Don’t be distracted by MAGA flash

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Don’t let them get you down …

Hand to God, my home church once looked like any other.

Southern, Baptist (please note the comma) houses of worship are a dime a dozen. If you’ve seen one in Alabama or Texas, you could probably draw this Florida outpost from memory. Carpeted stairs leading to an altar and a baptismal font, a few stained glass pieces trying to hide their embarrassingly recent vintage, a piano almost out of sight of the congregation in their semi-circle of cushioned pews.

But this church started to change sometime before I entered middle school. A new worship director brought an acoustic-electric guitar into the service, playing reverent, contemporary tunes that got the blood pumping (or, at least, encouraged folks to stand up). A drum kit was dropped into the sanctuary under cover of night, dampened by a wall of plexiglass. Hymnals were phased out in favor of follow-the-bouncing-ball singalongs of “How Great Is Our God” and “Hallelujah (Your Love Makes Me Sing),” helpfully projected on massive screens behind the altar.

This fresh take, coupled with a growing population of young parents in town, caused the congregation to grow exponentially. In a few short years, the ranks of worshippers swelled to the point that police were needed to direct traffic in the parking lot on Sunday morning. Overflow rooms on the church grounds – increasingly and inevitably referred to as a “campus” – tuned into a CCTV broadcast of the sermon for those who arrived too late to snag a seat. At the height of its popularity, satellite campuses opened, broadcasting the sermon in outer suburban sprawl.

The church itself was rebuilt right about the time its attendance peaked. The new one had large, clear windows and beige-painted drywall, and resembled nothing so much as a second-tier airport. My family took to calling it “Jesus International” right around the time we stopped attending every Sunday.

Rising housing costs pushed the area’s median age ever higher. Newly cleared swamps became massive subdivisions with their own, even newer churches. The satellite campuses closed. The church dropped its denomination from its name as attendance flagged.

Plain old habit brings my parents back to that church every Christmas, and I come along with them. The pews are long gone, replaced by rows of nondescript armless chairs. The carpeted stairs remain but they rise to an auditorium stage. Oversized Edison bulbs dangle from white, plank pyramids that nod at the idea of a Christmas tree while reflecting the modern farmhouse interiors of the surrounding suburban homes.

During my latest visit on Christmas Eve, the congregation shifted between bored and confused as the band tried out novel arrangements of Christmas classics. Spotlights danced over a half-empty sanctuary. The one moment of genuine life came when the pastor took the stage to deliver a simple message about God’s love. It boiled down to this: He won’t meet your expectations, but he always keeps his promises.

The “Amens” were louder than they’d been all night. I saw multiple people tapping their phones to NFID readers tacked onto the back of chairs to sign up for updates about church programming. After an hour in a half-dead sanctuary, full of people trying and failing to feel enthusiastic about the birth of their Lord and a synthesizer-led “O Holy Night,” it felt inspiring.

We live in an age of endless flash and distraction. Conservatives can become superstars by whining loudly about their own mediocrity. Politics has degraded into eye-poking and social media name-calling, with no goal greater than spiking the cortisol of some enemy you’ll never meet. It can feel like no one is interested in the hard, slow work of making the world a little bit more bearable.

But some people really are. They’re out there. All across the country, people are getting involved locally to ward off incursions of federal secret police. They’re launching grassroots campaigns around issues that actually affect their neighbors’ day-to-day lives. They’re taking the first steps toward a world that’s kinder and better, an America that lives up to its core promises (while always falling just short of our shifting expectations).

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re not even a year into Donald Trump’s second term. But we’d like to send you into 2026 thinking about the people who you’ll never see shouting on CNN, via the reporting work of our own Russell Payne:

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