Before We Rededicate America, Let’s Be Honest

By Rev. Carlos Malavé

Our nation is in desperate need of spiritual revival.

Over the last decade, we have watched something fracture. The moral and spiritual foundation that, however imperfectly, once gave shape to our common life has been left behind. Our moral compass is not merely spinning. It has been discarded.

But we have been here before.

At every crossroads moment in the history of God’s people, moments that felt as disorienting and as dangerous as this one, the Spirit moved. Not gently. Not quietly. The Spirit stirred, moving in the hearts of women and men who refused to accept that this was the final word, who believed that the arc of history could still bend, that a people could be called back from the edge. We have witnessed these revivals. In our own land and across the world. History bears faithful witness to what God has done when the people of God dared to believe that renewal was still possible.

The Second Great Awakening understood that spiritual transformation without social transformation was incomplete. The awakened conscience could not tolerate the existence of slavery. Faith became a public witness — demanding that a nation claiming to be “under God” account for the chains it refused to break. Revival and abolition were inseparable.

In the coal-blackened streets of Industrial England, the Methodist revival took the gospel to those the church had already forgotten. Preaching in fields and mines, Wesley’s movement declared something radical: that the laborer was not a unit of production, but a bearer of the imago Dei. Revival, in their hands, looked like mutual aid societies, literacy campaigns, and economic solidarity with the discarded.

In 20th-century Latin America, Liberation Theology relocated the church, from the seats of power to the barrios and favelas. The “preferential option for the poor” was not a political slogan; it was a theological conviction that God does not observe suffering from a distance but enters it. This was a revival of accompaniment, choosing proximity to the marginalized over proximity to the powerful.

And then there was the Black Church, which gave the world the vision of the Beloved Community. In the face of fire hoses and billy clubs, it answered with agape, a love that refused to be reduced by hatred. The Civil Rights Movement taught us that the ultimate goal of justice is not merely new legislation, but a new humanity: one where systemic cruelty is replaced by stubborn, costly, redemptive kindness.

These historic witnesses are not mere nostalgia.
They summon us.

This month, the President of the United States has called Christian leaders to gather on the National Mall for an event called “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving.” I would only hope that the intent of this gathering would be one of repentance; repentance for the ways in which we as Americans have strayed from kindness, humility, compassion, inclusion, equality, mercy, justice, peace, and love. And then there is the unavoidable question that cannot be ignored: the exclusion from the President’s call of the millions of Americans who profess different faiths and spiritualities.

The question before us is not whether God can revive a nation. The question is whether we are willing to be the generation that rejects division and embraces, with love and kindness, all of our neighbors. A generation called to build a nation in which all people are equal, everyone is included, valued, and respected. A nation that says yes to a new kind of community, the community that is waiting to burst forth from the heart of God.

With respect and hope, I call on the President and his advisors to broaden this vision, toward the kind of revival that leaves no one behind.

Rev. Carlos Malavé is the founder and president of the Latino Christian National Network, an organization that aims to provide a space for respectful dialogue among Latino Christian leaders of different traditions and theological perspectives. Previously, Malavé served as the executive director of Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT) for 11 years. CCT is the broadest organization working for the unity of the church in the U.S.

Malavé is a member of the steering committee of the Circle of Protection, a coalition of church bodies and related ministries representing the diversity of Christianity in this country. Malavé previously served as assistant stated clerk at the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and as pastor in Puerto Rico and Southern California. He holds a M.A. in family life education from Loma Linda University and an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is married to Aixa Malavé and has three children.