Part I: Land that I love

Two Sundays before American voters elected Donald Trump to become the 45th president of the United States, many American churchgoers marked the 499th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

In some churches, Christians clutched hymnals and sang “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” belting out Martin Luther’s rousing lyrics: “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also—the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still: His kingdom is forever.”

It was a fitting way to begin a week consumed by news of temporal leaders in earthly kingdoms.

In a stunning rebuke of polls and pundits, business mogul and reality television star Donald J. Trump has won the presidency of the United States.

Despite predictions that Democrat Hillary Clinton held an Electoral College advantage heading into Election Day, the Republican nominee swept a bevy of key swing states and picked off Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to prevail with at least 276 electoral votes.

UPDATE: The Associated Press called the state of Wisconsin for Donald Trump, giving the Republican candidate 276 electoral votes and enough to clinch the presidency of the United States.

How then do we wait?

That’s the question on this Election Day, as the most toxic presidential contest in modern American history finally draws to a close. For most Americans it’s also an ordinary day: Many got up early, took the kids to school, washed a load of laundry, went to work, planned dinner, and perhaps thought about a neighbor who needs a little help.

For Christians, that’s how it should be. Our ordinary callings carry on regardless of the extraordinary nature of this day.

A former secret agent is unnerving Donald Trump during his final push in an ever-tightening race for the most public job in the world.

The most recent average of polls at RealClearPolitics shows independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin surging in Utah. The former CIA agent is running 6 points behind Trump and slightly ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—For Gov. Pat McCrory, a low point in his political career came when his hometown newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, declared the Republican had joined “a dark list of Southern governors” and the kind of men who “fed our worst impulses.”

McCrory’s condemned deed: He signed a bill requiring people in government buildings to use the bathroom corresponding with their birth sex. Private businesses may still set their own policies.