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 16Dear 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.