2016 presidential election
How Christian Trump voters chose fear over compassion
Fear is a terrific uniter, but it's a strange way to carve out a Christian life.
How Trump won the 2016 fear sweepstakes
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson understood evangelical anxieties and played to them. But the strategy backfired.
by John Fea
Is Trump a deviation from American values or an expression of them?
E. J. Dionne, Norman Ornstein, and Thomas Mann see this presidency as a distortion of the country's character. But what if it's the opposite?
Five reasons Hillary Clinton’s new book is worth reading—and three reasons it’s worth critiquing
What Happened matters. Here’s why.
True Christianity in the midst of American shock
A brief black and Anabaptist account
Why I worry about the pastors of politically divided churches
In our current political climate, the preacher struggles to say something both unifying and prophetic.
The virtues we need in a post-truth world
Telling the truth requires more than right thinking. It requires being a particular sort of person.
What (some) Trump supporters were thinking—and feeling
A Berkeley academic empathizes with antigovernment Louisianans.
Holy work in a divided nation
Loving our enemies means arguing with each other about what matters most.
To know and not to know
Understanding an election requires stories. Last night, our stories proved inadequate.
The story that swallows the news
Political journalism may need to do more, but it also needs to do less.
A cruel line that served no purpose except cruelty itself
Trump's point was about Russia and cybersecurity. Why did his (theoretical) hacker need to be fat?
"America First" puts global neighbors last
It's not new for politicians to talk a lot about American jobs. But their nationalistic fervor is troubling.
Politics into poetry
Need a book to replenish your political and spiritual imagination this election season? I recommend Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems.
Trump alone
American civil religion is dead, to paraphrase Nietzsche. We have killed it.
At the RNC, a benediction that wasn't
So what’s been the most shocking thing to come out of GOP-presidential-nomination-land in the last couple days?
Populist fever: Anger at the democratic deficit
Populism is a predictable recurring feature of any society that is unwilling or unable to be as democratic as it claims to be.
Misguided surveillance
Both Cruz and Trump say the U.S. needs special surveillance of Muslims. This is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw from terrorism in Europe.
Jesus trumps tribalism
Trump does well among those who identify as evangelical—but lack deep formation in faith. Formation fixes people’s eyes on higher things.