Morning in America Again: 7 Reflections from Trump's Election

It’s morning again in America.

—Ad for Ronald Reagan, 1984

It is official: Donald Trump is the 47th President of America. For the second time in my lifetime, Trump has stormed the political scene, and won an election that many thought he could not win. By any fair measure, Trump is a political supernova, a force, a once-in-a-lifetime figure, a unique and complicated man who fought the most ferocious outbreak of woke paganism the modern world has witnessed, and triumphed.

But mark this well: Trump is not the true victor here. God is the one who has acted in immeasurable mercy toward our nation. God is the one who gets all the glory and deserves all the praise. In his magnificent kindness and common grace, God has chosen to spare us the plenteous vicissitudes of a Harris administration. The magnitude of common grace in this act is nearly unprecedented in Western history.

This is not hyperbole. We are in one of those rare moments right now when it is clear, abundantly clear, that we are at a hinge point in history. I say this because Kamala Harris represented the specter of Hades in her candidacy. This is not too strong. Death was Harris’s platform. Abortion was her cardinal value, her cherished principle, the beacon that lit her way. Killing precious babies was Harris’s policy. That’s what she ran on.

Not just that, though. Harris took on the very platform of paganism in her candidacy. Most everything that is good, Harris opposed, and opposed to the strong support of the mainstream media, Hollywood, the American academy, and the general drift of our culture. Harris wanted to normalize marijuana usage; transgenderism; the dissolution of traditional strong manhood; crippling federal debt; a truly borderless nation; a weak global presence, with Israel preyed on by a snapping pack of jackals; and much more.

Hear this clear as a bell: Kamala Harris’s campaign was an inversion campaign. In her platform, she championed the inverse of what God loves and blesses. God loves life; Harris proclaimed the liberating goodness of death. God establishes borders; Harris tried to make our country an open country, borderless and subject to a quiet invasion. God loves children; Harris sang the virtues of gender “transitions.”

Kamala Harris, lest we misunderstand, promoted the most wicked agenda we have ever witnessed in modern presidential politics. Had she won the 2024 American presidency, it is hard to see what limits could be reasonably placed on her perverse power. It is not exaggeration or fearmongering to say that she would likely have destroyed America. And what can one say but this: if God had appointed such an end, would he not be just?

But God appointed a different outcome. He has—I repeat myself—acted in magnificent kindness and undeserved mercy to hold back evil in America. He has not done this because of us. He has done this because he decided, before there was time, to preserve America. Our country as we have known it still stands. It has been battered, it has buckled, it has barely survived, but its heart still beats. America yet lives.

We are like Britain in the summer of 1945. The powers of darkness lost World War II, and would have subsumed the world in tyranny without the punishing stand of Britain (with Churchill as the heroic living center of that effort). But lest we forget, Britain came out of the war in a diminished and exhausted state. So it is with us.

We have come through a nightmare, we have woken up in our beds, and it is morning in America. But we have so much to fight for, and so much work to do. With that said, let me offer seven brief reflections on the future implications of Trump’s victory for the church of Jesus Christ.

First, this election was a referendum on wokeness. Just like that, the long horrible night of 2018-24 is over. It’s done and dusted. Wokeness just received the most severe rebuke possible; in truth, Trump’s election is not merely a rebuke but a repudiation of wokeness. Harris championed social justice in manifold ways, but we have watched as one major company after another has rolled back their noxious DEI initiatives.

I do not mean, of course, that our battle with wokeness is over. It is not over, not by a long shot. But many Americans have come to understand just how pernicious and destructive woke ideology is, as I’ve outlined in this book. This is cause for thanksgiving. This is what God has done in our midst. We praise Him for this.

Second, this election was a referendum on men invading women’s spaces. It is wrong, objectively wrong, for men to use womens’ restrooms. It is wrong, objectively wrong, for men to play womens’ sports. It took a little bit, but Republicans eventually started voicing these truths. They did so rightly, because Americans have increasingly grasped just how wicked it is for men to invade women’s spaces.

We have much more work to do on these fronts, to be sure. However, we need to see that things have well and truly flipped on the women’s issue. Evangelicals used to be the dread foe of feminists. Nowadays, whatever our standing disagreements, we are some of the only folks out there who are willing to protect women’s spaces and women’s sports. For those familiar with the history of feminism and evangelicalism, this is a truly stunning cultural reversal.

My hope here is that this advocacy will lead not merely to political and societal good, but to the salvation of souls. We Christians are truly pro-woman. The pro-transgenderism left cannot make that claim any longer, and many now see this. Let’s pray for many women who have been left out in the cold by the supposedly pro-woman left to come in to the warmth of the family of God. May it be so.

Third, America is no longer captive to the celebrity-media-academy complex. It used to be that the endorsements of celebrities and Ivy League professors carried massive weight. No longer. So too with the hit-pieces and advocacy journalistic practices of elite media.

Many in America now openly distrust legacy voices and legacy institutions. There can be a downside to this, to be sure. But it is a good thing that many people have turned to more trustworthy outlets than the once-influential leftist collective of Hollywood personalities, Beltway reporters, and Harvard professors. A new and chaotic day has dawned.

Fourth, the left will punch back. We should not think that Trump’s election means game over in the political arena. No, it means game on. In other words, the fight for goodness, truth, and beauty has not concluded; it has just begun. The modern left is motivated—as I said above—by causes that are positively diabolical in many respects. This dark energy is not going away.

Satan, we recall, is a roaring lion. He roams the earth, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). He is a defeated devil, overcome by the power of the cross as I have explored in this book (Genesis 3:15; Colossians 2:13-15; 1 John 3:8). But he is still able to work terrible evil on the earth. He is not done with America.

Satan will continue to try to send many sinners to hell. He will continue to try to ruin children through “gender affirming care.” He will keep fanning the flames of the culture of death. He will keep working through political means to erode religious liberty and silence the preaching of the gospel. In these and many other ways, Satan will redouble his efforts in this country. Many will follow his lead. So we must be ready. (More on this in a moment.)

Fifth, a new Christian political movement is dawning. For about 10-15 years now, some evangelicals—particularly the leadership class—ran the “be winsome” play. They engaged the political world like it was a cocktail reception, and their chief responsibility was to be charming, likeable, and to make as many friends as possible. This had massive effects on the church’s political witness.

Chief among them: the church went largely quiet on controversial matters, and fell prey to the foolish idea that the left and right are morally equivalent. But in the last several years, it is like God has performed an exorcism on the church. At least, on some who formerly walked in undiscerning moral darkness.

Guilted and shamed by evangelical leaders, these Christians have come to see that they are not vile “culture warriors” because they hold biblical convictions. They have come to see that they are merely walking the faithful convictional path cut for us by God in ages past, a path trodden by figures like Joseph, Esther, David, Daniel, and many others.

So, the old has gone. The new has come. We do not yet know how Christians will regroup and reorganize in days ahead. But hear this: there is something coming. There needs to be a new movement in our midst. We cannot, for example, allow the cause of the unborn to be sidelined in the future. We must build a new coalition.

Sixth, Christians must engage the public square. As I am at pains to say, we evangelicals are not doing politics the old harmless way anymore. The days of a disengaged, docile, uncaring, undiscerning church are over. In days ahead, we're not trying to be nice. We're not going to be quiet. We're not currying the favor of elites. We will stand boldly and unflinchingly for God's truth.

Do not misunderstand me. We're not going to hate our neighbor. We’re not going to approach politics as if it is a zero-sum game. Nor are we going to fall into the trap of confusing the mission of the church with the mission of the state. No, we are going to do everything we can in manner and policy to love our neighbor (Matthew 22:34-39). We want to be a people marked by just this posture: love.

But love is not the same as being seen as nice. Love has a gracious manner, definitely, but love does the hard work that needs to be done. Love motivates us, for example, to do what is genuinely good for our neighbor even if our neighbor thinks that action is hateful. How important this divine principle is for Christians living in the “negative world.”

For too long evangelicals have tried to get a seat at the respectable Beltway table. Let us have done with those grasping efforts. So let it be said, so let it be done: the days of the church’s Washingtonian captivity are over. They are done and dusted. We are not going back to the old ways. In faith, hope, love, and iron conviction, we're moving forward.

Let us engage our culture like never before. (Check out this resource toward that end.) Here is one way this can take practical form: Christians should run for office like never before. Let this election be a wake-up call to us all. The days are fleeting, and the time is short. We must not sit back. We must not assume that someone else will show up to do the dirty work of cultural and societal engagement. In much prayer, we must do it.

Seventh, we must pray without ceasing. This is the key to it all. We must be a praying church once more. We must pray for the protection of President Trump. We must pray for him to love righteousness and hate evil, and to know the saving grace of Christ. We must pray for the good of our country. We must pray for the church to regain its footing, to leave behind wokeness, to embrace Scripture, to proclaim the gospel while also being salt and light.

Conclusion

There is so much more to say here. This humble essay has just barely scratched the surface about our current moment. But one thing is clear to me, and I’m guessing to many others: God has chosen in his magnificent mercy and kindness to not give us over to the darkness. We are not yet finished. We have hope. We still have time (until Christ returns, that is).

We have all lived through a long and almost unbroken nightmare. We have been forced to contemplate not only our present darkness, but the possibility of still greater unleashing of darkness through the presidency of Kamala Harris. We have trembled at that reality; we have wept; we have felt great surging waves of fear, anxiety, doubt, discouragement, and hopelessness at times.

But for now, we have been granted a reprieve, a temporary stalling of evil as driven by the modern political left. God has shown up. God has answered our prayers. Let us use this truth to keep praying, and keep hoping, and keep loving. Let us not be weary in well-doing (Galatians 6:9); by the power of the Spirit in us, let us excel still more (1 Thessalonians 4:2).

It’s morning in America.