On Tuesday the Daily Beast website announced the latest Gallup poll findings with this headline, “Gallup Survey Finds a Majority of Americans Still Religious.” Based on 300,000 interviews the survey found that seven out of ten Americans consider themselves “moderate or very religious.” That’s 70% of this nation!

I’m afraid I have to agree with the blogger who commented: “Black Friday—the most embarrassing day of the year for me as an American.” He then embedded in his blog someone’s video clip of shoppers in a real, live melee at Wal-Mart last Friday. Embarrassing? You be the judge (http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/). But perhaps even more embarrassing is the latest sales report from retailers.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, his acclaimed history of the Pilgrims, recounts how William Bradford, the intrepid leader of that courageous band of Puritans, years later described “that first morning in America.” Recalling with wonder their landing on the salty, windswept shores of Cape Cod Bay on November 15, 1620, Bradford wrote: “But here I cannot stay and make a pause and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition. . . .

All that’s left of the election on this morning after is a handful of janitors in Chicago and Boston, sweeping up the scattered confetti or packing it away for another day. I realize we live in a world where life pretty much is defined by winning and losing, the victors and the vanquished. But in all candor, wouldn’t it be glorious if we could come up with a way that would excise the sting of defeat from sports and politics and academics and business and church and relationships and life?

Does America have a future? Of course it does. But I fear for it. The presidential debate on Tuesday evening reveals a nation sharply divided, each candidate championing the cause of his political supporters.

The internet and wire services have been abuzz with this week’s national survey report from Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. “For the first time in this nation’s history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority” (http://news.yahoo.com/report-us-protestants-lost-majority...). The new study reports that Protestant adults now comprise 48% of the nation. And apparently nobody is surprised.

A few nights ago, Karen and I stood on the portico of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital. It was this Lincoln who once observed, “It is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.” The adage may be true for politics, but not for evangelism—that divine calling that compels the community of faith to both plead what it must and prove what it can on behalf of Christ’s evangel.

That’s what colleges and universities across the land are discovering! Here’s how Justin Pope announced it: “College health officials are finally realizing that healthy sleep habits are a potential miracle drug for much of what ails the famously frazzled modern American college student: anxiety, depression, physical health problems and—more than most students realize—academic troubles.

Now that the brouhahas of the two major political parties in this nation are behind us—namely their back-to-back presidential-nominating conventions—allow me this moment of non-partisan reflection. The longer I live and the more presidential campaigns I survive, the deeper grows my conviction that the life of unabashed self-advancement that seems a requisite to politics these days is blatantly antithetical to the radical call of Christ.

Could it be it is darker than we’ve imagined? “The Dark Night Rises”—but do we comprehend how dark this night? Two emails—one at the beginning of the summer and the other at the end—have set in motion a chain of thoughts. Maybe for you, too. The first email came from a young friend of mine, a student at this university, who is in Bangkok, Thailand, on a short-term mission: “Hello Pastor Dwight—Doing student missions over here in Thailand this semester has been quite eye opening.