Japanese Evangelicalism Was Once Nationalistic

 Japanese Evangelicalism Was Once Nationalistic

Kazusa Okaya / Contributor

Christianity Today May 8, 2025

Making Christianity great again by means of political control is tempting. That didn’t work in my country.

In the past, I never had any issues with describing myself as an evangelical while living in Japan. But after the first election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, I struggled to identify with the term, as it became a politically charged label among the Japanese.

My discomfort with calling myself evangelical has only increased since Trump’s second term began. I felt distressed when a Japanese non-Christian friend asked me, “So are you the same kind of evangelical Christian who supports Trump?”

I am not the only Japanese believer who feels alienated from this identity.

The Challenge of Catholic Homiletics & Leadership Amid Polarization

The Challenge of Catholic Homiletics & Leadership Amid Polarization: Empowering Parish, School, and Apostolic Leaders to Be Both Prophetic and Reconciling

Msgr. Arthur Holquin, S.T.L.

Sep 18, 2026

I was privileged yesterday to participate in a virtual Conference Co-sponsored by Loyola University Chicago, Clough School of Theology & Ministry at Boston College, Jesuits West, The Josephite Pastoral Center, Candler School of Theology at Emory, and others on Dignity, & Elections: A Virtual Catholic Theological Conference. The text of my topic, The Challenge of Catholic Homiletics & Leadership Amid Polarization: Empowering Parish, School, and Apostolic Leaders to Be Both Prophetic and Reconciling, follows:

Most people of good will — Catholic and otherwise, progressive and traditionalist, cleric and lay — accept, I think without much argument anymore, that the present moment in our country brings challenges that are genuinely unprecedented. I do not say that lightly, and I do not say it as a partisan claim. I say it as a pastoral observation, offered after fifty-two years of ordained ministry, most of it spent listening to people in confessionals, in hospital rooms, and at kitchen tables tell me what troubles them. And, I say that as a citizen of this beloved country.

True memory, real history, and Western civilization

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