“Many people have forgotten about the crisis that’s occurred here in Haiti. Because of the 65 million displaced people around the world and the US election, people had forgotten about it,” says Sean Callahan, chief operating officer for Catholic Relief Services.

“We do have a higher rate of violence—not crime, but a higher rate of violence—than other industrialized nations,” says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project. "Some of that, our high murder rate, is related to the widespread availability of guns and illegal weapons."

“My hope is that every breath I take, every step is prayer,” says Nancy Bell, a Quaker who came to Three Rivers and began receiving spiritual direction from the Benedictine monks at St. Gregory’s Abbey. “Work can be a meditation, and so I try to do what seems to be the thing to do in the moment. Basically I just do simple, everyday things. I guess gratitude probably would be my major prayer. Just being thankful.”

“Donald Trump captured 81 percent of the white evangelical vote. That was key, because if you take away the evangelical share of the vote, which is about a quarter, Hillary Clinton would have won by a landslide. Now, 81 percent is slightly more than Mitt Romney got, but keep in mind that this time around there were some evangelical leaders who were telling their followers not to vote for Donald Trump,” says Jerome Socolovsky, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service.

"Spirituals are, of course, the songs that the enslaved crafted to tell the story of their experience. But more than that, to tell the story of their faith and the understanding of who they were in relationship to God, and who God was in relationship to them, and it became a story of freedom,” says Rev. Kelly Brown Douglass, Canon Theologian at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

“When you walk into the voting booth, I’ve compared it to the holy of holies in the ancient temple. A curtain is closed behind you. You are alone with your God and your vote. People will cast their votes listening to their hearts,” says Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance.

“Right now, given the current climate and the political rhetoric, we are a target,” says Olivia Cantu, South Florida director of Emerge USA, a national organization that works to increase Muslim-American engagement in politics. “We are being attacked.”

Peace, says history professor and scholar of the Muslim world Juan Cole, “is very central to the cultures of the Middle East. You greet someone by saying ‘Peace be upon you.’ It has the form of a prayer.”

United Methodism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and “the power of positive thinking” have all shaped the politics and personal stories of this year’s candidates for national office.

“I was living in the Bay Area. I had a nice salary. I had a very expensive foreign car. I had everything you think that a twenty-some-year-old kid would want. But I realized that without going back to Liberia I’d never really know who I am truly as a person,” says Chid Liberty, social entrepreneur and CEO of Liberty & Justice, a sustainable, fair-trade garment factory in Monrovia that manufactures school uniforms for children across Liberia.