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Barack Obama may have chosen Joe Biden, and John McCain may have turned to Sarah Palin, but in the end the most sought-after running mate in the 2008 campaign never appeared on a single ballot.

God, it seems, couldn’t be successfully wooed by either party.

The unprecedented and extraordinary prominence of religion in the 2008 election was easily the year’s top religion story. Both major parties battled hard for religious voters, and both were forced to distance themselves from outspoken clergy whose provocative rhetoric threatened to become a political liability.

The hope I am holding onto for Obama’s leadership is the depth and candor of his Philadelphia speech on race and the fact that his most fundamental racial identity seems to be his being biracial. He represents a new generation of children of interracial families who have experienced the rich gifts and real challenges of finding intimacy across the divide, who refuse to choose between the cultures of their two parents. They want the best of both, see the flaws of self-sufficiency and are willing to lose some friends along the way for the sake of something better than the old categories of who “my people” are. —Chris Rice

It’s the day after the election, and I am clicking around on one of the many interactive maps of the nation available on the Internet. I’ve found one that shows, in reds and blues, how every single county in the nation voted. You click on a state and the data for each county appear, down to the very last vote.

Although Barack Obama has won the election decisively, my home state, North Carolina, is still too close to call. I move my cursor around the eastern part of the state, looking for my hometown.

In a narrow outcome, California voters overturned same-sex marriage rights in the nation’s most populous state, as similar bans on gay marriage were approved in Arizona and Florida. The ballot verdicts in three large and growing states will likely put the brakes—at least temporarily—on gay groups’ march toward civil marriage rights.

Whatever else you might think about the outcome of the election, Barack Obama energized young adults in a way that was reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s campaign.

As I watched the election returns and the wonderfully diverse crowd that gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to celebrate Obama’s victory, I remembered my own first exposure to the civil rights movement and how the connection between Christian faith and the quest for racial justice caught my imagination and solidified my sense of call to ministry.

The election of Barack Obama offers hope that religion will play a more constructive role in the public arena rather than the largely divisive role it has played in recent years. One sign of hope is that Obama was able to narrow the Democrats’ so-called God gap. Whereas George Bush enjoyed a 29-point advantage over John Kerry among voters who attend church more than once a week, Obama reduced the Republican advantage to 12 points, according to data released by Faith in Public Life.

The role of religion in the presidential campaign was summed up by Associated Press religion writer Eric Gorski in an article headlined “Religion Used to Divide, Mock in ’08.” Lamenting the low level of discussion of religion, Gorski ran through a YouTubed array of controversies, from the inflammatory preachings of Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee to Mike Huckabee’s thoughts on whether Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers to a witch-hunting Kenyan pastor’s prayer over Sarah Palin.

Mainline churches, mostly out of the D.C. loop during the eight years of the Bush administration, were quick to embrace the winner of the long race to the White House.

“Only rarely in our history has a president-elect faced immediate challenges of such fierce magnitude,” said an open letter to Barack Obama from National Council of Churches leaders who pledged their “unstinting support.”