Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 3 Dear Reader, W e may be heading for the fall of the West, former British foreign secretary William Hague recently warned. He was referring to November’s unexpected election of Donald Trump to the US presidency and to the surge of populist nationalism around the globe. Hague’s dismay is shared by many across the political spectrum. Even social conservatives who supported the Republican candidate for fear of a Democratic administra- tion are bracing for turbulent years. Christian progressives lament a vote that both reflected and fueled an ugly turn in American politics – a defeat made bitterer by the knowledge that it was meted out by clear majorities of evangeli- cals, Protestants, and Catholics. Meanwhile, many of the working-class white voters who handed our next president the election feel that their security and identity are under threat. It’s a moment of anxiety when fear is under- standable, even justified. But it is not Christian. The exhortation “Fear not” has served as the predictable springboard for a thousand Christmas sermons. It is also the gospel. As surely as a first-century Jew named Jesus is lord of the universe, God will have the last word on humankind’s affairs. Who is in the White House should be as secondary a question to us as the rise of a new Roman emperor was to Peter and Paul. On January 15, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached to his Berlin congregation against the anxiet- ies then engulfing Europe. For Christians, Bonhoeffer said, to live in fear is not acceptable: “Fear takes away a person’s humanity. This is not what the creature made by God looks like. . . . The Bible, the gospel, Christ, the church, the faith – all are one great battle cry against fear in the lives of human beings.” We who believe in Jesus must not fear, because we have heard the glad tidings of the arrival of a new political regime: the kingdom of God. We are patriots for a different homeland. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” the apostle Paul tells us (Phil. 3:20). Dorothy Day, the E di tor’s L et t e r Our Alien Citizenship Image from en.tcgnordica.com Zhu Jiuyang, Untitled. Zhu Jiuyang, born in 1969, is a Christian artist working in mainland China.