For almost two and a half centuries, the United States has been governed by a presidential system. Throughout that time, there have been 45 presidents, many of whom have been so popular that they served more than one term.   The Presidential System Numbers of Electoral College electors from each state for the presidential election in 2024. Source: Wikimedia Commons   The system for voting in the US head of state hasn’t always been the same. The president has always, however, not been elected by popular vote, but rather by a designated number of electors or “delegates” from each state. Early on in US history, the system of the popular vote determining the vote of the electors was adopted. As the United States has changed geographically, and politically, the number of electors from each state has changed. The first election had 69 electors, while today the number stands at a total of 538.    Detail of a portrait of George Washington by Rembrandt Peale, 1795. Source: Wikimedia Commons The first person to be elected president was, of course, George Washington, in 1789. He served until 1792 when he was re-elected. He was the first of 21 presidents who served a second term. Many of them, however, would not end up finishing their second term in office!   Two Full Terms Franklin D. Roosevelt, photographed by Leon Perskie in 1944. Source: Wikimedia Commons   A total of 14 presidents have served two full terms. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have all served two terms and each spent a total of 2,922 days in office. George Washington also served two terms. After he was elected, however, there were issues which delayed the official start of his term in office, and so he only served 2,865 days in office—slightly fewer than other presidents who served two full terms.   Only one president has served more than two full terms in office. Franklin D. Roosevelt proved so popular that he was elected for a third and even a fourth term in office. Grover Cleveland’s two terms were not consecutive; thus, he is considered the 22nd and 24th president.    More Than One Term Colorized photograph of Abraham Lincoln. Source: Wikimedia Commons   Not all the presidents elected for a second term completed their term in office. Many of them had their presidency terminated due to unforeseen disasters and unfortunate events. Some of those who served out the remainder of these terms, went on to be elected afterwards.   Portrait of Harry Truman by Martha G. Kempton, 1947, via the White House Historical Association   Harry S. Truman took over as president after Roosevelt died in office, and was later elected. Likewise, Theodore Roosevelt was vice president when President William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt took the reins of the presidency and was subsequently elected to another term. Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was similar. He took over when John F. Kennedy was shot in 1963, and then was elected in 1964 after a landslide victory. Calvin Coolidge also became president after the sudden death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Coolidge was then elected to the position of president the following year.    Richard Nixon’s official White House portrait. Source: National Archives   Richard Nixon completed a term in office and was re-elected in 1972, only to have his second term cut short after he resigned following the Watergate Scandal. Meanwhile, William McKinley and Abraham Lincoln had their second terms cut short by being assassinated   Conclusion   Serving more than two terms is currently not possible after term limits were set following Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth presidential election victory. Nevertheless, it’s almost certain that the future will bring more presidents that will prove so popular that they serve two terms.

  In the second half of the 19th century, European powers competed with each other in an effort to expand their control over the African continent. Known as the Scramble for Africa, this period of renewed colonial activity strained the relations between the Western countries. In November 1884, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck organized the so-called Berlin Conference to prevent the highly-charged contest from degenerating into armed conflicts. During four-month-long negotiations, the European countries and the United States agreed to a series of rules to regulate the colonization of Africa. The resulting General Act led to the partition of the continent among the Western powers.   The Scramble for Africa & The Berlin Conference Photo of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Berlin, 1877. Source: Lebendiges Museum Online, Deutsches Historisches Museum   In 1884, when German Chancellor Otto von Bismark gathered the representatives of thirteen European countries and the United States in Berlin, the so-called Scramble for Africa was already well underway. While the earlier European colonial efforts had focused on the Americas and Asia, in the second half of the 19th century, many European states began to look at the African continent with renewed interest. During the previous expansionist waves and the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Western powers had established a series of settlements and trading posts in the coastal areas of Africa. They rarely ventured into the hostile interior. Thus, in the 1870s, a large percentage of the continent was governed by indigenous chiefs and kings.   A decade later, in the 1880s, the Western countries, seeking to strengthen their international prestige and exploit the raw materials located in several African regions, began to exert their authority and control over the previously independent territories.   “In our time,” declared French Prime Minister Jules Ferry, “nations are great only through the activity they deploy; it is not by spreading the peaceable light of their institutions … that they are great, in the present day.”   Alongside the oldest colonialist powers, some new players, such as Belgium, Germany, and Italy, joined the mad rush to secure their hold over the most strategic areas. As a result, the Scramble for Africa led to suspicions and conflicts among the main rivals.   The opening of the Suez Canal (1869). Source: Deutsche Welle   In North Africa, for example, Great Britain and France competed over the control of Egypt, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal had turned the country into a crucial spot in the routes to the East. In 1875, taking advantage of the Egyptian government’s financial difficulties, the British managed to acquire its shares, thus becoming the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company. Then, in 1882, when the Egyptians protested the foreign involvement in their internal affairs, Great Britain occupied the country. This turn of events alarmed the French, who hoped to restore their national pride after losing Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.   As the tension among the Western powers also rose in other areas of the African continent, especially in the Congo Basin, where Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, and Great Britain struggled for control, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called an international conference in Berlin to regulate the volatile expansionist endeavors. In particular, Bismarck feared that the disorderly race over the control of the African territories would upset the balance of power he sought to achieve in Europe.   Colonization in the 19th Century Map showing the telegraph lines connecting the globe, c. 1869. Source: Princeton University   In the 19th century, a combination of economic, social, and political factors led the European powers to embark on aggressive colonialist campaigns in Africa. During the 1873 Panic and the ensuing Long Depression, for example, many industrialized Western countries saw overseas expansion as a means to secure new open markets and outlets for their investment.   Most importantly, the African continent was rich in sought-after raw materials. Besides diamonds and gold, rubber, copper, and ivory (all unavailable in Europe) were especially in demand. Rubber, for example, was employed for the insulation of the newly introduced electrical and telegraph wires.   The technological advances of the Second Industrial Revolution also played a crucial role in enabling the 19th-century expansionist rush. While the invention of the telegraph made the communication of news and information easier and faster, railways and steamboats (running on the new triple-expansion engine) revolutionized the world of transportation, making vast portions of previously hard-to-reach areas accessible to merchants, missionaries, and explorers. As steamboats, telegraph lines, and trains became increasingly common features of the African landscape, another invention, the automatic machine gun, contributed to the fast colonization of the continent. In particular, the new type of firearm widened the technological gap in armaments between the Europeans and the African people, thus accelerating the rate of territorial conquest.   Henry Morton Stanley. Source: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC   Before the 19th century, Africa was a largely unexplored area of the globe. The Western powers, busy with the Atlantic Slave Trade and the strengthening of the commercial routes with the East, had little interest in venturing into the hostile interior of the continent. The impenetrable forests separating the coastline from the hinterland, the unnavigable rivers, and the vast desertic regions discouraged traders and travelers from exploring most of Africa.   However, the new technology, alongside the improvement of quinine, a medicine now effective against malaria, led numerous Western geographers, naturalists, explorers, and missionaries to reach new regions. As a result, cartographers were gradually able to fill their previously blank maps of Africa with rivers and lakes.   European and American newspapers and journals regularly regaled their readers with stories of the most famous exploration missions, going as far as directly hiring reporters to travel to Africa. In 1871, the New York Herald sent journalist Henry Morton Stanley to Central Africa to locate David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary who had gone missing while searching for the source of the Nile.   In the second half of the 19th century, the explorers began to collaborate with the Western powers, signing treaties on their behalf with African chiefs. Often mistranslated, the treaties allowed the European countries to exploit the local resources and establish their control in the continent.   “Heart of Darkness”: The Struggle Over the Congo Basin King Leopold II of Belgium. Source: National Galleries Scotland   Stanley’s mission caught the attention of King Leopold II of Belgium, who had embarked on an ambitious expansionist policy. In particular, Leopold II aimed to establish his authority over the Congo Basin, seeking to exploit its resources to increase his wealth. To this end, in the 1870s, he founded the International Association of the Congo with the financial backing of a group of bankers. Then, at the beginning of the 1880s, the king sent Stanley on an expedition to the central African region.   From 1879 to 1882, the American reporter explored the areas surrounding the Congo River, negotiating treaties with the local chiefs and studying how to open up the basin to trade and colonization. Thus, in 1884, shortly before the Berlin Conference, Leopold II stated his claim over the entire Congo Basin, hoping to turn the territory into his personal colony.   As Stanley’s expedition unveiled the previously impenetrable African region to the Europeans, other Western countries became interested in the Congo Basin, turning it into perhaps the most sought-after overseas territory. France, for example, dispatched the Italian-born explorer Pierre de Brazza to Central Africa, where he founded the city of Brazzaville. As a result, Great Britain, attempting to thwart its colonial rivals’ expansionist designs on the area, opted to support Portugal’s claims on the Congo River. However, the bilateral negotiations between the two countries failed to reach an agreement.   Toward the end of 1884, in the face of the mounting tension, the Western powers finally agreed to meet in Berlin to introduce some rules in their frenetic Scramble for Africa.   The Berlin Conference Bismarck carves up Africa during the Berlin Conference. Source: Deutsche Welle   In Berlin, the participants of the conference focused on three main tasks: ensuring freedom of trade in the Congo Basin, establishing freedom of navigation on the Niger and Congo Rivers, and regulating the future colonization of African territories.   At the same time, the Berlin Conference recognized King Leopold II’s authority over the Congo region, where he formed the Congo Free State. On February 26, 1885, after four months of negotiations, the representatives of all nations signed the General Act of the Berlin Conference, thus agreeing to abide by the newly established rules in their future expansionist campaigns.   To avoid the outbreak of armed conflicts, Article 35 of the General Act stated that “any Power which henceforth takes possession of a tract of land on the coasts of the African continent outside of its present possessions … shall accompany the respective act with a notification thereof, addressed to the other Signatory Powers of the present Act, in order to enable them, if need be, to make good any claims of their own.”   Nine Congolese prisoners chained together. Source: Wellcome Collection   The following Article 36 introduced a further requirement to rein in the chaotic colonial rush. Commonly known as “effective occupation,” the new norm committed the “signatory powers” to “insure the establishment of authority in the regions occupied by them on the coasts of the African continent sufficient to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of trade and of transit.”   As they normalized the ongoing partition of Africa, the Western powers depicted their imperialist policy as a civilizing mission consisting of “instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization.”   In 1899, British writer Rudyard Kipling famously referred to this mission as “the white’s man burden.” In 1885, while the participants of the Berlin Conference committed themselves to “watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being,” they neglected to invite the African leaders to take part at the meeting which would define the future of their countries.   New Imperialism & The Aftermath of the Berlin Conference The partition of Africa after the Berlin Conference. Source: Stanford News   Far from slowing down the Scramble of Africa, the Berlin Conference accelerated the Western powers’ rush to expand their spheres of influence. At the outbreak of World War I, around 90 percent of Africa had been colonized. Only Liberia and Ethiopia remained independent. In 1896, Ethiopia’s emperor had successfully thwarted Italy’s expansionist endeavor during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. The partition of the continent among European countries had disastrous effects on the indigenous African peoples. In the Congo Free State, for example, the local population was decimated and slaughtered under King Leopold II’s harsh rule.   In the years following the Berlin Conference, the rules established in the General Act were only partially followed. Indeed, the notification requirement and the principle of “effective occupation” were ultimately unsuccessful in ending the rivalry between the colonialist powers, which continued to pursue their expansionist endeavors.   Contrary to their alleged pledge to preserve and protect the “native tribes,” the European countries proceeded to carve out their spheres of influence without any consideration for the already existing ethnic, linguistic, and cultural groups. The political and social effects of the artificial boundaries established during the Scramble for Africa still endure today.   Photo of the Congo Basin. Source: The Ecologist   Regardless of the effectiveness of the normative framework established by the Berlin Conference, the meeting legally and ideologically legitimized the Scramble for Africa. Thus, the event is commonly held as the embodiment of 19th-century New Imperialism, a period of territorial expansion justified by the erroneous belief in the superiority of the white race.   “It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best, the most human, most honorable race the world possesses,” claimed Cecil Rhodes in 1877.   Similarly, Jules Ferry, addressing France’s colonial policy, declared: “We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races … I repeat, that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races.”

How to Handle Disagreements Among the Body September 11 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. – >1 Peter 3:8 Veteran American League baseball umpire Bill Guthrie was working behind the plate one afternoon, and the catcher for the visiting team was repeatedly protesting his calls. Guthrie endured this for a number of innings, and then he spoke up. "Son," he said softly, "you've been a big help to me in calling balls and strikes today, and I appreciate it. But I think I've got the hang of it now, so I'm going to ask you to go to the clubhouse and show whoever's there how to take a shower." Among believers today, some of the most bitter arguments are those that don't have to be so divisive if only we'd address them in a loving way. When we think about nonessential issues such as worship style, what the pastor wears, and how our churches are arranged, we can disagree on these things without being disagreeable. The truth is, we simpy can't allow the all-important work of expanding God's Kingdom to be thwarted by arguments of little to no eternal value. So don't be divided by arguments that are ultimately insignificant. Push through your minor disagreements with one another and work together for the Kingdom of God! Prayer Challenge Pray that God would give you the patience and understanding you need to stay unified with other believers – even when you disagree. Questions for Thought What's one issue you have a strong opinion about that other Christians may disagree with you? When it comes to being unified in faith and reaching the world for Christ, what can you do to put aside petty differences and move forward together with other believers? Visit the Senior Living Ministries website The post How to Handle Disagreements Among the Body – Senior Living – September 12 appeared first on GodUpdates.

Spend time with God today asking him how you can put your faith into action. In what ways has the love of God been demonstrated to you? In what ways can you share with those around you the incredible gift that’s been given to you?

During the Nazi party’s rise in the 1930s, a document was adopted by the Confessing Church in Germany known as the Barmen Declaration. The statement affirmed the church’s allegiance to Jesus Christ as its one true head and rejected the idea that other powers, ideologies, or leaders could claim ultimate authority over Christian faith and practice. It also emphasized the church’s autonomy in spiritual matters and Scripture’s primacy in guiding Christian life and thought. Recently, a new statement was released by some center and center-left evangelical Christians in America. Titled “Our Confession of Evangelical Conviction,” the statement is a conspicuous effort at replicating the Barmen Declaration, both in format and theme. It’s a good thing that they see the need for Christians to engage in political theology and warn against political excess. But the statement falls short because the signatories misunderstand (1) what politics fundamentally is in this age and (2) the necessity of political action. It’s hard to read this new confession and disagree with any word in it. The statement is correct in virtually all its seven assertions about Jesus Christ’s supremacy over worldly political regimes and about the dehumanizing attitudes that can corrupt Christian political witness. Yet something essential is missing. It demonstrates continued gaps in how Christians approach questions of applying their faith to politics. Confusing Nature and Grace The new statement is confused over the relationship between nature and grace. It ends up telling us almost nothing about how to properly relate Christianity to politics. It becomes a vacuous declaration that one gets the impression is a way to tsk-tsk rightward-facing evangelicals. We first must consider some background on the relationship between nature and grace. This is shorthand theological phrasing for the relationship between God’s plan for creation and God’s plan for redemption and how these spheres overlap. We might phrase it this way: What does my redeemed life in Christ mean for my creaturely existence in the world and the world’s institutions right now? Do worldly affairs really matter, or should I spend my time preparing for heaven? In my view, the spheres overlap. God’s kingdom has begun but is not consummated in full. Given that the kingdom is not consummated, the integrity of creation order persists and must be responsibly stewarded. Life in Christ should deepen our commitment to creation order since we are awakened to God’s original plan for it. As for how that relates to Christianity and politics, various questions come to mind: Is political power the antithesis of Christian meekness? What responsibility does Christianity have to uphold creation-order goods: the value of life, human embodiment, marriage, family, and vocation? How does my Christian life relate to my American life? Does redemption evacuate us of political responsibilities? Nature-grace paradigms are underneath various approaches to political theology. Theonomists and Christian Nationalists tend to over-emphasize nature and heavy-handed political engagement. Anabaptists tend to over-emphasize grace and view politics as futile, worldly, and corrupting. These tensions explain how confusing, blurring, or negating the roles of nature and grace in evangelical political engagement create conflicting visions as to what evangelical political witness ought to look like. A proper relationship between nature and grace shapes the purpose of the state and civil society, too. Jesus’s kingship does not suspend creational realities like politics. Creation order remains in full force today, giving temporal and common grace to all—obligating obedience by all. The statement’s confusion on the nature-grace question is found in article 5: “We are committed to the prophetic mission of the Church.” It goes on to say, We affirm that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), therefore the Church necessarily stands apart from earthly political powers so that it may speak prophetically to all people, the society, and governing authorities. The Church has been given a divine mission of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). First, we call everyone to be reconciled to God through the proclamation of the Gospel as we teach people everywhere to copy the way of Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20). Second, we seek to reconcile people to one another by addressing issues of justice, righteousness, and peace (Amos 5:24). We accomplish this by loving our neighbors (Mark 12:31), and by engaging our public life with humility, integrity, and a commitment to the common good as defined by our faith in Christ (Romans 12:18). We reject both the call for the Church to withdraw from societal issues out of fear of political contamination, as well as any attempt to distort the Church into a mere vehicle of political or social power. This statement tells us affirmatively nothing about what means are appropriate to steward society in the furtherance of the “common good” they commit themselves to promoting. The statement’s posture seems condemnatory of what they perceive as worldliness in the church when it comes to politics. But then article 5 also says withdrawal from society is problematic. So which is it? Should we embrace piety on the margins of society or public engagement toward the common good? And what about those who are obstacles to the common good? By what means are impediments to the common good disempowered? Political by Nature This is where the confusion over the nature-grace relationship comes to the forefront. Once Christians are serious about enacting God’s prophetic mission—which necessarily includes testifying of God’s authority over creation—that will mean playing politics. But politics is what we’re told in this statement is prone to corruption, worldliness, and partisan rancor. This confusion stems from an improper understanding of what politics is in this age in relation to God’s coming kingdom. Politics and government are creation-order institutions meant for the common good of all. There’s no redemptive narrative wrapped up in politics. It’s about the stewarding of power for the benefit of all. The government’s authority is derivative of God’s authority. Government—and therefore, power—aren’t intrinsically wrong things. It means, among many possible pursuits pertaining to the common good, securing the rights of individuals to live (so “no” to abortion), upholding the truth about our embodiment as males and females (so  “no” to transgenderism), promoting the natural family as society’s cornerstone (so “no” to same-sex marriage), and securing liberty to live in accordance with the truth (so “yes” to religious liberty). Politics and government are creation-order institutions meant for the common good of all. All those key pillars of the common good are under siege, formally, by the Democrats—the party supported and embraced by many of the confession’s signatories. Are the signatories calling for gross violations against the unborn to stop? Or for a return to God’s plan for marriage? If they are, then why do so many identify with a political party that opposes the common good? Questions like healthcare are prudential applications of the common good. Whether a human being is killed in their mother’s womb is not. We need a better understanding of political power than what this statement calls for—which means we need continued work on the relationship between nature and grace. How we understand the connection between our natural world and God’s grace is crucial in Christian ethics. It helps us balance our earthly lives with our hope for heaven. We must learn to appreciate nature without it eclipsing grace (or making grace extraneous). We must appreciate grace without it consuming nature in this age. Grace leavens (fallen) nature but isn’t an enemy of nature. Grace restores nature. Grace sets nature free from sin’s bondage. The eternal doesn’t obliterate the temporal; the eternal broadens the peripheral of the temporal. There’s nothing wrong with making political claims, even partisan claims, if those are truly in the furtherance of the common good. Why? Because that’s what politics simply is: the organizing of power for the sake of mutual benefit. Ends of Political Power For too long, evangelical political discourse has assumed politics is inherently worldly and compromising. It can be. Trusting in political power can lead to idolatry and misplaced hope. But politics is chiefly about ordering our life together within the city of man. It’s a matter of stewardship. How that ordering is brought about occurs through the exercise of power within the government apparatus. The government is a God-ordained institution established to execute justice. It does so through the preponderance of justly exercised power. Wielding political power is the difference between millions of dead unborn children and power that prevents such atrocities. Virtuous power is when power is pursued for the sake of justice. Virtuous power is when power is pursued for the sake of justice. Power is teleological: To what end is power being used? This statement seems to assume that the gospel is the solution to political fracture. It is and isn’t. That sounds controversial, but stay with me. The gospel saves sinners and awakens them to the things of God. It allows for a deep and eternal unity. Political unity refers to a unity of common ends, not eternal ends. Yes, I need my political foe to ultimately understand that Christ is Lord. But I also need my political foe defeated if they’re wrong with regard to the substance of what politics is and political morality requires: political justice done to procure and advance the institutions of creation order necessary for the common good. The gospel can unite political foes if and only if the one who has the wrong political morality has his error rectified in light of Christ. Until a political foe stops opposing God’s authority over creation order, he is indeed a political foe, and power should be wielded against him so he can stop doing harm. But this new statement erases these realities and creates moral equivocations that end up doing little else than justifying votes for platforms that continue their assault on the common good. Believing one side is acting against the common good doesn’t necessarily justify supporting the other side. The solution isn’t to undermine the common good by choosing the lesser of two evils. The solution is to use political power to promote the common good using the available means within a political community. Navigating the complexities of modern politics is difficult. But Christians must recognize that political power, when wielded justly, can be a tool for promoting the common good and upholding God’s created order. This requires discernment, wisdom, and a willingness to engage in the political process without compromising core biblical principles. The need of the hour is to develop a robust political theology that balances heavenly citizenship with earthly responsibility, allowing us all to be both faithful witnesses to Christ’s kingdom and effective stewards of our temporal societies.

Nearly 25 years after its publication, Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone continues to be a defining text in 21st-century life. So much so that a new documentary film, Join or Die (screening nationwide on September 15 as part of a new series, In Real Life Movie Club), aims to re-up the book’s arguments for a new generation of readers. The book’s thesis is more urgent than ever and the stakes higher (as the documentary’s title suggests). The correlated trends Putnam flagged—declining civic community and organizational membership and declining public trust—have only gotten worse. The internet and social media are a big part of why these trends have worsened (more on that later), and the deep entrenchment of digital formation makes it all the harder to reverse course. Directed by Rebecca Davis and Pete Davis (author of Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing), Join or Die begins by describing itself as “a film about why you should join a club . . . and why the fate of America depends on it.” It presents data on the decades-long decline in associations, both formal (PTA, Kiwanis, Lions Clubs, bowling leagues, church membership, etc.) and informal (dinner parties, picnics, etc.). The documentary summarizes Putnam’s big idea that social networks have value—what he calls “social capital”—and that this is what clubs and similar associations provide. Social capital produces trust and a norm of generalized reciprocity, and it’s an essential ingredient for a healthy democracy. An impressive array of bipartisan talking head commentary is included (e.g., David Brooks, Glenn Loury, Mike Lee, Pete Buttigieg, and Hillary Clinton), testifying to the broad influence and relevance of Putnam’s ideas. But the film’s implications go beyond politics and have huge relevance for the church. Because while “bowling alone” might have dire temporal implications for the waxing and waning of democracy, the spiritual corollary—“believing alone”—has eternal implications. Believing Alone: ‘My Own Little Thing with the Lord’ Join or Die mentions declining church membership as a big part of the overall problem, as churches have long been vital venues for cultivating civic life. As Putnam’s Bowling Alone research assistant puts it in the film, “Religion provides at least half of the social capital in the United States.” The film observes that the things you learn to do at church—run a meeting, give a speech, organize people to solve community problems—are transferable skills to other civic groups. As the vitality of church communities wanes, the ripple effects are felt throughout civic life. As the vitality of church communities wane, the ripple effects are felt throughout civic life. But the film’s emphasis on the civic implications of declining church membership is only part of why the “dechurching” trend is concerning. The spiritual implications of “believing without belonging” are even more dire. Yet this is clearly the trend of religious affiliation in America: identification with a faith without bothering with the inconveniences and uncomfortable dynamics of a faith community; curating a bespoke, tailored-to-me spirituality rather than committing to an institution; having an individualized relationship with Jesus but opting out of church. A quote from a New York Times article earlier this year has lingered with me as a representative example of what’s going on. The article features 67-year-old Karen Johnson, who grew up in a Lutheran church and even taught Sunday School as an adult but no longer goes to church: She still identifies as an evangelical Christian, but she doesn’t believe going to church is necessary to commune with God. “I have my own little thing with the Lord,” she says. Ms. Johnson’s thing includes frequent prayer, she said, as well as podcasts and YouTube channels that discuss politics and “what’s going on in the world” from a right-wing, and sometimes Christian, worldview. This is how we do spirituality in the digital age. In a world of smartphones, algorithms, and one-click consumerism, we expect everything to cater to us on our terms, fast and frictionless. That’s why something like committed involvement in a local church—which is anything but fast and frictionless—becomes counterintuitive. Why bother with church when spiritual “content” is in ample supply on YouTube? Why submit myself to a religious “system” (in which I might not fully align with all tenets or all participants all the time) when online life lets me be religious on my own terms, fed only by the voices and expressions I like? Technology’s Role Putnam mentions the effects of technology and media on the overall degradation of community, with TV an especially big culprit (he wrote Bowling Alone in the 1990s): “The more TV people watched, the less they went out to connect with other people,” he says in the film. “We’re now watching Friends rather than having friends.” If Putnam wrote the book today, I think he’d need to make digital technology—the shaping effects of the internet and social media—more central in his overall diagnosis. In A Web of Our Making (2023), an incisive, deep-dive analysis of the nature of digital formation, Antón Barba-Kay argues that online life shapes us to associate with others in a few-strings-attached way that prioritizes convenience, efficiency, “empowered individuality,” and pain avoidance—where we can “retreat, refrain, or abstract [ourselves] at any point.” Our preferences and comfort reign supreme online, leading us to “identify, speak to, and transact with others who already share our views and preferences.” We live in a “scrolling alone” world where we listen to the voices and ideas that resonate and mute those that don’t. In this world, each of us is ever more conditioned to subject all things, including relationships and religious beliefs, to the transactional, hypersubjective logic of swiping, scrolling, subscribing, and unsubscribing. This scrolling alone world naturally becomes the believing alone world. But that comes with great risk for our overall spiritual health. Faith Formed by Feeds Churchless Christianity is dangerous because it invariably becomes unaccountable to anyone but you and your whims and preferences. Your faith gradually takes the shape of your Facebook feed—a prison of your own algorithmically mirrored disordered desires; a narcissistic echo chamber that, by becoming so much about serving you, becomes totally untrustworthy as a source of truth independent of you. The scrolling alone world naturally becomes the believing alone world. But that comes with great risk for our overall spiritual health. Without the accountability of others in a church community—others who love Jesus as you do but are otherwise very different from you (often uncomfortably so)—we’re prone to adopt an iteration of faith formed in the image of some highly online tribe. And an online tribe is different from an offline community. We look to tribes to have our preferences affirmed and our biases validated. We look to communities and institutions to form our preferences and challenge our biases. Barba-Kay highlights the central problem of the way digital life warps our understanding of community: “It is an online mistake to think of human communities as platforms for furthering our readymade desires, since it is precisely within families, friendships, neighborhoods, congregations, clubs, and other organizations that our desires come to have shared, recognizable, and higher aspirations in the first place.” We’re positively formed in a real-life community precisely because it isn’t primarily beholden to our preferences. A local church is a crucial part of spiritual health precisely because it’s awkward, uncomfortable, inconvenient, and often costly. Barba-Kay describes strong communities as those where we must “inescapably work out our differences about shared concerns,” regularly forced to “come to grips with those we think disagreeable or dead wrong, with those whom we are tempted to despise.” Countercultural Choice It’s countercultural to choose this type of community in a world where online “community” has come to be a seamless, smooth, consumer-friendly experience. But if we want to grow, and discover truly transformative, way-bigger-than-me truth, we have to resist the allure of a “believing alone” life. A “me and Jesus” solitary faith is fickle and fragile, not to mention often heterodox. A local-church-formed faith isn’t perfect but generally more durable and secure, drawing us out of the deceptions of consumer autonomy and into the wisdom of Scripture-bound community. Believing together is a path to spiritual life. Believing alone is often a path to spiritual decay. Let’s preach this truth to one another, and to ourselves, recognizing that the “join or die” stakes are high not just for the future of healthy democracy but for the future of thriving faith.

You Hate Trump? So What?

An excavation of the ancient city of Myra and its harbor, Port Andriake, in southwestern Turkey has uncovered plates and fragments of millefiori glass from the 5th century numbering in the hundreds. The intact glass plates are about four inches square and every one of them is different. Conservators have puzzled together close to 30 plates that are virtually complete. There are hundreds more small pieces currently being put together. Millefiori, Italian for “a thousand flowers,” is a glasswork technique that layers tiny glass canes of different colors and then fuses them together to create an kaleidoscopic explosion of floral and geometric patterns. The rods are arranged by hand and the fusing process adds an element of randomness, so no two patterns are ever the same. A popular technique in antiquity since the 1st century and still today, millefiori glassware has been found in many parts of the Roman Empire, but not in Turkey. Researchers have found references to one or two millefiori artifacts in the scholarship, but not the objects themselves. Even finding one complete plate in Turkey would be a stunning discovery, but the quantity and quality of the millefiori glassware in the Andriake excavation is unprecedented. The plates were unearthed in room 42 of the customs area of Andriake’s agora. It was at the corner of the agora and the main granary, the most important location of the harbor. Archaeologists think the building had an administrative function. The millefiori pieces are believed to have been used as wall decoration in this building, along with other glass elements. The team also found opus sectile (marble and stone cut to form mosaic figures and patterns) depicting birds, camels and saints. The opus sectile saints are also unique on the archaeological record of Turkey. Archaeologists were able to date the millefiori glass to the 5th and 6th centuries thanks to other objects found in the same archaeological layer, including ceramics and coins. They also found glass rods that had not yet been layered, cut and fused, evidence that the millefiori were not only imported, but also  manufactured there. The discovery of these millefiori glass elements and other decorative techniques in Andriake challenges the notion that such sophisticated glass techniques and mural decorations were exclusive to the larger centers of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, suggesting there was a sufficiently developed network of trade and communication to allow the diffusion of these techniques to more remote places like Andriake.