That seemed to be the case on Cyprus when the apostles Paul and Barnabas ran into a magician whose Greek name was Elymas. The Roman governor, Sergius Paulus, was apparently impressed by his gifts of legerdemain. Elymas did what he could to oppose Paul and Barnabas, who proclaimed a richer and more powerful way in the good news of Christ Jesus. At some point Paul got fed up with him and declared, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that Elymas would be struck blind for a time. That so impressed Sergius Paulus that the Book of Acts reports he became a believer that very day.

The question is, a believer in what? Did he simply become a believer in a better magician with better magic? We are not told, but we are left wondering whether he might instead have become open to hearing the word of God from Paul and Barnabas—a word that relied not on miracles but on the grace of God and the power of love that leads to salvation in this world and the next, while making clear the way of peace and well-being for all people in all places, if only we would follow it.

That may be why Jesus was so dismissive of people who followed him around hoping for another miracle of healing or another handout of bread and fish. It may explain why he urged those who had been healed to say nothing to anyone. Paul, in his letters, describes no healing through his laying on of hands. In the Book of Acts, it is reported that he healed a few people in various places, including Ephesus and Malta, but those healings were not central to his ministry and apparently had little effect on the spread of the good news and the establishment of worshiping communities.

The Christian faith is rooted in the word of God as recorded in Holy Scripture and most especially in the Word made flesh, Jesus, the crucified and risen one, who revealed to the world that in him the one true God, through whom all things were made and have their existence, has been made known in human form once for all. It is not in the amazing, astounding, or mesmerizing that the faith itself exists, but in the fullness of God’s truth revealed in Christ. It is not a truth about God but a truth of God, given for the well-being of all humanity and creation itself.

That may be why, in the post-apostolic ages, the good news of God in Christ Jesus has been made known primarily through words and deeds of love and not through the miraculous.

Miracles have occurred from time to time, of course. When they have become widely known, they have often attracted a flow of the curious, hoping for another miracle in that place or from those waters. But no place and no waters are the source of miracles. They can only proclaim a time and place where God’s kiss of healing love has been made known in an extraordinary way.

Those who come hoping the place or the waters will perform their magic may leave in great disappointment. Others may come seeking not the place or the waters but only to be more fully open to the power of God engaged with them in healing—a healing that may never answer the prayer they uttered but may answer the deepest needs and desires of their souls.

That hasn’t stopped religion-peddling magicians from following in the footsteps of Elymas. Some of them have developed huge followings and enriched themselves beyond all measure. Eventually, however, they are revealed to be the frauds they are and have always been.

People are still attracted to and entertained by the amazing and the astounding, and by whatever appears to offer what is desired at little cost—just a donation here and there, in return for which one will receive magic prayer beads, a blessed shawl, or, my favorite, the glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus.

In the meantime, the faithful in congregations large and small will continue on the path of discipleship, following Jesus on the way of the cross. During their own cycles of crucifixion and resurrection, which every life experiences, they will, in their own small and ordinary ways, bring something of the kingdom of God and the healing power of Christ’s love into the lives of others.

Some will be remembered as saints, but most will not be remembered at all.

They are the ones who point the way to true religion in the way of Jesus Christ.

I think the success of more progressive candidates in primary elections indicates a significant political shift. There is broad disappointment, bordering on disgust, with the way the Congress of the United States has lumbered and bumbled along, tied up in its own rules and rhetoric, subservient to vast amounts of dark money, and largely unable to accomplish much for the good of the people. Too many current members of the House and Senate seem unable to recognize that they have their heads buried deep in the dense fog of the Washington bubble.

Some progressive primary candidates have identified themselves as affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which has confused some and alarmed others. The Democratic Socialists of America website presents an agenda that is remarkably noncontroversial except for one point: it calls for eliminating capitalism in favor of public ownership of industry. That raises several questions.

Because the Democratic Socialists of America is not a political party and does not have a platform agreed upon by convention or through some similar process, it is unclear who is responsible for drafting the agenda on the website. It is equally unclear whether some, many, or all of those who have chosen to affiliate with DSA agree with it.

What the DSA means by capitalism or private business is also unclear. Frankly, I don’t think the author has the faintest idea what capitalism is and suspect that he or she has confused it with something that can be described in clear, objective, and limited terms. I won’t go into why capitalism is not an “ism” of any kind because I have written about it recently, and you are free to go back and reread that short piece.

Assume that the author of the DSA agenda has in mind major corporations and not small businesses that are, for the most part, owner-operated. The idea of public ownership as a means of relieving the nation of the rapacious behavior of major corporations is a romantic ideal floating on thin air.

The only way for ownership to be public in any meaningful sense of the word is for government to become the owner—the trustee of the people’s interest. That turns into state capitalism, something similar to what exists in China and Vietnam. It is also, in part, what Trump appears to want as he seeks to invest federal money in major corporations over which the government would then exercise influence or control. That would be one giant step away from democracy and from anything remotely similar to what Europeans call democratic socialism.

European democratic socialism is enthusiastic about private enterprise while equally enthusiastic about assuring generous treatment of labor, protecting consumers, and limiting the ability of industries to pollute or corrupt the natural and political environment. It is not perfect, and it sometimes fails, but it is a model the United States should seriously consider in principle and then adapt to the unique needs of our culture.

I would be surprised if experienced lawmakers and candidates affiliated with the DSA would buy into the illusion of abolishing capitalism or attempting to put major corporations under federal ownership. It is a really silly thing even to contemplate.

It is equally ridiculous for conservatives and others suspicious of the DSA to run around like Chicken Little claiming the sky is falling. It isn’t.

Whether DSA-affiliated candidates can win general elections is another question altogether. I suppose it depends on whether they can resonate with voters by speaking with them rather than to them. The issues they emphasize will have to be the issues of greatest concern to the people of their states and districts rather than an abstract ideological agenda.

I also suspect that those who are elected will very quickly collide with a reality that shatters whatever romantic notions they may have about legislating a workers’ paradise or anything like it. Frankly, I hope enough of them do get elected to give Congress some of the energy it needs to do its business for the good of the people with an acceptable degree of alacrity and responsibility. They may also help eclipse the waning power of the Freedom Caucus, which has spent years attempting to replace democracy with authoritarianism and to stop almost anything that smells like negotiation in good faith between competing interests.

That would not produce a workers’ paradise. A Congress capable of doing its job would be quite enough.

For all its weaknesses, the American Republic still places great value on the individual right to invest in business opportunities, large or small. At the same time, Americans are increasingly aware that appropriate regulation of private industry is essential to the health and welfare of the nation. They are increasingly aware that powerful corporations and the ultra-wealthy too easily evade paying the taxes that provide the public investment necessary for the nation and its people to prosper in the twenty-first century.

They have also seen how quickly too much federal power concentrated in one office can corrupt the entire democratic system. Neither unrestrained corporate power nor concentrated government power serves a free people particularly well.

Americans have had enough of a Congress that cannot govern, corporations that wield too much political power, and a federal government increasingly vulnerable to the ambitions of a single person. They are ready for something different.

They may simply be ready for a new beginning.

Note:

I have been reminded by a friend that I overlooked a number of other rather goofy proposals in the DSA agenda. For instance, the author of the agenda proposes to replace our Republican democracy with parliamentary democracy. As a practical matter it would require a constitutional convention, something that's been frequently proposed and highly unlikely to ever take place. Or over such a convention once convened might come up with something entirely different and it could not be made the law of the land without ratification from 50 states each having a degree of its own sovereignty. I stand by my recommendation that people not get all been out of shape over silly proposals

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about the legacy of DOGE, the Trump-Musk con job pulled off over the past year and officially ending on July 1.

It was one of the most amazing stings ever pulled off and deserves a place in history. What makes it so fascinating is how unlike a traditional sting it was. Stings are ordinarily planned and executed in secret so that the mark never discovers what has happened until it is far too late. The DOGE sting was pulled off in public, making it increasingly obvious that it was a sting and the American public was the mark.

It was a brazen thing to do.

The cover story was that DOGE would be a carefully planned and executed effort to make the federal government more efficient and cost-effective: reducing staff, eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, and ultimately reducing the federal deficit. It was a story bought lock, stock, and barrel by a good part of the American public, even though the real purpose was being revealed almost from the beginning.

The effect was to dismantle federal programs and agencies that protected the public’s health and welfare and provided assistance to those least served and in greatest need. At the same time, regulations and enforcement were weakened in ways that benefited industry and the ultra-wealthy, including reduced IRS enforcement and diminished enforcement of environmental and workplace-safety rules.

Gigantic cost-saving flags were waved about, but too often the flags were the only reality. Whatever savings were achieved have to be measured against the disruption, waste, lost expertise, and costs DOGE itself created. Far from solving the federal deficit, the deficit continued to grow.

The DOGE sting became its own master class in waste, fraud, and abuse—perpetrated against the people in the name of protecting them from it.

Did they get away with it?

Indeed they did. Although DOGE officially ended in July, the administration has continued much of its work with remarkable impunity, willing to test or ignore judicial restraints and confident in the compliance of a congressional majority and a Supreme Court that has shown remarkably little interest in restraining the exercise of executive power.

What can be said except: Well done.

Never has such a bold sting been pulled off so openly, with the mark watching the whole thing unfold in broad daylight.

Put it down among the great robberies and plunders of history. The difference is that this time the thieves told the mark what they were doing—and the mark applauded.

I have a half dozen or so acquaintances of nearly twenty-five years who have been ardent supporters of Donald Trump, if not especially active in the MAGA movement. They have not been shy about challenging some of the things I have written, claiming that I have failed to recognize how important Trump has been in restoring the country to a better course and addressing its most threatening problems.

Immigration and the southern border have usually led the list. Close behind, however, has been a strong sense that at long last there was a president who understood people like them, spoke their language, and could be trusted to say things the way they really were.

I think we have understood each other well enough to recognize that their challenge to me represented something larger: their challenge to what they considered an elite ruling class and the media they believed it controlled. They were simply the more vocal—and perhaps more courageous—representatives of a great many others who were unwilling to speak publicly but who shared among themselves much the same views and suspicions.

Something has changed in their more recent comments.

They are no longer defending Trump as though he were a leader bringing his followers into a promised land where the unwanted and unneeded features of the old order had finally been swept away. Instead, they are increasingly poking fun at Trump’s critics and at the avalanche of failures and abuses those critics dare to publicize.

There is the ubiquitous and tired accusation that anyone persistently critical of Trump suffers from “Trump derangement syndrome.” An alternative is the charge that one is allowing Trump to “live rent-free” in one’s mind. Then there is the forced snickering over the supposed entertainment value of people becoming exercised over the renaming of familiar places by executive fiat. Opposition to the SAVE Act is similarly dismissed as little more than pearl-clutching hysteria over nothing.

There is more, of course, but it all seems to point in an interesting direction.

It has something of the juvenile character of teenagers relying on sarcasm and feigned indifference when they suspect they may have attached themselves to the losing side of something genuinely important. Sarcasm becomes a last line of defense when the argument itself has become more difficult to sustain. As the familiar saying attributed to Oscar Wilde has it, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

I don’t know whether these half dozen old acquaintances are emblematic of something more widespread in the self-proclaimed conservative world. I suspect they may be. In fact, I hope they are.

But here is something else.

They are not bad people.

I have known them for nearly twenty-five years. They work hard. Each contributes in his or her own way to the community. In the ordinary things of ordinary life, their word can be relied upon. They care genuinely about the people they know and about the well-being of those around them.

They see the microcosm of the world in which they live as under attack by vaguely understood forces that they believe exercise too much control over the nation. Among those forces are the highly educated, whose books, articles, media presence, and, above all, positions as educators give them an influence that is regarded with suspicion. Some of the ultrawealthy are included among these imagined malevolent forces, while others, oddly enough, are admired as renegades and rebels refusing to participate in whatever “the establishment” is understood to be.

Will my acquaintances change their minds? Can they be convinced? Probably not, and I don’t think there is much point in trying.

They may be occupying their last redoubt while the world around them moves in a different direction. If the time comes when they choose political silence, they will still be the hardworking and diligent people they have always been. They will find ways to adapt to a new economy and a changing society and make comfortable lives within them. But they will remain vigilant, always suspicious that somewhere out there are forces intending to control their lives and determined to resist those forces to the fullest extent they can.

And in that respect, perhaps they are not so very different from others who are equally vigilant and equally suspicious of forces they believe would deny them justice, full access to everything the American promise has to offer, and the right to be as fully American as anyone else, regardless of culture, ethnicity, or religion.

That may be the more important thing to remember.

Even in this difficult time of bitter and conflicting differences, there remains a thread linking us together. We disagree profoundly about who threatens our freedom, who possesses too much power, and who is being denied a rightful place in American life. But beneath those disagreements lies a remarkably similar insistence: No one else gets to decide that I do not fully belong here.

Whether the thread connecting those competing convictions is strong enough to hold, or whether it will finally give way and leave us broken into a hundred pieces, remains to be seen.

It has been tested many times before.

It has held.

I think it will again.

Christian belief in the supernatural poses a problem for skeptics who are aware of the physical reality of the universe and deeply suspicious of anything said to be real but not part of that physical reality. For many skeptics, the supernatural is a little too “woo-woo,” belonging mostly to the realm of New Age spirituality and magical thinking.

Christians understand the supernatural quite differently. It is the greater reality over which and through which the natural, physical world exists. That greater reality is God, through whom all things, seen and unseen, have their being and continue to exist.

What is supernatural is of God, and God is not a human construct. God can be known to humanity only through God’s own self-revelation, the record of which has been preserved by human beings through whom God has made himself known to us in Holy Scripture. It is the record of a progressive revelation that begins with God known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Here I think it is important to make three points of clarification.

First, the supernatural realm of God is not separate from the physical reality we experience in the world around us. It envelops the world in which we live and is everywhere present.

Second, it is not something that can be searched for and discovered on our own, nor can it be manipulated to serve our purposes. It can only be encountered through the willing reception of what God reveals through human experience on the one hand and through the study of what God has made known to us as truth on the other.

Third, human beings have long invented gods of their own design and made in their own image. Some have been made into religions, while others exist only in the imaginations of individuals. None of them are supernatural simply because none of them are real.

Speaking through the prophet Isaiah in chapters 43 through 46, God declares repeatedly that there is no other God. He alone is God.

There have never been a people anywhere who did not have some sense that something greater than themselves was present and that the boundary between the physical world and something experienced as a spiritual world was permeable. I believe it is the supernatural reality of God, through whom all things exist and who is always present, that they experienced and knew to be true, even without the self-revelation made known by God through those whose words are preserved in Holy Scripture. It means we must be cautious, because God can reveal what God chooses to whom God chooses.

Those experiences are therefore not to be dismissed. They may have something to teach us, but they can only supplement, not replace, the intentional self-revelation of God recorded for us in Scripture and ultimately made known in Jesus Christ.

With that in mind, God’s own being, which we describe as the Word of God, was made flesh in Jesus Christ. In him resided the fullness of divinity and the fullness of humanity—not as a prophet, sage, or manifestation, but as the reality of the Word of God made flesh.

Jesus is the physically present reality connecting the supernatural with the natural, so that we can see and understand God’s way of engagement with humanity and all creation. At the very least, he is the authentic and reliable guide to the way of life into which we are called, so that our natural lives may become, to the extent humanly possible, consistent with the supernatural way of God. It is the way of love that desires nothing but the good of humanity, engaging with us to show us what is good and right and loving, but never coercing obedience.

God does not have to be propitiated. God does not require human beings to prove themselves worthy of God’s attention. We are creatures whose very existence is in the hands of a God who loves us, knows each of us by name, and offers us the way of living into the fullness of who we are able to be in this world. God has also opened the way beyond life in this world into the greater reality of God’s presence.

Here is the astounding truth: God is free to engage in what we call physical reality as God chooses. Sometimes we experience that engagement through natural phenomena, where it remains largely invisible to us. Sometimes we experience it visibly in such powerful ways that we call them miracles.

They are not magic. God cannot be manipulated by prayer or ritual to do as we ask. We do not know why God chooses to act here and not there, nor can we predict what God may do. That leaves us in the uncomfortable position of enduring pain, trials, and tragedies while wondering whether God cares or even notices.

Yet, as the apostle Paul and the many authentic martyrs of the church have confessed, living into the way of God, following Christ, and knowing ourselves embraced by God’s love can be more important than any trial or tribulation we may experience.

I am sure that rings hollow for those who, in despair, wonder whether God cares or even whether God is there at all. God is, and God does care. God will not turn away even from our angry despair.

Human life is unpredictable, partly because human beings are unpredictable and partly because nature itself is unpredictable. But the supernatural God who has declared that we—and creation itself—have a future beyond this physical reality, if we are willing to receive it, is the one sure, certain, and irrevocable truth underlying all physical reality.

You get the idea.

And most of us know very well that the American new year begins in September, with the start of school and football. Labor Day might as well be called American New Year’s Day.

It is a fresh start: a new grade level in school, hopes for a successful football season, and often a renewed energy at work. Families gear up for schedules of activities and events plotted on calendars and spreadsheets and stuck to refrigerators. Even churches celebrate “kickoff Sundays,” which, I’m sorry to say, sometimes suggests that they had put everything but worship on standby during the summer months.

We live in Williamsburg, Virginia, home of William & Mary. Like other college towns, the excitement of the American new year is magnified by the arrival of the freshman class a few days before the rest of the students return. Streets and sidewalks swarm with the excited energy of newly admitted college students wandering from place to place, more or less oblivious to traffic. The marching band can be heard practicing in the distance. SUVs and U-Hauls line the streets. Parents carry boxes, lamps, bedding, and all the other necessities of a new life into residence halls.

It is joyful chaos.

Given the state of the world and the anything-but-joyous chaos of the current administration, these few days celebrating the new, the possible, and the hopeful are positively salubrious. We very much need them. All these September beginnings—kindergarten, a freshman dormitory, a football season, a church program year—have something in common: nobody knows how they will turn out. They begin in hope rather than certainty. It is the American new year, when, at least for a few weeks, all good things seem possible.

Sometime during the first Trump administration, I wrote an article arguing that we Americans were going to have to learn how to live and prosper as one country among others. No longer would we be number one in everything. Many nations would be number one in something, but none—including us—would possess the economic and political dominance necessary to direct the course of free democratic societies around the world.

It was not well received.

Many readers felt it was an admission that the United States was in decline and losing its status as leader of the free world, and that was an unpatriotic step too far. I understood the reaction, but the objective reality was already changing. Trump’s words and behavior, especially on the global stage, did not inspire respect or reflect the dignity of the presidency. His erratic domestic initiatives did not produce the booming economy he promised, and his muddled management of the COVID pandemic contributed to an extraordinary number of deaths that might otherwise have been prevented. The world could no longer automatically look to the United States as the model other nations should follow.

The brief reprieve of the Biden administration put the nation’s economy back on track but did not produce the critical mass of public support needed for that direction to continue. The result was Trump’s return to the White House, this time with less chaos and more deliberate intent to dismantle the liberal consensus underlying our republican democracy and replace it with an authoritarian government still pretending to be democratic.

What has prevented Trump’s second term from succeeding, at least so far, has been in considerable measure his own increasingly bizarre behavior as he has drifted farther into a reality of his own creation. Political leaders throughout the world have learned that he is unpredictable and that longstanding American commitments can no longer simply be taken for granted. At home, his administration has lurched from one initiative to another, claiming victories while finding someone else to blame for failures.

Meanwhile, unfunded tax cuts accruing mainly to the very wealthy, together with unfunded wars, have caused the national debt to explode. Inflation is higher than at the end of the Biden administration. Promised growth in manufacturing jobs never materialized; manufacturing employment has instead declined. Ethnic cleansing disguised as immigration enforcement has created shortages of labor essential to agriculture and construction. And the rule of law has been strained to its limits.

The damage has been done, and not all of it can be undone. It will take years for the nation to recover its standing in the world, and I doubt it will ever again be the singular leader of the free world. Other nations will lead the world in one thing or another. None is likely to possess the economic and military might to claim leadership in all things everywhere.

The people of the United States will have to learn to be proud, prosperous, and peaceful as one nation among others, without the pretense of an exceptionalism that makes us superior to everyone else.

It is a lesson people in other nations, once dominant powers in their parts of the world, have already had to learn. They are not thereby diminished. Their histories, cultures, achievements, and contributions to the common good continue to be respected, and the world continues to benefit from what they have to offer.

That is the future in which Americans must be prepared to live. It can be a future rich in pride and empty of hubris.

It will require the hard work of proving to the world that our racially and ethnically diverse people can live together in unity as Americans. Perhaps that is one place where we really can become a leader of the free world: showing other nations how people of different races, religions, cultures, and national origins can become one people without surrendering their differences.

It will also require us to rebuild our national infrastructure and prepare it for a future driven by advances in technology only now being developed. We must restore excellence to public education at every level, lift people out of poverty and into lives of productive contribution, and create a healthcare system in which everyone can receive the best available care without fear of financial ruin.

Those investments will require changes in the tax code—simplifying it, making it significantly more progressive, and limiting the ease with which a very few people can accumulate such massive concentrations of wealth that they distort the economy and undermine democratic values.

None of this will be easy. It remains to be seen whether the American public is up to the task.

It will require perseverance in the face of determined opposition and a greater proportion of the public becoming informed citizens committed to doing their civic duty. It will also require leadership from one of the rarest species on earth: politicians committed in equal measure to the good of their constituents and the good of the nation.

They must be willing to establish rules for themselves that prevent them from taking advantage of their positions in ways unavailable to the general public. Such politicians can be found—but only by an electorate willing to find them, elect them, and hold them accountable.

Can we do it?

I think we can, and we certainly must. We will stumble along the way. We will make mistakes. We will continue occasionally to elect a charlatan. But we can do better, and by doing better we can continue to improve until the worst of the old ways are left behind.

Perhaps that will be our new American exceptionalism—not that we are more powerful than everyone else, but that we learned how to become better without having to be the best.

A prayer sometimes heard in Episcopal churches asks God to keep us steadfast in the true faith. What is the true faith? The question might be asked another way: What is authentic Christianity?

Throughout the ages there have been church leaders and religious movements claiming that they alone represent the true faith. That is not quite the same thing as the Church declaring something a heresy. Heresy is a significant departure from what can fit within the broad circle established by the great councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. Within that circle, following Christ in the way of the cross can be expressed authentically in many different ways.

That has not stopped some Christians from declaring that the circle is very small and excludes everyone who cannot express faith within their particular constraints.

The Reformation of the 16th century encouraged more than a few church leaders to assert that their way was the true way and that those who followed other ways were heretics. It took centuries before much of the Christian world began to reconcile these different traditions to one another. What genuinely feeds the souls of Christians in one denomination may be quite unlike what feeds the souls of Christians in another. Each may nevertheless recognize the other as a genuine expression of the true faith, even though it is not its own expression.

That growing reconciliation was challenged in the early 20th century by the emergence of fundamentalism, which declared that certain fundamentals were essential to the true faith. These included the historical and literal inerrancy of Holy Scripture, substitutionary atonement, and several other doctrines that called into question the authenticity of Catholic Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism and the high-church Anglican tradition. In its strictest forms, if one had not been saved according to its standards, one was not saved at all.

Fundamentalism still exists and is expressed in much of what has come to be called conservative evangelicalism, although many conservative evangelicals are now less confident that Christianity can be confined within such narrow boundaries. In other words, they may be willing to consider that perhaps we can share in the one true faith even when our ways of expressing and experiencing it differ.

Oddly enough, there seems to be a similar fundamentalist movement emerging within the Roman Catholic Church, in direct opposition to the direction Popes Francis and Leo have set before the Roman Catholic communion.

I have recently been receiving multiple videos from clergy and laypeople proclaiming that the only authentic Roman Catholicism is essentially the Catholicism of the late 19th century and Vatican I. Their assertion is that much of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church is no longer authentically Catholic and that they represent the true Catholic way.

Moreover, some assert that unless clergy are ordained within what they regard as the authentic Catholic tradition, whatever sacraments they offer are invalid and God pays no attention to them. That applies not only to Roman Catholic priests they regard as insufficiently orthodox but to clergy of other denominations, and most especially to Anglicans, whom they consider fake priests claiming an apostolic succession they do not actually possess.

It is a curious form of fundamentalism. It tightens the Christian circle to such a small diameter that even some 20th-century Protestant fundamentalists begin to look almost liberal.

What it seems to me they have forgotten is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the way of the cross he prepared for us to walk. They have made an idol of rites, rituals, doctrines, and ecclesiastical norms. I have little doubt that some offer prayers of self-satisfying gratitude that God has allowed them to discover and proclaim the truth for the sake of the very few who will be saved. They are thankful to be among them rather than among the millions who claim to be Christians but whom they regard as outside the true Church. They may not say all of that aloud, but it is implicit in much of what they say.

So are they heretics?

There is an answer to that question, but it is not mine to give. Within the Roman Catholic Church, that judgment belongs ultimately to Pope Leo and the teaching authority of that Church.

As an Episcopal priest in the Anglican tradition and therefore, as I understand it, part of the Body of Christ, I believe these traditionalists are terribly misled, just as the fundamentalists of the early 20th century were misled. Both attempt to close a circle God has drawn very large, with boundaries far more permeable than they would like.

God is still speaking. Truth is still being revealed. And the true religion is finally about following Jesus in the way of the cross.

I find that way most clearly articulated and experienced through the Episcopal Church. But I have very close friends who experience the fullness of following Jesus in the way of the cross as Roman Catholics, Seventh-day Adventists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and even members of the Assemblies of God.

For me, the sacramental life of the Episcopal Church is central to the faith. Christ is truly present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in the waters of Holy Baptism, in the laying on of hands, in anointing, in reconciliation, and in the other sacramental rites of the Church. These things are real and efficacious to me—more real and efficacious than almost anything else in the world.

I am grateful as well for the apostolic tradition of our Church, in which the laying on of hands in ordination reaches backward through generations of bishops toward the apostles themselves. All of that is profoundly important to me.

But it need not be equally important to Christians in other denominations.

We can each be steadfast in the true faith and receive its nourishment in different ways. Of course you would expect me to invite everyone to become an Episcopalian, and I do.

What else would you expect an Episcopal priest to do?

Facebook videos have recently featured Hannah Arendt giving a talk on how authoritarian powers are able to reduce some part of a population to the status of nonhuman, deserving only of exclusion or even extermination, while much of the population acquiesces or enthusiastically surrenders its own independence to unquestioning obedience.

Given Facebook algorithms, I imagine I am one of relatively few people receiving these videos. Maybe it is because I have mentioned Arendt in several articles and have learned much from her writing.

Arendt died in 1975 at age 69, but not before she had dissected the European history of scapegoating, in which groups of people, most notably Jews, were periodically condemned as the cause of natural or human-made disasters. More to the point, she explored how authoritarian leaders such as Hitler could subordinate an entire nation to their will.

Professor Timothy Snyder is a contemporary scholar of many of the same dynamics and has written extensively about how authoritarian leaders use them to subordinate populations and demonize scapegoats.

There isn’t much new about the process. It uses a propaganda campaign designed to overwhelm competing sources of information and systematically reduce the targeted scapegoats to something less than fully human by asserting that they embody the most feared evils afflicting the nation.

At the same time, the propaganda machine turns toward the general population, inspiring it to accept what are said to be the highest values of a chosen people. The leader presents himself as the only one who can bring the nation into a new age of greatness while delivering it from the debasing presence of outsiders who have supposedly contaminated the land with their vile practices and beliefs.

It is difficult for me to look at the Trump administration without recognizing elements of that playbook.

The chosen people are implicitly white Americans of European descent, especially those who can go back several generations before stumbling upon their immigrant ancestors. Some nonwhite Americans are granted auxiliary status to the degree that they appear to be fully assimilated into the dominant culture, including some Asians and Hispanics.

What about the Black population? There are approximately 43 million Black Americans, and they have proved themselves to be a formidable political and social force in asserting their own rights and the rights of others. The administration appears to be conflicted. On the one hand, Trump claims he has done more for Black Americans than anyone since Lincoln—perhaps even more than Lincoln. On the other hand, his administration and its political allies have supported efforts that weaken voting-rights protections and use redistricting to dilute Black voting power. It appears to me that they would prefer the Black population to be politically pacified—to understand its place and stay there without causing too much trouble.

The people portrayed as contaminating the nation include those categorized as illegal immigrants, regardless of who they are, how long they have lived here, or what they have contributed to American society. More particularly, the administration and its allies have singled out groups such as Haitians and Somalis—people who are readily identifiable, politically vulnerable, and too few in number to constitute a powerful opposition by themselves.

The MAGA movement was intended to be the core of something that would eventually engulf a majority of the American population.

But the playbook does not appear to be working as expected. A significant portion of the American public, including people holding high office and respected positions throughout society, has risen to the defense of designated scapegoats. A significant portion of the population has also challenged attempts by the administration to misdirect public anger and point fingers at other groups as responsible for what is wrong with the nation. The MAGA movement, however devoted and motivated its adherents may be, has been unable to command the allegiance of a majority of Americans.

The result has been a political, moral, and social struggle in which the carefully crafted and disciplined efforts of the administration have repeatedly encountered the resistance of a remarkably disorganized and uncooperative people.

It has not helped the administration that it is led by a man whose words and behavior do not inspire confidence in much of the population. They may inspire fear, confusion, anger, and even ridicule, but not confidence.

Nevertheless, the struggle continues and will continue at least until the end of Trump’s term—and perhaps well into the future.

I do not know what the future will hold. But Americans, despite all our differences and our many prejudices, seem simply not to be a people compliant enough to be subordinated as a whole. Any American future will have to accommodate the complicated multiplicity of our people and the stubborn way in which we manage to pull together without necessarily pulling in the same direction.

That may be one of the great frustrations of anyone who wants to impose a single vision upon us. It may also be one of the great strengths of American democracy.

My friend Rick asks a lot of questions I suspect other people would like to ask but are afraid might make them look stupid, so they keep quiet. That’s too bad, because they are questions worth asking even when the answers are, at best, inadequate.

One of his recent questions was deceptively simple: When did denominations come into being?

If you are a serious student of Christian history, you may want to skip what follows. You will probably be dissatisfied with a relatively short answer to a question normally addressed in five-volume sets.

The short answer is that denominations as we understand them today did not arise until the Reformation. If you want a benchmark date, call it 1500 CE.

That does not mean the Church was an undifferentiated unity before then. There never was such a time.

From the beginning there were differences in the way the Gospel was interpreted and the Christian life understood. Some of those differences developed around the great centers of early Christian thought, particularly Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. They sometimes produced fierce theological arguments.

One of the greatest was the controversy over how to understand the relationship between God the Son and God the Father. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE declared that the Son was “of one being”—of the same substance—with the Father. The Council of Constantinople in 381 affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit. What we now recognize as the Church’s Trinitarian understanding of God was thereby given its classical form, although much of it had been customary Christian belief for a long time.

Meanwhile, the Western, Latin-speaking Church and the Eastern, Greek-speaking Church were gradually diverging. They developed different ways of worshiping, different theological emphases, and different understandings of the relationship between Church and political authority. The differences eventually produced the great division between Eastern and Western Christianity.

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire accelerated another development. Its last emperor was deposed in 476 CE. In the political disorder that followed, the Bishop of Rome—the pope—became one of the few authorities capable of providing any continuity across much of Western Europe, and he did so largely through the structure of the Church.

But Western Christianity was hardly uniform.

Various kings and princes, bishops and archbishops, developed their own ways of doing things. While acknowledging the authority of Rome with one hand, they adjusted Christian practice to local culture with the other. There were French, Spanish, English, Welsh, Irish, and various German ways of doing church. They were recognizably part of the same Western Church, but they were not identical.

They were not denominations either.

Religious orders added still more variety. Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and others developed distinctive understandings of how Christians might best live and serve the Church. At the same time, the pope was not merely a spiritual authority. He was a temporal prince ruling a considerable portion of Italy and was frequently engaged in political struggles—and occasionally wars—with other Christian rulers.

Then came the Reformation.

That is where something approaching our modern idea of denominations begins to emerge. The first great Protestant traditions were Lutheran, Reformed or Calvinist, and Anglican. The Anabaptists also arose during the Reformation and, although brutally suppressed by Catholics and Protestants alike, eventually produced traditions represented today by groups such as the Mennonites and Amish.

The Roman Church also recognized its need for reform. The Council of Trent, meeting intermittently from 1545 to 1563, clarified doctrine and established much of the discipline and structure we associate with modern Roman Catholicism. That is why I have sometimes said that Roman Catholicism as we now know it is as much a product of the Reformation era as the major Protestant traditions.

More divisions followed.

Presbyterianism developed within the Reformed tradition. English Puritanism became one source of Congregationalism. Anglicanism eventually gave birth to Methodism. Baptists and Quakers became part of an increasingly complicated Christian landscape.

The 19th century brought another explosion of religious movements, particularly in the United States. Adventist groups arose amid widespread expectations that the Second Coming and the end of the age were near. The famous “Great Disappointment” of 1844 followed when the predicted return of Christ did not occur, but several movements growing out of that period survived. The Seventh-day Adventist Church eventually became a major denomination with an especially significant ministry in health care and education.

Other new religious movements departed much more substantially from historic Christian orthodoxy, most notably the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Then came another upheaval.

Darwin and the enormous scientific advances of the 19th and early 20th centuries created an uproar in parts of American Christianity. Modern biblical scholarship was raising its own questions. Some Christian leaders, particularly among American Presbyterians, regarded these developments—and evolutionary theory in particular—as direct assaults on the authority and inerrancy of Scripture.

The Fundamentalist movement arose in large part from those concerns. The publication of The Fundamentals between 1910 and 1915 gave the movement its name. Fundamentalism and the broader evangelical movements surrounding it eventually contributed to an extraordinary proliferation of independent churches and denominations, many claiming to represent a particularly pure expression of the Christian faith.

Which brings us roughly to where we are today.

The Christian landscape of North America includes the older Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions that emerged from the long history I have just described; the historically mainline Protestant denominations that grew principally from the Reformation; a vast and diverse evangelical world, much of which took its present shape during the upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries; and an unknown number of independent churches claiming no denominational affiliation at all.

So when did denominations begin?

If by denomination we simply mean Christians disagreeing with one another, they have been doing that since the New Testament.

If we mean separate, organized Christian bodies existing alongside one another, each with its own identity, theology, worship, and governing structure, then the Reformation and the centuries following it are the place to look.

And if all of this seems complicated, it is.

I have gone on for more than a thousand words, and this is still a very short answer to a very large question.

If there is ever a Chapter Two, perhaps it will be on Trinitarian theology and why Nicaea matters.

Trump’s first term as president provided us with a flood of lies and misrepresentations so numerous that counting them eventually became pointless. His public corruption was noted but generally tolerated as Trump simply continuing to be Trump, as he had been throughout his adult life.

His second term has revealed corruption on such an enormous scale that it is difficult to comprehend. And much of it has been done in public view, without excuse or shame. It is not only the destruction and alteration of public property and his compulsion to decorate and build the public areas of Washington according to his own taste, in his own image, and without regard for law or public interest. He has also used the presidency to enrich himself and his family in ways that are without precedent in American history.

Other presidents have benefited financially from having held the office, particularly by writing books and giving speeches after their terms ended. But Trump has turned the presidency itself into an enormous money-making enterprise.

The boldness of his public corruption has encouraged many Americans to conclude that other politicians in high public office must be similarly corrupt. They simply hide it better and never reach Trump’s scale.

Sadly, people can point to senators and representatives who have been expelled or forced from Congress over various scandals, and some who have been convicted of felonies and sentenced to prison. It does not help that members of Congress have been accused of taking advantage of information unavailable to the general public when making personal investments, creating the appearance—whether or not a particular transaction violates existing law—that those who write the rules play by a different set of them.

No wonder there is a widespread belief that the whole system is corrupt to one degree or another, and that members of Congress perform their duties according to their own best interests. Too often those interests appear tied to the enormous amounts of campaign money available from the ultra-rich, corporations, and other powerful interests.

I wonder if it is one reason young, so-called democratic socialists have gained momentum as candidates for public office and influencers of public policy. They express the romantic ideal of political purity dedicated to the welfare of ordinary people.

It is a romantic vision because its proponents imagine something ideal and beautiful that can never be fully attained by human effort, and most certainly not through the messy political processes of our republican democracy. Reality will always assert itself.

That does not mean they should be ignored or that their ideas are loony. Quite the contrary. That national public policy must attend to the needs of ordinary people should be beyond question. That too much public policy in recent decades has been shaped by the ultra-rich and those possessing enormous power over resources and people should also concern us. The principle that elected representatives should serve the people—all the people—in their districts and states rather than the interests of those making large contributions to their campaigns ought to be beyond question.

In other words, the electorate—the people who vote and the people who could vote but seldom do—has a civic responsibility to elect candidates who demonstrate both competence and integrity.

We can never entirely escape the seductive power of the charismatic candidate, but charisma by itself has little value.

The people elected after standing the test of serious examination can not be the paragons of virtue our romantic idealists might want. They will be human beings, men and women whom we must hold accountable to do the best they can for the nation and its people, with particular attention to the marginalized and poor, the working class, small businesses, and the need to create conditions in which large corporations treat their employees as valued human beings rather than disposable commodities of production.

Some of those elected will do their best to live up to these expectations, and others will fall short. Not everyone will possess the gifts necessary to be more than a mediocre participant in the legislative process. That is simply the way it is among human beings, and we are foolish to expect otherwise.

But we are even more foolish if we fail to hold our elected representatives accountable.

These last few decades have also revealed the foolishness of a large portion of the electorate who have willingly allowed themselves to be duped and misled by appeals to their fears, anxieties, and prejudices.

How that problem gets solved is much more complicated.

In one part it depends on a massive, coordinated effort to educate an enormous portion of the public in the fundamentals of our republican democracy and its history without distortion; the basic obligations of citizenship; and the American values upon which the nation was established and which, for more than two centuries, we have struggled to make real for ever more Americans.

Can it be done? I don’t know.

Human history extending back at least four thousand years suggests that when a people goes badly astray, it often takes some combination of national disasters to bring them back to their senses. I would rather we not go through that trial.

It is certainly possible that enough Americans will have learned from these ancient lessons to create a momentum toward redirection—back toward what might properly be called “the American way.”

And what is that American way?

It has nothing to do with the political and social conservatism that sometimes claims ownership of the phrase. It has to do with the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and with the trials through which we have struggled to make those ideals increasingly real. It has been tested through civil war and insurrection, through wars fought in defense not only of ourselves but of others, and through the continuing conviction that people can live together in peace and mutual prosperity despite their many differences.

It came up again just the other day.

The short answer is that God did not change. Our ability to understand God is what changed.

That is not a very satisfying answer to people whose exposure to Christianity is steeped in the image of a punishing God. If they know nothing else of Jonathan Edwards, they may remember his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, with its terrifying picture of sinners suspended over the fiery pit of hell and preserved from destruction only at God’s pleasure. The problem is further complicated for those who believe Scripture must be literally true in every detail.

It creates a serious question and considerable anxiety: Can the loving God revealed in Jesus Christ really be trusted when so much of the Bible says God is angry and punishing?

Let me try to untangle the mess as clearly as I am able.

The Hebrew Scriptures are chock-full of statements that God is visiting punishment on his people and sometimes on others. Several of the Psalms complain about how quickly his wrath can erupt against people (Psalm 6:1; 38:1; 90:7–9). If these passages are taken without a more thorough study of the arc of the Hebrew Scriptures and the context in which they were written, it is easy to conclude that God is a punishing God.

But that is not how the arc of Scripture progresses, nor does it adequately reflect the context in which these texts were written.

In a critical passage, God declares that he desires the death of no one, but that everyone turn from their evil ways and have life: “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live” (Ezekiel 18:32; see also 33:11).

So what is going on?

Remember that the Hebrew Scriptures tell a story spanning roughly two thousand years. During that time, God reveals God’s self to the people incrementally, always moving toward greater inclusiveness and a fuller understanding of godly love. We see that most clearly in the prophets, but we Christians believe the fullness of that arc and of God’s self-revelation is not made known until Jesus (Hebrews 1:1–2).

As the people of Israel began to understand that their God was very unlike the gods of the peoples around them, they recognized that God could not be seen or represented by any figure (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 4:15–16). Moreover, God appeared to have no beginning and came from nowhere, but was somehow the source of everything (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 90:2).

But how were the early Israelites to know that their God was the only one? Every other people had a god, sometimes many of them. Might there not be other gods as well? And might not those gods help explain something about the God of Israel?

The gods of the surrounding peoples were often understood as fickle and unpredictable. They had to be placated. One offered sacrifices or performed rituals to gain a god’s attention and favor. Perhaps then the god would bestow a blessing, take pity on the people, or, if nothing else, leave them alone. One could never be entirely certain when a god might bless or punish.

That was much of the religious context in which the early Israelite experience developed.

Yet again and again in the biblical story, God makes clear that if the Israelites continue doing such and such, they will bring disaster upon themselves. What they experience as punishment is often the consequence of their own actions. Deuteronomy puts the choice starkly: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

But they perceived disaster as God’s punishment because they had little other context in which to understand it. The result was the familiar pendulum swinging from obedience to disobedience and back again. A judge or prophet would awaken them, and they would return to following God as best they could, given what they knew and the world around them.

It took centuries for Israel’s understanding to develop into the unequivocal declaration that there is only one God and there is no other. We hear it with particular clarity in Isaiah, speaking God’s own words: “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 45:5).

The later understanding becomes more profound still: God does not delight in punishment. God warns the people because what they are doing leads to destruction. Hosea even pictures God recoiling from judgment: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8–9).

I deeply regret that too many people cannot get it out of their heads that God is a punishing God. That is true of a large number of Christians, and it is one reason many other people want to have nothing to do with God.

It is wise for us to remember that our own history as Christians extends over two thousand years. Those first Christians had an intimate experience of Jesus, whom they came to know as the Son of God. For them, the love of God for humanity and God’s desire to be continually engaged with humanity for its well-being was a greater truth than any other.

That conviction was tested as the church expanded beyond the eastern Mediterranean into Gentile worlds filled with other gods and demons of every sort. Confronted with plague, fire, drought, political cruelty, and grinding poverty, people—Christian though they might have been—could still resort to blaming God for the disasters that befell them and distrusting the love of God proclaimed in Christ Jesus.

Again and again we have had to rediscover and recommit ourselves to the profound faith of those early Christians: what God has declared in love can be believed, and God can be trusted to care for us in every way.

What does God desire of us? “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

And what does God intend? Jesus puts it this way: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

This is a short answer to a long question. It is long only because people persist in believing in a punishing God no matter what God has to say about it.

First, a brief preamble.

The far right that has taken over the Republican Party, and the corruption of this administration, have no equivalent on the left. Can one point to left-wing ideologues? Of course. Some get enormous publicity. Is there corruption among Democrats? Certainly. It gets publicity too. But there is no equivalence. The far right has also been remarkably successful in labeling virtually everyone who disagrees with it “radical left” and dismissing unfavorable reporting as “fake news.”

What I think most of us want is to restore a political balance in which conservatives and liberals can work together for the good of the country. It has happened before and can happen again. More importantly, it is fundamental to republican democracy.

With that said, let’s get on with it.

I would start with Vietnam, Watergate, and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and ’70s, when a new generation began questioning whether traditional public and private institutions could be trusted to assure political, social, and economic stability.

There were earlier precedents. In the postwar years, the John Birch Society and others on the right worked vigorously to convince Americans that anything remotely “socialist” was dangerous and that liberal democracy itself was failing. Its adherents included ideologues, wealthy industrialists calling themselves libertarians, and politicians attracted to Barry Goldwater’s version ofconservatism. But let’s begin with the modern period.

1980 — Reagan

Ronald Reagan declared in his inaugural address that government was not the solution to our problems; government was the problem. He embodied the western ideal of the cowboy who wanted nothing from government but to be left alone. From Reagan on, the Republican Party celebrated rugged individualism over the common good, at least at the national level.

He promised smaller government, lower taxes, and economic prosperity. Coming after the inflation, high interest rates, and perceived malaise of the previous decade, it sounded very good.

The Reagan Revolution became Republican orthodoxy for decades. It also accelerated a political and economic transformation in which tax rates at the top fell sharply, deficits grew, organized labor weakened, and an increasing share of economic gains went to those already wealthy.

Then came what I think was one of the genuinely transformative moments.

1988 — Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh took right-wing political talk radio nationwide, combining politics with entertainment and flamboyant attacks on liberals, feminists, minorities, social activists, and virtually anyone else he disliked. In the 1990s he famously labeled leaders of the women’s movement “feminazis.”

He was followed by dozens of imitators. Local AM stations in every town featured them.

Their audience included millions of working- and middle-class Americans who had come to believe that liberal elites were deliberately making their lives harder and giving opportunities that rightfully belonged to them to minorities and other favored groups.

Talk radio did not create those resentments, but it gave them a national voice, reinforced them every day, and eventually created a political culture of its own.

1993–1994 — Clinton and health care

Bill and Hillary Clinton attempted to create a system of universal health coverage. The proposal met ferocious opposition from insurance companies, conservatives, portions of organized medicine, and a public campaign warning that “socialized medicine” was coming.

The idea itself was hardly new. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and even Dwight Eisenhower had wrestled with versions of the same problem.

But the Clinton effort made national health insurance a major partisan battleground, and conservative talk radio helped turn it into a symbol of everything the right believed was wrong with liberal government.

1994 — Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America helped Republicans take control of the House and made Gingrich Speaker.

He envisioned a much smaller federal government, lower taxes, less regulation, and considerably less federal responsibility for social and economic programs. Much of his program never became law, but something more important happened: confrontation itself became a political strategy.

Gingrich helped transform the opposing party from people with whom one disagreed into enemies who had to be defeated.

2008–2010 — Obama and the Affordable Care Act

Barack Obama entered office in January 2009 during the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Republicans nevertheless quickly made opposition to Obama himself a central political strategy.

The fact that he was the nation’s first Black president cannot simply be ignored. A young, extraordinarily articulate and intelligent Black man, with an equally accomplished Black wife, occupying the White House was more than some Americans could tolerate. Obama lit up talk radio like the proverbial Christmas tree.

While Democrats still controlled Congress, Obama pursued health-care reform. The Affordable Care Act relied heavily on private insurance while expanding Medicaid and providing subsidies to help lower- and middle-income Americans buy coverage.

It was bitterly denounced by the right, yet it survived repeated attempts to destroy it and eventually became deeply embedded in American health care.

2010–2016 — Government by obstruction

Republicans regained the House in 2010. John Boehner became Speaker in 2011. He was very conservative and a formidable opponent of Democratic policies, but he was not an ideologue incapable of negotiation.

Negotiation became increasingly difficult because of pressure from the Freedom Caucus and others to his right. Eventually Boehner was driven out.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell announced that his principal political goal was to make Obama a one-term president. As minority leader, and later majority leader, he used the procedural powers of the Senate with extraordinary effectiveness to block Obama administration initiatives—including, at times, proposals Republicans themselves had previously supported.

2016 — Trump

Donald Trump’s election surprised almost everyone, but the political culture that made it possible had been forming for decades.

Millions whose worldview had been shaped by right-wing media finally heard a presidential candidate who talked their language, shared their grievances, identified their enemies, and promised that the country would belong to them again.

You remember the chaos of those four years: the endless lies, the revolving door of senior officials, exaggerated claims of economic accomplishment, and, above all, the disastrous management of the COVID pandemic.

One important exception deserves acknowledgment: the administration’s Operation Warp Speed helped make the remarkably rapid development of effective vaccines possible.

Trump repeatedly promised a replacement for the Affordable Care Act and an enormous infrastructure program. Neither appeared.

His principal legislative achievement was the 2017 tax law, which heavily favored corporations and higher-income taxpayers and added substantially to federal deficits despite promises that economic growth would pay for it.

2020–2024 — Biden

Biden inherited a nation still suffering from the pandemic and its worldwide economic disruption.

With narrow congressional majorities, Democrats enacted major recovery and infrastructure measures, expanded support for families, and organized nationwide vaccine distribution.

The American economy recovered more strongly than those of other major industrial nations. Employment grew dramatically and wages at the lower end improved. But the recovery came with inflation, intensified by supply-chain disruptions, energy costs, enormous pandemic spending under both Trump and Biden, and worldwide shortages. Inflation eventually declined substantially, but voters never forgot the higher prices.

Biden nevertheless made a disastrous final mistake. His attempt to seek another term continued long after it had become apparent that age had seriously diminished his ability to communicate and campaign effectively.

2023 — Project 2025

Then came Project 2025, produced by the Heritage Foundation and allied organizations.

Unlike Gingrich’s Contract with America, it was not a campaign document. It was an extraordinarily detailed governing plan designed to strengthen presidential control of the executive branch, replace large numbers of career officials with political appointees, and systematically implement a sweeping conservative agenda.

Whatever one thinks of its objectives, it was serious, detailed, and ready to be used.

2024 and after

Trump was elected again.

Given the chaos of his first term, I still find that extraordinary. But he was elected, and this time he entered office surrounded not by the revolving cast of his first administration but by people far more ideologically committed and far better prepared.

He had claimed during the campaign to know little about Project 2025, but many people associated with its authors entered his administration. What had once been rhetoric now had an administrative blueprint behind it.

Meanwhile, Trump and the Trump Organization have engaged in a degree of self-aggrandizement and conflict between public office and private interest unlike anything I have witnessed in American presidential politics.

That brings me back to where I began.

There are ideologues on the left. There are foolish Democrats. There are corrupt Democrats. There are Democrats more interested in winning elections than serving the public. Of course there are.

But none of that requires us to pretend that what has happened to the two parties is symmetrical. It isn’t.

The transformation of the Republican Party has been developing for decades—from Goldwater and the Birchers, through Reagan, Limbaugh, Gingrich, the Freedom Caucus, McConnell’s obstruction, and finally Trump. The Affordable Care Act was an important battlefield, but it was not the beginning.

What lies ahead remains to be discovered.

The 2026 midterms may provide some answer. The greater test will come in the next presidential election, when we will discover whether the American public still wants the constitutional republican democracy we have struggled, imperfectly, to maintain for 250 years—or whether enough Americans are willing to exchange some of it for the promise of a powerful leader who will simply make things happen.

Hungary under Viktor Orbán ought to be warning enough of where that road can lead.

I don’t want our country to have to travel it before discovering that democratic freedom was worth preserving.

Mumbling and rumblings are occasionally heard in Episcopal congregations about hearing too much politics preached from the pulpit. There are congregations deeply committed to social justice, and that commitment can appear political to some. For the most part, I think they are following Jesus on the way of the cross, although perhaps in a single-minded way that occasionally drifts from the command Jesus gave us to love one another as he has loved us (John 13:34).

They need to be reminded of Paul’s admonition that we are saved by grace through faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8–9). They also need James’s insistence that the faith we profess is demonstrated by what we do: “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17). Put the two together and there is balance. Christianity does not work nearly as well when that balance is lost.

Mumbling is also heard in congregations offering a comprehensive menu of Christian formation—discipleship, study, prayer, worship, and action. Some complaints, I think, come from people made uncomfortable when reminded of God’s command in the Hebrew Scriptures to treat the alien as one of us because we ourselves were once aliens in a foreign land (Leviticus 19:33–34; Deuteronomy 10:18–19).

They may be uncomfortable with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), in which the person who proves to be the neighbor we are commanded to love is a foreigner, a member of a people greatly distrusted and despised. They may also be uncomfortable with the command that, rather than seeking retribution against those we consider enemies, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink” (Romans 12:20).

And Jesus leaves little room for ambiguity when he identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned: “just as you did it to one of the least of these...you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

Those passages make some people uncomfortable because they point rather clearly toward questions of public policy, particularly when governments pursue policies that remove assistance or make it more difficult for people to care for themselves.

It is also difficult for some to understand that taxes are not simply money taken from our pockets that rightfully belongs to us. They are also our collective investment in the welfare and future of our people and nation.

I have a strong belief in generous voluntary charity to address the needs of the marginalized, the poor, and those in great need. But private charity alone cannot begin to accomplish all that needs to be done. Some things require collective effort.

And there is that troublesome word: “collective.”

For decades, collectivism has been treated as a synonym for socialism, which in turn is said to be little more than a polite name for communism. Surely no patriotic American could tolerate such a thing.

My own youth was spent during years when fear of Russian communism was rampant. Pamphlets were thrust into my young hands explaining how creeping socialism—socialized medicine, for example, or government payments to farmers—represented little steps toward a communist takeover. Someone even gave me The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious fabrication of a supposed Jewish plan to control the world. Most people I knew tossed such things in the trash, but the atmosphere of fear inevitably influenced how a generation learned to think.

Then came Vietnam, the struggle for civil rights, Watergate, and the slow recognition that the comfortable assumptions of white, middle-class America could no longer be accepted as universal truths.

That helped jolt my denomination out of its self-satisfied complacency. Following Jesus required the Church to engage society as a whole and to encourage its members to place the way of the cross ahead of personal prejudice and political preference. To many, that looked like surrender to liberalism and a headlong dive into socialism.

However unfortunate that reaction was, it was real then and remains real today. Fear has been passed to succeeding generations through talk radio and social media, accompanied by a determined effort to convince Americans that government itself is the problem, individualism is more important than the common good, and government assistance to those in need is simply undeserved welfare riddled with fraud.

What does any of this have to do with the mission of the Church and following Jesus on the way of the cross?

Jesus calls us to be responsible and accountable for ourselves, but also to help bear the burdens of others. The common good is not limited to the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is commanded to seek the good of all, regardless of who they are. For Christians, that common good must be measured against the social and economic justice revealed in the prophets and proclaimed by Christ.

The Church as an institution is required to develop social teachings after careful study, deep prayer, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit. Each Christian must then “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), discerning what it means to follow Christ and contributing voice and action toward public policies that offer greater opportunity and greater justice for more people.

That is not inherently liberal or conservative. Nor is it slipping and sliding into the kind of socialism generations of Americans were taught to fear. Those who identify as conservative and those who identify as liberal both have much to offer. When they engage one another in good faith, they can often reach decisions acceptable to a broad majority.

There will always be critics, naysayers, and hard-core ideologues of one kind or another. Sometimes they have something useful we need to hear. But they cannot be allowed to become the only voices heard or, simply by occupying high public office, treated as automatic rulers.

If this sounds like a political theme that should never be preached from the pulpit, I agree that partisan politics should not be. But I also submit that the social consequences of the Gospel must be part of what guides the Church and its members in their lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel should never be reduced to politics. But neither can following Jesus be separated from how we treat our neighbors and order our common life.

What is the purpose of a worship service? More particularly, what is the purpose of a liturgical worship service like the one that anchors Episcopal congregations and other churches throughout the Anglican Communion?

A recent comment on a church-related Facebook page asserted that the celebration of the Eucharist in Episcopal congregations was so deadly boring that it was the primary reason the denomination is not growing.

“You follow the same ritual Sunday after Sunday,” he wrote. “They are so tightly packed with what must be done that there is no room to experience the Holy Spirit, to ask questions, or to engage in communal conversation.”

“In my church,” he continued, “we have lots of children, many opportunities to visit, lively music, something a little different each Sunday, and the homilies are very short and to the point. They actually teach something.”

He described a congregation whose worship services had been inspired by the Alpha Course. Alpha is a popular ten- or twelve-week introduction to the Christian faith that is intentionally non-denominational and focuses on what Christians of many traditions hold in common. It typically includes a shared meal, Scripture readings, a brief presentation, and small-group discussion. I do not think it was ever intended to become a model for weekly worship services, but apparently at least one congregation has taken it as the inspiration for the way it worships.

Well, good for them. May they receive from God all they hope for through the practices they have adopted.

But it was equally clear that the comment reflected a profound misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the Eucharistic liturgy that anchors Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and most Lutheran churches in the power and presence of God actively engaged in the lives of those gathered. Whatever form a sermon takes it is always point the way through the word spoke here the Spirit is saying to the church.

The Eucharistic liturgy, done well, brings the worshiping community out of the ordinary world of daily life and into the presence of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—where the kingdom of God is made present in a unique way and where each person is fed with the holy food of new and unending life, nourishing them for the work of the days ahead. Fed by Word and Sacrament, the congregation departs singing and hearing the command to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Archbishop Rowan Williams once asked, “Do our worship services look like we expect God to show up?” The answer should always be an unequivocal yes. If there is doubt, then something needs attention, and that work begins with the clergy, staff, and lay leadership.

The liturgy is holy language spoken in holy space and holy time, fully expecting God to be present—not as an observer but as the principal source of God’s holy power and life at work among the people. Worship cannot be measured by how well it satisfies the individual preferences of those attending. Rather, each person is fed by Word and Sacrament in the context of a community—not just any community, but one of kinship and fellowship, a family learning to love God, one another, and the world God loves.

The liturgy is, in a very real sense, a dance with room for improvisation, in which movement, word, silence, and music draw the entire congregation into a shared rhythm of call and response. Liturgical worship is not a place to come, sit in a pew for an hour, and then go home. It is active worship. It involves standing, sitting, kneeling, speaking the prayers, listening to Scripture, singing hymns of praise, exchanging the Peace, and sharing together at the Eucharistic table. It can be both orderly and delightfully messy at the same time.

Is liturgical worship done well the secret to growing a congregation or even a denomination? No, it is not. It is certainly an important contributor, but that is not its purpose. Liturgical worship, done well, is remarkably uninterested in how large the congregation is, how many children are present, or whether its growth can be measured on a spreadsheet. Its purpose is to make real the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed was at hand, so that those gathered—whether few or many, young or old—may encounter the living God.

Of course, it does not work for everyone every time. I have sat through services while feeling grumpy and distracted. God showed up, but I had not. I have also worshiped in unfamiliar places where local customs were confusing enough to make it difficult to hear the Spirit speaking. You probably know that feeling. It is the old problem of, “Well, that’s not the way we do it.”

Yet wherever I have worshiped throughout the Anglican Communion—and occasionally in Roman Catholic and Lutheran congregations—I have usually been able to recognize when the liturgy was being done well. And when it was, everyone worshiped as though they truly expected God to show up.

It is said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. It is, of course, a myth.But, as with many myths, it reveals a deeper truth.A great fire swept through Rome in 64 CE, destroying much of the city. Nero was away enjoying himself when it began, which probably explains why later generations accused him of “fiddling while Rome burned” as the citizens of Rome suffered enormous loss of life and property.

What was he to do?

He did what many corrupt leaders do. He blamed a vulnerable minority for the disaster and punished them with extraordinary cruelty. It was classic scapegoating, a tactic used by rulers throughout history to divert attention from their own failures and avoid accountability.

And whom did Nero choose? Christians.

It was the first major imperial persecution of Christians in Rome and almost certainly contributed to the executions of Peter and Paul around 64 or 65 CE.

The emperor Nero came to mind as I reflected on Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with helipads, reflecting pools, golden statues of himself, triumphal arches, lavish ballrooms, and other monuments to personal grandeur while the nation struggles with wildfires, economic uncertainty, and the consequences of incompetent policies at home and abroad.

Mr. Trump is certainly not another Nero. Nero became emperor at only sixteen years of age and died in 68 CE before reaching thirty-one. By the end of his reign he appears to have become mentally unstable, something that had become obvious even to Rome’s political leadership.

Trump is an old man. If he is unstable, it is in a different way. He has remained capable of making calculated decisions designed to manipulate government to his own advantage, influence elections, expand executive power, and enrich himself and his family.

The time will come when Trump is gone, just as Nero eventually disappeared from Rome. The greater question is what follows.

After Nero’s death, Rome descended into the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors. None of the claimants to power provided lasting stability until Vespasian finally restored order and established the Flavian dynasty.

That is not a future Americans should want for themselves. We do not want political chaos to follow the Trump era, nor do we want one would-be supreme leader to succeed another. What we should seek is the restoration of our constitutional republic and its democratic institutions.

We have not lost them yet, but we have come dangerously close.

I find it difficult to understand how nearly thirty percent of American adults continue to approve of Trump’s administration. No administration in our history has displayed such public corruption and incompetence so openly or so consistently. Much of it has taken place in plain sight.

That so many remain loyal to him—or at least willing to tolerate him—is a sad commentary on the condition of our nation.

The Trump era also brings to mind another ruler: Charles I of England. He claimed a divine right to rule without meaningful regard for Parliament or the will of the people. That provided Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans with the opportunity to wage civil war, execute the king, and impose a decade of authoritarian rule under strict Puritan discipline.

There is today an element within right-wing evangelical Christian nationalism that views Trump as a useful vehicle for imposing its own religious vision upon an unwilling nation.

It did not take long for the English people to tire of Puritan rule. The monarchy was restored in 1660 under Charles II. Yet the deeper constitutional struggle continued, culminating after the reign of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. William and Mary accepted the throne under new constitutional limits that made the monarchy subject to Parliament rather than above it.

That is the enduring lesson of English constitutional history: no ruler stands above the law.

The next president and the next Congress must understand that the American people will no longer tolerate any claim of a presidential right to rule unchecked. Nor should we tolerate a Congress that willingly surrenders its constitutional responsibilities to the executive branch.

The Supreme Court likewise must recommit itself to its constitutional role—not as an instrument of ideology, but as an independent interpreter of the Constitution in light of the nation’s laws and the realities of the twenty-first century.

This November’s midterm elections will, I hope, send a clear message to our elected leaders and to the judiciary: Americans have had enough. Our republic depends not on powerful individuals but on institutions worthy of the public’s trust. Those institutions must once again be strengthened, respected, and held accountable.

Something I have heard in conversation—or a question asked directly—is the source of many of these columns. Not long ago, a member of our congregation complained, good-naturedly, that we spend entirely too much time on Paul and that she gets tired of him. She also observed that she finds too many of Paul’s comments about women uncomfortable.

Before moving on, it is worth remembering that Paul also proclaimed that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.” He also named women as deacons, leaders of local churches, and fellow workers with him in proclaiming the gospel.

Nevertheless, she has a point. After all, Paul is only a few words shy of being the most prolific writer in the New Testament, trailing only Luke. That means Paul’s letters make up a significant portion of the Scripture read on Sundays, which also means they occupy a significant portion of what I teach when we are studying the New Testament. Pauline scholars who have devoted their careers to the study of his writings are legion.

With that in mind, I think there are a couple of clarifications that need to be made about Paul and his letters.

The first, and most important, is that Paul is not Jesus. Paul is not the Messiah. He is not the Son of God, and although he was eventually executed, he did not rise again on the third day. That should be obvious, but many believers treat everything Paul wrote as though it were “gospel truth.”

It isn’t.

Rather, it is Paul pointing toward gospel truth as he matures in his own understanding of who Jesus was, who he is, and what he means for humanity.

Gospel truth is found first and foremost in the record of what Jesus said and did. It is sealed by his death and resurrection as the incarnate Word of God, who lived and died as one of us—not merely as another prophet, but as God made flesh.

Because Paul’s letters were written first, some have suggested that they must be more authoritative than the Gospels.

It is really the other way around.

The evangelists did their very best to preserve the memory of what Jesus said and did. They told, as faithfully as they were able, of his ministry, his trial, his death, his burial, and above all his resurrection and appearances to many witnesses. Their purpose was to proclaim Jesus himself.

Paul’s purpose was different.

He began as a fierce persecutor of those who followed Jesus. He had never been one of the Twelve, and there is every reason to believe that he rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Only years later did the risen Christ confront him on the road to Damascus as he was traveling to persecute Christians.

From that moment he became the last of the apostles, and he spent the rest of his life doing two things.

The first was discovering for himself what it meant to believe in, trust, and follow Jesus as Lord. Reading his letters in roughly chronological order reveals how that understanding developed and matured over time.

The second was founding churches throughout what is now Turkey, Greece, and Macedonia. He trained local leaders, appointed elders, and wrote letters to congregations struggling with questions of faith, ethics, worship, and life within the surrounding culture.

We should also remember that Paul was only one of many apostles sent out from Jerusalem to proclaim the good news throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. He had little or nothing to do with the spread of Christianity into North Africa, much of Italy, or the ancient Christian communities that eventually appeared as far away as India.

Sadly, Paul is almost the only apostle whose letters have survived in substantial number. Because of that, he has become our primary source for understanding both the growth of the early Church and the spiritual development of one remarkable believer.

However inspired Paul was by the Holy Spirit, he was not Jesus.

He was a man who faithfully did the best he could, and he did it extraordinarily well. His letters reveal not only his convictions but also his struggles, his doubts, and the way his understanding deepened over the years. They also reveal the struggles of the congregations to whom he wrote.

That is why we continue to study them.

Their questions are our questions. Their conflicts are our conflicts. Their hopes are our hopes. Paul’s letters help guide us on our own journey toward greater faith.

They also enrich our reading of the Gospels. Paul reminds us that faithful people ask questions, wrestle with uncertainty, and continue learning throughout their lives. Faith is not something we acquire once and for all. It grows as we grow.

God is still speaking. God is still creating. Our task is to keep listening.

So give Paul a bit of a break.

More than that, think of him as a trusted mentor who has already walked much of the road on which you now travel and who still has much to teach us.

That was the question a friend asked me recently. The answer—or perhaps the answers—are somewhat complicated because they depend on what someone means when they speak of humanism or claim to be a humanist.

The Dutch Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam is one of the best-known figures of Renaissance Christian humanism. He lived during the turbulent years surrounding the Protestant Reformation. A reformer in his own right, he remained within the Roman Catholic Church and was a faithful Christian throughout his life.

How, then, could he be called a humanist? It was because he believed that reason and the pursuit of knowledge enabled human beings to understand God more deeply in the midst of a rapidly changing world. He was an intrepid skeptic of those who claimed complete possession of immutable truth. Unafraid to challenge both Protestant reformers and defenders of the Roman Catholic status quo, he believed that faithful Christians should continue learning rather than assume that every important question had already been answered.

From Erasmus comes what we now call Christian humanism. It invites human beings into an active conversation with God and encourages a willingness to wrestle with Holy Scripture in the pursuit of a deeper understanding of God’s purpose. It differs from forms of Christianity that require unquestioning acceptance of top-down teaching from a magisterium, and it also challenges forms of Christianity that insist Scripture is inerrant in every detail while rejecting the insights of biblical criticism. Although it has not always been consistent, the Anglican tradition has generally followed the path of Christian humanism in seeking fresh light on what it means to follow Jesus Christ in the way of the cross.

Contemporary humanism is something quite different. For the most part, it is uninterested in what God—or even Scripture—might have to say. Those who identify as contemporary humanists often believe that spiritual fulfillment can be found through human wisdom, scientific knowledge, and life shared with others who are committed to the flourishing of humanity.

Many contemporary humanists may be unaware of the roots of their outlook. Those roots reach back to the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which opened the way to modern science and systematic study of psychology, sociology, and many other fields.

The Enlightenment unquestionably produced extraordinary advances in nearly every area of human endeavor, from the Industrial Revolution to the exploration of space. Modern medicine and public health are among its greatest achievements. It was a remarkable turning point in history and deserves considerable honor. Yet it also encouraged many people to conclude that the world could do quite well without God.

One expression of this was eighteenth-century Deism, which taught that God set the universe in motion and then entrusted humanity with responsibility for its future. Many educated men of the period—including several of America’s Founding Fathers—embraced some form of Deism, confident that human reason could continue the progress God, if there was a God, intended.

Nineteenth-century Transcendentalism, especially in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, added another dimension. It proposed that spiritual reality is inherent in nature and may be experienced by those who open themselves to what nature has to teach. Exactly what that spiritual reality is remains largely subjective, something each individual must discover for himself or herself.

Many people seeking spiritual fulfillment today draw, consciously or unconsciously, from each of these traditions. They often supplement them with fragments of Celtic spirituality, Native American traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and, for some, beliefs about crystals, pyramids, or mysterious forms of universal energy.

Can these become sources of spiritual fulfillment? They certainly can at least in a transitory way. Crystals and amulets will eventually prove themselves to be nothing more than pretty baubles. The more important question is What is spiritual fulfillment?

The answers I have heard differ from person to person, but they usually center on discovering a sense of wholeness that had previously been missing. Many also speak of experiencing a profound connection with nature and with other living creatures. Organized religion, they often say, did not help them find that wholeness. In fact, they experienced it as a restriction that prevented them from discovering a deeper relationship with the world around them.

No one can simply dismiss the reality of those experiences. Indeed, they expose one of the great sins committed by parts of the Church. Christians have too often obscured the life-giving presence of God beneath legalism, rigidity, fear, or institutional self-interest.

Speaking only for myself as an Episcopal priest, however, I believe that whatever spiritual fulfillment contemporary humanists have found is only a foretaste of the greater reality God desires for them. Through the nourishment of Word and Sacrament, given in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they would discover not only a deeper relationship with creation but also a living relationship with its Creator and Sustainer. They would discover the God who declared creation to be good and who continues to be actively engaged in our lives through steadfast and abounding love.

There is indeed a spiritual reality in nature, but it is God’s own Spirit that gives creation its life. The beauty and wonder of the created order point beyond themselves to the One who made them. Humanism, at its best, can glimpse that reality, but it cannot fully reveal it.

The deepest and most enduring spiritual fulfillment comes, I believe, through trusting the God made known in Jesus Christ. Once we learn that God is trustworthy, our sense of fullness need not depend on passing feelings, for it is continually renewed by gratitude, worship, and communion with God and neighbor. God’s freedom to make himself known cannot be confined by human boundaries, and I do not doubt that his Spirit is at work far beyond the visible Church. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that the fullness of spiritual life is found most completely in Christ, whose presence is received not through any human intermediary but directly from God in the hearts and minds of those who come to him in faith.

The news has lately been filled with articles about the use of artificial intelligence in academia and among the general public. Whether entire papers—or significant portions of them—have been written by AI has become a serious concern in some quarters. In a similar way, the reliance of the general public on AI as a source of medical information or personal advice about intimate issues of life has also raised legitimate questions.

For those of you who had the courage to wade through my somewhat lengthy essay on AI, the legal system, and ethics published on Substack a month or two ago, you know it is a subject of considerable interest to me. That naturally raises the question of how I use artificial intelligence.

After I lost most of my sight about five years ago, I had to learn to dictate my articles, and it proved much more difficult than I anticipated. It requires me to construct an outline in my head and then keep coherent sentences flowing in a reasonably logical order. Apple’s voice-to-text capabilities are remarkable, but they also have their limitations. It is amazing how often the software misunderstands simple words and substitutes something entirely different. It also “corrects” things it assumes I have said incorrectly.

For instance, yesterday I dictated the word rector, the title of the senior priest in an Episcopal parish. Apple decided I meant director. In the same article I dictated the word Union, referring to the concept, and Apple changed it to Union-Bulletin, the name of the daily newspaper in our former community. You get the idea.

My wife became my editor, and she spent far more time than she should have had to, not only proofreading but trying to discover what I had intended to say when my dictation wandered off course.

With the arrival of ChatGPT, I gradually developed a working relationship with it as my editor. It took a while for it to understand the way I write and the way I want an editor to work without changing either my style or my voice. Now I dictate a draft like this one, submit it for a first edit, revise that edit myself, and then ask it to review the final product before publication. For me, it has become an indispensable tool.

I have also discovered that I can rely on it to answer many biblical questions and locate citations that would otherwise require hours of painful searching with a reading device that allows me to read only a word or two at a time. It is also valuable in pointing me in the right direction when I have questions about theology, history, or subjects related to the issues on which I write.

I deliberately limit my use of ChatGPT to those subjects. For more general “World Book” questions, I usually turn to Gemini. It is less reliable and occasionally needs to be reminded that its information is out of date, but for dictionary-like questions or broad factual inquiries it generally serves well enough.

A friend who uses ChatGPT for almost everything wondered why I don’t do the same. My answer is based on little more than a hunch. I suspect that if I keep my conversations focused on the subjects about which I write, I am more likely to receive answers that remain within that body of knowledge instead of wandering into areas where I have less interest or less ability to evaluate what I am being told.

Whether that hunch is technically correct is almost beside the point. It disciplines me. It reminds me that ChatGPT is a tool to assist my work, not a substitute for thinking.

By contrast, I have little interest in how Gemini develops its responses. As long as I can use it as a reasonably dependable dictionary or encyclopedia, I am satisfied. I certainly would not mistake it for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Yesterday I asked it about Pope Leo. It confidently informed me that the most recent Pope Leo was Leo XIII, who died in the nineteenth century, and that Pope Francis was the current pope. I suggested it might want to update its records. A few minutes later it apologized and acknowledged that there is indeed now a Pope Leo.

Another friend asked why I don’t simply tell ChatGPT what kind of article I want, what conclusions I would like it to reach, and let it do all the writing. After all, he said, it writes remarkably well.

I find the suggestion repulsive.

I have to be the author of my own writing, or I am not its author.

I have read articles generated almost entirely by ChatGPT. It is usually apparent that there has been very little genuine human engagement with the subject. A careful exegesis of the writing reveals a multitude of weaknesses. They may be acceptable if honestly identified as AI-generated, but I do not think they should appear under the name of a human author who did not actually write them.

Which brings me to clergy and AI.

An AI-generated sermon is, in my opinion, an abomination. No more need be said.

As a mostly blind person, I use AI for biblical and theological research because I often cannot read the original texts efficiently. Even so, I regularly find myself turning to Wikipedia, to books in my virtual library, and sometimes to the few printed reference works and Bibles I can still use, painstakingly looking up passages for myself.

I do that because I do not want to become dependent on AI as my only source. AI can be a valuable research assistant. It cannot replace the responsibility of doing the work. That responsibility belongs to the author, the scholar, and especially the preacher.

That raises two obvious questions. What do I mean by orthodox Christianity, and what do I mean by politics?

By orthodox Christianity—with a lowercase o—I mean the continuing development of Christian understanding of what it means to follow Christ through the same process of inquiry that guided the leadership of the early Church: listening diligently for where the Holy Spirit is leading us in our own time. Orthodox Christianity is closely related to two thousand years of apostolic tradition and, through the Reformation, to the denominations that emerged from it and continue today. It is not a definition intended to exclude others, but one that invites cooperative conversation with other faithful expressions of the Christian faith.

Politics is itself a problematic word. Modern usage often limits it to electoral politics. It is also used pejoratively in expressions such as, “It’s just politics,” or, “They’re playing politics.” In those cases it implies something less than honorable, where self-serving actions manipulate political decisions with little regard for the common good.

When I write about politics, however, I mean the art by which a people decide the rules and conditions under which they will live together and the processes by which those decisions will be made. In the United States, we have determined that our government will take the form of a democratic republic. The Constitution establishes that form for the federal government, and the constitutions and laws of the states generally follow the same pattern. The intention is to elect competent people of integrity who will represent both the interests of those they serve and the broader interests of the nation as a whole. What those interests are, and how they are best served through legislation, will always be matters of debate, compromise, and the search for workable solutions that are acceptable, if not entirely satisfactory, to most parties.

It is a system that has proven remarkably reliable and resilient, even when circumstances have seemed to stretch it to the breaking point. We appear to be at such a moment today, with an administration and congressional majority that, in my judgment, believe republican democracy is too inefficient and should give way to a more authoritarian form of government.

That we periodically arrive at such moments points to an inherent weakness within republican democracy itself. Its long-term success depends upon a substantial majority of citizens being reasonably well informed by reliable sources about the events and conditions affecting the welfare and security of the nation and all its people. What constitutes that welfare and security is never static. It changes continually as technology advances, environmental conditions evolve, and our understanding deepens of what free people need in order to remain free and to contribute to the flourishing of others.

The American political system falters when large portions of the population remain ignorant of how their government operates and why informed citizen participation is indispensable. It appears that basic civics education has not been a high priority in primary and secondary education for several decades, perhaps longer. As a result, many adults have only a limited understanding of how our government works or what it is intended to accomplish.

Making matters worse has been three decades of right-wing talk radio and, more recently, social media dedicated to ridiculing liberal democracy, republican government, and American society in general. They have demonized minorities and women. They have spread falsehoods about social injustice, the importance of protecting civil and human rights, and the intentions of political leaders with whom they disagree. In doing so, they have deliberately fostered conditions favorable to authoritarianism. For many Americans they have become the primary source of news and the voices in which they place their trust.

This has continued for so many years that we may have lost a significant portion of several generations who will never again be open to evidence that is real and verifiable because they have been carefully schooled by what may be the most effective propaganda campaign in our nation’s history.

The resilience of our republican democracy now depends upon a concerted effort to restore civics education as a priority in our schools. It also requires every available means of providing remedial civics education for adults. Above all, it requires motivating the great number of Americans who seem at once anxious and complacent to recommit themselves to becoming informed citizens and active participants in the political process.

As for Christians—particularly those whom I have described as orthodox Christians—they have a moral obligation and a duty to God to be agents of peace, healing, and reconciliation within society. To follow Christ in the way of the cross is to obey the command to love God with all one’s heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, remembering that the neighbor is often the stranger, the alien, or even the person one dislikes or distrusts. Jesus said that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. Through the prophets, God has made abundantly clear that there are divine expectations for the ordering of society if justice is to prevail. Those expectations are revealed in the witness of the prophets, in the life and teaching of Jesus, and in the whole of the biblical witness. God shows no preference for one particular form of government, but God does expect every society to strive for justice.

To follow Christ is also to be realistic about the human condition. We are never fully able to separate ourselves from our own selfish desires and ambitions. For that reason the kingdom of God can be made known only in part. Nevertheless, Christians are called to make that part as real as they can in their own lives and, together, as the Body of Christ, the Church.

That leads to an obvious conclusion about the political responsibilities of Christians. They cannot faithfully fulfill that calling unless they are themselves well informed through reliable sources and equally committed to responsible citizenship and participation in the political process.

Lest there be any misunderstanding: Christian nationalism has no place in the life of those who follow in the way of Jesus. Our duty to God and to country is to participate with integrity in the political process as one voice among many. Our task is to encourage the nation toward justice as God has revealed it, but we have no right to impose our faith upon society. We should be especially suspicious of our own tendency to mistake our cultural preferences, political ideologies, or inherited social norms for the justice of God.

These convictions have shaped Country Parson from its beginning, and they will continue to shape every column that follows.