2016 presidential election

The demons of the white evangelical past

Fear is a terrific uniter, but it's a strange way to carve out a Christian life.

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson understood evangelical anxieties and played to them. But the strategy backfired.

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?

What Happened matters. Here’s why.

A brief black and Anabaptist account

In our current political climate, the preacher struggles to say something both unifying and prophetic.

Telling the truth requires more than right thinking. It requires being a particular sort of person.

A Berkeley academic empathizes with antigovernment Louisianans.

Loving our enemies means arguing with each other about what matters most.

Understanding an election requires stories. Last night, our stories proved inadequate.

Political journalism may need to do more, but it also needs to do less.

Trump's point was about Russia and cybersecurity. Why did his (theoretical) hacker need to be fat?

It's not new for politicians to talk a lot about American jobs. But their nationalistic fervor is troubling.

Need a book to replenish your political and spiritual imagination this election season? I recommend Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems.

American civil religion is dead, to paraphrase Nietzsche. We have killed it.

So what’s been the most shocking thing to come out of GOP-presidential-nomination-land in the last couple days?

Populism is a predictable recurring feature of any society that is unwilling or unable to be as democratic as it claims to be.

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.

Trump does well among those who identify as evangelical—but lack deep formation in faith. Formation fixes people’s eyes on higher things.