The good, the sad, and the ugly
Campaign 2016 | Campaign 2016 has turned American politics on its head and raised sharp new divides in the electorate. Here’s an inside look at how lessons from the past year could prepare American Christians for the next season
by Jamie Dean
Vol. 31, No. 23 - November 12, 2016
Posted on Friday, October 28, 2016, at 1:00 am
WORLD magazine (lengthy - excerpted)In many ways, my year of covering the 2016 presidential elections began in July 2015 on a rutted, dirt road in northern Nigeria.
I was covering Boko Haram’s ravaging of Christian communities in the country’s beleaguered Northeast, and I had spent days walking through the ash heaps of churches burned by extremists and sitting in hospital rooms with crippled widowers who lost limbs and wives because they refused to renounce Christ.
Meanwhile, a quiet question kept surfacing in conversations with Christian leaders in the area: Could this suffering have been lessened if the United States had intervened sooner?
It would become one of the largely ignored themes of the 2016 presidential campaign: Did Hillary Clinton’s State Department delay declaring Boko Haram a terrorist organization because of wealthy Nigerian donors to the Clinton Foundation charity? Did that delay cost Christians and others their lives?
As the sun set over a town recently occupied by Islamist terrorists, I didn’t think about presidential politics as a group of Nigerian Christians held choir practice in the crumbling hull of a torched church. I just listened as believers in brightly colored dresses clapped, swayed, beat drums, and sang praises to the Lord in a literal pile of ashes and destruction.
I realized these often-unseen Christians were teaching a lesson worthy of displaying to the rest of the world and certainly to comfortable believers in the United States: how the joy of the Lord is our strength, even when the days seem darkest.
WHEN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED LAST SUMMER, the days didn’t seem so dark to many conservatives.
The GOP field included an upbeat senator from Florida, a retired neurosurgeon from inner-city Detroit, a Texas senator willing to stare down foes, the former CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and the wonky-but-likable brother of former President George W. Bush. Trump seemed like an anomaly.
But that was his strength. ...
For some, panic did seem to creep in after Trump and Clinton clinched their parties’ nominations. Clinton’s later-than-expected victory over Sanders came as the FBI investigated her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.
FBI Director James Comey concluded her conduct was “extremely careless” but not criminal. Later emails would suggest the State Department pressured the FBI to declassify certain emails in what an FBI official called a quid pro quo.
During the spring, WORLD published its investigation into the Clinton Foundation: Evidence suggested Clinton’s State Department may have delayed declaring Boko Haram a terrorist organization because of wealthy Nigerian donors.
Meanwhile, Clinton launched her bid as the presumptive Democratic nominee at Planned Parenthood and reiterated her call to allow federal funds to pay for millions of abortions for the first time in 40 years.
AS SUMMER BEGAN, an amazing reality set in: America’s two major political parties were about to nominate two profoundly troubling candidates whom many Americans said they didn’t trust. For some Christians, the choice felt like a judgment as much as a dilemma. ...
