%1

Our spiritual lives would grow if we could step beyond the false notion that God arranges our circumstances.

Jerry Falwell wanted to prepare America for the end of the world. Ted Cruz’s evangelical backers want to take America over.

Martin Modéus will lead the national church during a time of profound change.

In 2005, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht published a paper naming a new emotion: solastalgia. The word describes the pain we feel when we see environmental change in the places we call home. In justifying his decision to make up a new word, Albrecht pointed out that English has very few words that connect emotional and environmental states. Albrecht found plenty of examples of solastalgia: among Australian farmers during lengthy droughts, residents of Louisiana following Katrina, and survivors of the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004.

In the evangelicalism I grew up in, people talked about heaven a lot. We longed for the pearly gates. And why not? Heaven meant being with God forever. We shared the gospel in hopes that others would get saved and get in. “Got heaven?” we asked. We promised a dreamy world beyond this world’s nightmares. We read scripture, sang songs, and tried to be patient for that one day at the end of our days. We couldn’t wait for heaven.