking them out to coffee, and attending their sports games. From there, we host Bible studies and have the opportunity to spiritually engage them and invite them into a faith community.

Beyond just criticizing the hours young people spend online, we need to offer them a compelling alternative: a loving, embodied, imperfect community.

As Mary Demuth wrote for CT in 2011:

We live in a mobile culture, which sometimes isolates us. We who create personas on the web, who perfect our hiding, may find attaching ourselves to a local church frightening. And yet God calls us there, warts and all. He calls us to covenant together with other Jesus disciples, to messy our lives with people we might not hang out with normally. In that beautiful conflagration of community, we learn the art of loving each other and showing the world outside our circle just who Jesus is.

For those who have avoided community for various reasons, yes, there is risk in being a part of an in-person faith community. You can’t be anonymous; you can’t log off when you feel triggered. But you also have the opportunity to be known and loved—something that an online community can never offer.

Jenna Mindel is a NextGen Accelerator Fellow with Christianity Today. She recently graduated from Biola University with a degree in journalism.

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