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By most conventional measures, this is the time of year for wrapping things up. Fall’s harvests are in, accounts are being settled, academic terms are coming to an end (our last class of the semester is today). In preparation for end-of-year rituals, people start winding down and closing things out. We approach the shortest day of the year, and something inside each of us wants an ending.
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In the Christian tradition, the way we keep time interrupts this natural rhythm. Just when we turn toward thinking about the end of a year, Advent tells us that the end has already come. This past Sunday was the beginning of Advent – the first day of a new year on the church’s calendar. When everything else says it’s time to wrap things up, Advent invites us to wait for something new.
When the end is near, we watch in hope for a new beginning.
Advent’s wisdom seems especially needed at the end of 2025 in the United States of America. The worst-case scenario that many experts on authoritarianism warned about has become our reality at an astonishing pace. Project 2025 laid out a detailed plan for a disciplined dismantling of public institutions. It has been accelerated by the wrecking ball – both literal and figurative – of a regime that insists it is not accountable to Congress, to the courts, to the media, or to the people.
Ancient King Herod ordering the execution of young children in order to eliminate the potential threat of a challenger feels like a plausible news story this year. We watch and wait this Advent in a moment not unlike the original context of the Christmas story.
In a moral moment like this, we realize why our faith traditions are born out of moments of civilizational crisis. The stories passed down to us bear wisdom for how to hold onto our humanity, especially in times like these. The way of keeping time that we learn in our religious traditions offers real and practical resources for people who are trying to survive an authoritarian regime.
This is why we’ve decided to host a series of conversations on Advent in a Time of Authoritarianism here at Our Moral Moment.
Each week of December, we will host a live conversation with someone who is helping us face the reality of this moment and imagine the better world that is possible on the other side of it. Our first conversation will be with Robert P. Jones of PRRI this Friday, December 5th at 12pm ET.
Subscribers to Our Moral Moment will receive a video of these live conversations along with a longer video from the symposium on Public Theology in a Time of Authoritarianism that we hosted at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy last month.
We’re grateful for this chance to put the spiritual wisdom of our tradition in conversation with some of the best scholarship about the challenges we face in this moment. Together, we hope these resources will help you deepen your hope for a better future and make plans for what you can do now.
We want to have these conversation because we know they’re what we need.
The wisdom of Advent is often best understood by mothers who know the experience of welcoming new life in difficult circumstances. The work of birthing requires waiting, but it is not an easy wait in the best of situations. (That’s why we call it labor.) When the forces that threaten life press hard upon us, expectant mothers know that life depends on a hope that is as real as the hands that support them, the breath that sustains them, and the voice inside that says, “Keep pushing.”
Life depends on gifts like these. We hope you’ll join us during Advent and make some space to receive the gifts needed for the shared labor of this moment.
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