(RNS) — Seventy percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the way things are going in the United States at this time,” according to a Gallup poll. This presumably includes a large number of Christians — a group of people who claim to have reasons to hope no matter how dismal the moment. Christian hope, of course, is not tethered to the success of America. But the darkness of our present age raises questions about how followers of Jesus can nurture the light of hope.

Writer Zach Hoag wrestles with these very questions in his new book, “The Light Is Winning: Why Religion Just Might Bring Us Back to Life.” The darkness is real, he says, but it is also receding. He explains why America is in a time of “great revealing” and how Christians can stave off nihilism and nurture hope.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CONTINUE READING. . .

Jonathan Merritt, who writes On Faith & Culture for RNS, invited Peter Wehner — senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times — to write this guest column on his blog.

(RNS) — We’re at a hinge moment in the public witness of American Christianity.

The evangelical Christian movement in America is being compromised and discredited by the way prominent leaders have associated themselves with, first, the Donald J. Trump campaign and now, the Trump presidency. If this is allowed to define evangelical attitudes toward political power, the public witness of Christianity will be undermined in durable ways.

CONTINUE READING. . .

Tomorrow at noon, Donald J. Trump will become the 45th President of the United States of America. Depending on your political persuasion, reading that line either stirs your sense of hope or saps it.

Enter Michael Wear, a former Obama White House staffer who directed the outgoing president’s faith outreach during his 2012 reelection campaign. Wear has just written a sobering book, “Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America.” It contains a messages for all Americans, whether you believe that the incoming president poses a threat to America’s greatness or will truly make us “great again.”

Here, Wear and I discuss whether Obama’s “hope and change” promised failed, how pro-Trump Americans should check their sense of hope, and why anti-Trumpers have reasons to keep hope alive in this new age. He explains why all Americans have reason to hope no matter who they voted for last November.

CONTINUE READING. . .

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan stood before an audience of evangelicals and declared that the Soviet government was the “focus of evil in the modern world.” The arena erupted in unsurprising applause, standing ovations, and echoes of the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.” While many conservatives supported a hardline stance on the Soviet Union, the religious right gave Reagan the moral backing he needed to reignite the Cold War.

Pastors preached sermons about the godless, evil Russians. The 3.5 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals—who invited Reagan to address its annual gathering, where he gave that 1983 speech—became “a leading anti-communist voice.” And the Moral Majority purchased full-page advertisements in newspapers using charged religious language to frame the issues. “Recognizing the inherently moral nature of debates about nuclear weapons, the Moral Majority gave Reagan’s policies the weight of their moral authority,” as historian Jeremy Hatfield has observed.

More than three decades later, another Republican prepares to move into the White House, but unlike Reagan, President-elect Donald Trump seems to be cozying up to the former Soviet Union. If this weren’t enough to contradict Reagan’s legacy, some of his most loyal Cold War allies—conservative Christians—have advocated building bridges with Russia. As the new administration makes its plans, their collective moral voice may be just what Trump needs to thaw relations with the big bear across the sea.

CONTINUE READING…

This is a guest post by Richard Mouw.

Some of my friends have been talking about giving up the “evangelical” labelbecause of what it has come to be associated with in this year’s political campaign. I’m not ready to make that move. I spent a good part of the 1960s trying hard not to be an evangelical, but without success.

When I marched for civil rights during my graduate school years, I helped to organize “ban the bomb” marches and protested the Vietnam War. I was clearly out of step with much of the evangelicalism of the day.

When one key evangelical leader suggested that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was being used by the Communists to undercut American values, I came close to resigning from the movement. But when I realized I had nowhere else to go theologically and spiritually, I simply hung on and hoped for better days.

CONTINUE READING…

Members disillusioned by support for the president-elect can more easily effect change if they stay put.

In October 2000, Jimmy Carter publicly bid farewell to the Southern Baptist Convention. He said he had grown “increasingly uncomfortable” with the Baptist body’s beliefs for years, but then the denomination adopted a “rigid” and conservative statement of faith that asked wives to submit to their husbands and prohibited women from serving as pastors. That was a bridge too far for the former president.

“My grandfather, my father, and I have always been Southern Baptists, and for 21 years, since the first political division took place in the Southern Baptist Convention, I have maintained that relationship,” Carter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I feel I can no longer in good conscience do that.”

The announcement was shocking—it’s not every day that a former U.S. president publicly forsakes a Christian denomination. But there was one glaring problem with his decision: The Southern Baptist Convention is a voluntary collection of congregations, not congregants. Because Carter continued attending and teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia—which was a member of the Protestant group—he was still very much a Southern Baptist, despite his gesture.

I remember this announcement well because my father, James Merritt, was president of the denomination at the time.

CONTINUE READING…

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. believes that Donald Trump “will become America’s greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.”

But that wasn’t enough to persuade him to accept Trump’s offer to become secretary of education, he said.

Falwell told RNS the decision was due to concerns for the health of his family and the university he leads.

Falwell’s relationship with Trump began when the real estate mogul spoke at Liberty in January as part of his effort to capture the votes of conservative Christians.

Days later, Falwell became one of the first and most vocal evangelicals to endorse Trump, sticking by him throughout the campaign despite much controversy and pushback from Liberty students and alumni. Falwell even campaigned for the Republican candidate, whipping up evangelicals who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers.

CONTINUE READING…

Best-selling author and HGTV star Jen Hatmaker says her first political memory is of being at a church service and finding a voters guide in her bulletin. The pamphlet did not strike her as odd or off-putting, despite encouraging congregants to “vote straight-ticket Republican.” As she says: “The way it had always been explained to me was the Republican platform is Christian. The end.”

But much has changed since Hatmaker’s childhood in blue-collar suburban Wichita, Kan. The evangelical movement in which she was raised has become more politically diverse and less willing to overtly align with one party. And Hatmaker has changed, too. She has voiced strong political opinions on her Facebook page and took time during her multi-city Belong Tour to criticize Donald Trump.

Here, we discuss her political views, and Hatmaker does not hold back.

CONTINUE READING…

An elderly man with a silver comb-over and a blazer two sizes too large stares at the ground with sunken eyes as if he’s unaware there’s a television camera broadcasting his words. He’s rambling about Donald Trump, dismissing the 2005 video in which the candidate brags about sexual assault as nothing more than “macho” talk. Glancing up at the camera, he goes on to say that Trump is “like the phoenix” who the world presumed dead, but “came back strong” to win the second presidential debate despite all initial scientific polls indicating the exact opposite.

This man is Christianity’s crazy uncle, Pat Robertson. He was once an influential televangelist and powerful leader of the religious right, but in recent years, he’s used his 700 Club television show to spout extreme rhetoric, peddle bizarre prophecies, and fling insensitive comments. He has tarnished his reputation, diminished his influence, and embarrassed his fellow Christians. He needs to step down.

CONTINUE READING…

As Christians watch 2016 burn, we must remember that fire both consumes and refines. That is, it forces us to return to what makes us who we are. For Christians, this means asking once again how faith and theology should inform our political thinking and engagement. Few thinkers are better qualified to explore this territory than Miroslav Volf.

He is Henry B. Wright professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture and co-author of “Public Faith in Action: How to Think Carefully, Engage Wisely and Vote with Integrity.” And as a Croatian, Volf is arguably less influenced by partisan conditioning than many American Christians. Here we discuss how he believes Christians should engage the public square, and Volf makes his best case for the candidate he believes is more “Christian.”

CONTINUE READING…