The indictment of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign manager, has sent shock waves through Washington – and through the world of American political consultants who work in foreign elections.

It is a world of talented political operatives from both parties who demonstrate skill in the American arena, and then parlay that into at-times lucrative opportunities abroad. Some work primarily to help ideological brethren and, in countries with less-developed democratic systems, spread American ideals of governance. For others, it’s a way to cash in big-time on a well-polished reputation. Some manage to do both.

Viewed broadly, the field of American political consulting abroad represents an ever-shrinking planet, where global markets beckon. And in some ways, the case of Mr. Manafort – charged Monday in federal court with money-laundering, tax fraud, and illegal lobbying – is a cautionary tale. Manafort and associate Richard Gates, charged in the same indictment, pleaded not guilty.

“Where Manafort goes off the rails, is that he became this consigliere to this Russian puppet in Ukraine,” says Adam Sheingate, author of the book “Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy.” “I can’t think of any other political consultant doing that.”

Not only did Manafort advise Viktor Yanukovych, a Russian-backed politician in Ukraine who is now in exile in Russia, he also got involved in investment projects with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. According to published reports, Manafort was also hired by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to promote Russian interests in Europe and the United States.

The Manafort indictment is focused on the consultant’s business dealings, which began long before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, and included dealings with prominent Democrats such as the Clinton-allied Podesta Group. It does not shine light on allegations of collaboration during the campaign between Trump associates and the Russian government – a main charge of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. Principally, Manafort’s is a case of alleged financial misdeeds. Another former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the timing and nature of his contacts with foreign nationals with Kremlin ties.

Manafort entered the Trump campaign already an outsize figure – one who had burst onto the political scene in 1976 with his work at the Republican convention for President Gerald Ford. In the 1980s, he pioneered the new field of foreign political consulting. Through it all, he had a reputation for wheeling and dealing, and a taste for luxury.

Many have asked why Trump hired Manafort in the first place. The short answer, according to news reports, is that he came recommended by two Trump friends – businessman Thomas Barrack and the flamboyant political consultant Roger Stone, a former business partner of Manafort’s.

Regardless, in hiring Manafort, Trump also effectively bought any baggage the storied consultant had. And in so doing, Trump demonstrated the risk of being a political novice, suddenly playing in the highest-stakes election on the planet.

Mr. Yanukovych, the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president, isn’t the only controversial foreign leader Manafort has worked for. Over the years, he also lobbied for Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Jonas Savimbi of Angola.

His client list brings to mind another controversial Washington lobbyist, the late Edward Von Kloberg, who also specialized in representing dictators – President Mobutu, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Samuel Doe of Liberia, and Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.

Picking clients carefully

To most top-tier US political advisers, of both parties, this type of business model is anathema. One Republican consultant who sometimes works abroad talks about picking his clients carefully.

“I think it all, quite frankly, comes down to the individuals,” says the Republican, speaking not for attribution. “I shy away from negative campaigns and candidates who run that way in the US, let alone overseas.”

For Stanley Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster and also a pioneer in international political consulting, the choice of clients is centered on political philosophy.

“We are very serious about working for pro-Western, pro-Europe parties that don’t conflict with American interests,” says Mr. Greenberg, who did work for former South African President Nelson Mandela, and is a regular in British and Israeli elections.

When the country in question already falls firmly in the Western camp, consultants from the same party can find themselves in competition. That happened in 2015, when David Axelrod and Jim Messina, both top political strategists for President Barack Obama, faced off in the British election.

Mr. Messina, who worked for then-Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, took some good-natured ribbing. The competition also showed how consultants market their skills: Messina focused on data analytics, while Mr. Axelrod’s role with Labour was more about messaging and strategy.

In the Manafort case, partisan affiliation also seemed to take a back seat when lucrative opportunities arose. Monday’s indictment refers to Manafort soliciting two companies to lobby on behalf of the Ukrainian government. One of those companies is reportedly the Podesta Group, a high-profile firm started by Democrats Tony Podesta and his brother John, a former top aide to President Obama and the Clintons. Tony resigned from the firm on Monday, and John left in 1993.

Foreign consulting work is often far from a top-dollar enterprise. Robert Shrum, a presidential campaign adviser to Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, did consulting work in Britain, Israel, and Colombia; he says his overseas business was never a major profit center. In 1989, while working for the British Labour Party, he made $1,000 a day.

“It was not a hugely lucrative endeavor,” says Mr. Shrum, now director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. But “it was fascinating … and it went to the heart of things that I believed in.”

'International lobbying is the Wild West'

According to the indictment, some $75 million flowed through off-shore accounts set up by Manafort. Shrum says he’s “stunned by the amount of money they’re talking about here.”

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant based in Austin, Texas, and Washington, doesn’t think the sums Manafort made say much about consulting. “I just think it says a lot about Paul Manafort,” he says.

“International lobbying is the Wild West. It’s not policed very effectively,” he says. “It would be very good for international lobbying and consulting to be far more overseen by authorities, and if that’s a byproduct for Manafort and Podesta, that would be a good thing for the country.”

Toby Melville/Reuters/File

As Brexit looms, millions of European Union citizens living in Britain cannot plan their family futures. The migration rights they will enjoy after London has withdrawn from the bloc are still unclear. The government is proposing to treat them in the same way as it currently treats people from non-EU countries, and that will make it harder for Britons to bring their foreign spouses to live with them.

Jane Yilmaz and her husband, Altuğ, live in separate countries, but not by choice: Under current British family migration rules, Yilmaz’s income is too low to sponsor her spouse for a visa. Altuğ remains in his native Turkey, barred from permanently joining his wife and seven-year-old daughter, Ela.

A British citizen living in Plymouth, Yilmaz’s voice wavers with emotion when she describes how Ela has reacted to the indefinite separation.

“She’s been diagnosed with selective mutism, which means she’s only talking in certain situations,” Yilmaz says. Her daughter has shown other signs of severe separation anxiety: “When I’ve had to leave in the morning for temp work, she’s stood at the door and screamed, ‘Mummy, please don’t leave!’ ”

Thousands of families in Britain are grappling with similar circumstances, following the 2012 passage of a migration law that sets strict income requirements for those hoping to sponsor a spouse or dependent who does not come from a European Union member state.

With Britain poised to exit the EU in 2019, these stringent regulations may soon apply to millions more families – compounding a deep sense of anxiety and uncertainty among EU citizens who’ve settled here about their family future.

The Conservative government has pledged to end free movement of people from Europe following Brexit, and to roll out immigration rules currently only applicable to non-EU citizens across the board. Such a change would sharply restrict the right of Europeans not yet residing in Britain to join family members here.

Income litmus tests

Britain’s family immigration rules are among the world’s most financially stringent. Passed as part of the ruling Conservative Party’s policy to sharply curb migration, the regulation currently requires that a British citizen or European resident earn at least £18,600 per year (about $24,400) to apply for a spousal residency permit.

That threshold is roughly 25 percent higher than the annual minimum wage for a full time British worker. Critics say that in addition to inflicting undue hardship and emotional stress on children and families, the policy is overtly classist.

“The system is designed to discourage people with low incomes from applying,” says Chai Patel, legal and policy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI). He says it disproportionately affects women and minorities, “who tend to earn lower wages.”

Yilmaz is among those Britons who have been unable to find a job that pays enough. A former food technology teacher, she says cuts in the education sector have made it even harder to find work that meets the salary threshold.

While the policy has faced harsh criticism, a spokesperson for the UK Home Office says the rules are lawful and necessary. “It prevents burdens on the taxpayer arising once family migrants have settled in the UK and thereby gain full access to the welfare system.” The spokesperson points to a February Supreme Court decision that largely upheld the policy after several families challenged it.

Post-Brexit quagmire

While thousands in Britain have been living with the realities of UK family migration policies, European residents here are increasingly anxious that Brexit may erode their own rights in this arena.    

Since Britain narrowly voted to leave the EU in a referendum last year, some three million European nationals and their post-Brexit rights have become the subject of protracted negotiations in Brussels. Those negotiations have stalled.

Prime Minister Theresa May has assured EU nationals settled in Britain for at least five years that they’ll be allowed to stay indefinitely. But she and her government have also vowed to end freedom of movement from Europe to Britain and are proposing to align family migration rights for EU citizens not yet in the UK with the rules already applied to non-European nationals.

Justine Stefanelli, interim deputy director at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, believes it’s “highly likely” that EU family members attempting to enter the UK after Brexit will be subjected to strict new visa requirements.

She points to a government policy paper on EU family rights released in July that proposed such changes. However, she cautions, the same paper also says “other arrangements” might be made as part of Brexit negotiations. “Everything at this time is rather hypothetical,” she says.

Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, a lawyer who has addressed the House of Commons on European citizens’ rights post-Brexit, stresses that Britain is also seeking a good deal for its own nationals scattered across Europe.

That could have considerable impact on any agreement, she says. Since the EU refuses to begin trade talks before hammering out a firm deal on the rights of Europeans in Britain, the most pragmatic choice for British negotiators might be to uphold most of the rights those residents currently enjoy.

But until the complex exit negotiations currently underway between Britain and the EU yield a firm deal, it’s impossible to ascertain how family migration rights might change.

Living in limbo

The murkiness of Brexit has thrown EU residents into a state of limbo: one that is both emotionally wrenching and legally thorny.

“You're putting people in a position where they can’t plan their lives. They don’t know what their rights will be going forward,” says Georgiana Turculet, researcher for INTEGRIM, a project focused on European migration issues.

Ms. Stefanelli says the ongoing legal uncertainty around Europeans’ rights in Britain breaches the rule of law principle: the notion that laws should be as accessible, clear, and predictably applied as possible.

“Legally, it makes it difficult not just for the people who have to live their lives according to these rules, but also for a lawyer to give adequate advice to their client,” she points out.

Katya Ivanova, a researcher in European politics who recently taught at the London School of Economics and has written on European family rights post-Brexit with Ms. Turculet, says profound uncertainty and anxiety are already prompting Europeans to leave Britain.

According to the UK Office of National Statistics, 2017 has seen a steep rise in EU nationals leaving the United Kingdom, with some 122,000 departures from January to August.

Ms. Ivanova predicts a sharp uptick in European departures from Britain “over the next two to five years.”

For some European residents pondering whether to remain in Britain, the prospect that they might be unable to care for elderly parents is a serious worry.  

Current policies require proof that a non-European dependent parent cannot get adequate care in his or her home country. And in September, The Guardian published leaked documents revealing government plans to restrict the definition of “family members” to dependent children and spouses for EU migrants, post-Brexit.  

“Both my partner and I are EU citizens with elderly parents, [and] we worry about how we’ll care for them,” says Mike Mac Sheanlaoich, an Irish researcher in biotechnology who lives near Gateshead in northeastern England.

“It appears that if we want to stay in the UK, we may have to force the burden of care onto our respective brothers and extended family, which seems deeply unfair.”

Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters

Photo illustration of Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange website. Some 90 percent of bitcoin transactions appear to be between investors rather than as payments for goods and services, some experts say.

Do you think Donald Trump is the world’s most divisive force? Are you impressed by the recent bull run of the stock market?

Think again. They may be bit players compared with the digital currency called bitcoin.

Bitcoin has been called a fraud and the most important advance since the internet. It has attracted money-launderers, data kidnappers, international drug dealers – and some of the world’s premier financial companies. China has tried to ban it. North Korea is starting to dabble in it.

Over the weekend, bitcoin hit a new high – a single bitcoin is worth more than $6,300 – a breathtaking runup of more than 500 percent in this year alone. The S&P 500, by comparison, has managed only 13 percent. The bitcoin price surge reflects partly some inherent scarcity in that currency's design, although finance experts also see a speculative bubble. 

Clearly, something is going on with bitcoin and the 1,000 or so other cryptocurrencies now in circulation. The technological breakthrough behind these currencies has spawned at least three huge waves of innovation in the digital world that are beginning to wash over into the physical world. Dramatic changes may lie ahead.

First, there is the lure of purely digital currencies, which operate outside the control of any nation or central bank. There are now a dozen that exceed $1 billion in value.

Second, there’s the technology itself, called blockchain, a public record, stored on a decentralized network of computers, of every transaction in the cryptocurrency. The technology acts as a hacker-proof currency and a ledger rolled into one. It’s as if the dollar bill in your wallet or purse did its own bookkeeping, recording who gave it to you and where you spend it. Blockchain technology may cut billions of dollars out of business transaction costs and make everything from stock trades to insurance contracts cheaper and more secure.

The third wave, which is more speculative and perhaps more transformative in the long run, is the use of blockchain to tokenize things, from legal identification to human attention.

“You [take] the idea of the coin in a blockchain and you abstract it out to anything, literally anything that can be turned into a token,” says Lex Sokolin, global director of fin-tech strategy of Autonomous Research, an independent research provider based in London. “For example instead of having advertisers pay Facebook in order to reach you and me, advertisers can pay us directly, because we control tokens that can monetize our attention.”

Testing the possibilities

The experiments are coming fast and furious, much as they did in the heyday of the dot-com boom:

• Already, Swiss-based Viuly is creating a YouTube alternative using blockchain technology, where the creators of catchy video would get up to 65 percent of the ad revenue they generate and viewers would get 25 percent, just for watching the free video.

• To fight global warming, a UN official has proposed using blockchain to make companies’ trading of carbon credits more efficient.

• In Jordanian refugee camps, the UN’s World Food Program is experimenting with Ethereum, a blockchain rival to bitcoin, to distribute food vouchers to displaced Syrians.

• A consortium of UN agencies, nonprofits, companies, and governments is looking into using blockchain for creating secure and portable identity for the billion or so people in the world who are not officially recognized by a government.

Buffett’s rebuff

Is bitcoin caught up in a speculative frenzy? Almost certainly, according to savvy observers. A “real bubble,” superinvestor Warren Buffett told a group of business students in mid-October.

“If you’re stupid enough to buy it, you’ll pay the price someday,” Jamie Dimon, chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase, warned an audience in Washington earlier this month. The banker has previously called bitcoin a fraud and threatened to fire traders in his company who buy it.

Yet for now, the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies keeps going up. Bitcoin started the year trading at just over $1,000 apiece; it topped $6,000 on Oct. 21. Speculators, hoping to ride the next bitcoin-like wave, scoop up new currencies as soon as they come out in initial coin offerings or ICOs (similar to companies selling stock in initial public offerings, or IPOs). Novum Insights, a research group tracking financial technology, estimates that through September blockchain ICOs had raised $2.2 billion this year.

That level of activity suggests bitcoin may be acting more like a store of value, like gold or even stocks, rather than a medium of exchange.

“I think bitcoin is more of an investment security than a currency,” David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, writes in an e-mail. Some 90 percent of the transactions appear to be between investors rather than as payments for goods and services, he says.

After the bubble bursts, which many old-school investors say is inevitable, bitcoin or some other cryptocurrencies could emerge as a more stable, less volatile digital money.

“Cryptocurrencies are in a position to be more valuable than gold, dollar, euro, or yen, as long as there is a clear [case for their] use,” Asheesh Birla, vice president of product at blockchain firm Ripple, writes in an email. At the moment, for example, when a big bank pulls out of an emerging market, their clients can use a cryptocurrency instead to continue transacting business in that market, he adds. [Editor's note: This paragraph was changed to clarify Ripple's business.]

In the meantime, financial companies from the Royal Bank of Canada to Goldman Sachs to even Mr. Dimon’s J.P. Morgan are experimenting with the technology behind bitcoin – blockchain – to cut the costs of financial transactions.

No forgery 

This recording of each transaction is also what makes blockchain secure. To forge a cryptocurrency “coin,” you would have to correctly alter the entire chain of transactions since the coin was created – an almost impossible feat mathematically. By one estimate, top banks could save 30 percent (some $8 billion to $12 billion apiece) in their operational costs by switching to blockchain.

The third wave – the use of blockchain to turn just about anything into a tradable token – is the least developed and the most volatile. One maker of hardware for bitcoin “mining” (the process of creating new bitcoins) has turned itself into a social network where people join to get paid in special tokens for answering emails and completing tasks. Epazz Inc., a software maker whose products include a cryptocurrency to make it easier to buy legalized marijuana, lost half its market value on a single trading day this week.

Privacy ... and nefarious uses

The technology’s lure for many users – no government control and anonymity – also makes it a useful tool for criminals.

A month ago, when data thieves hijacked the data of Montgomery County, Ala., and threatened to erase it, they demanded – and county officials paid them – in bitcoin worth between $40,000 and $50,000. In Benton County, Ark., the sheriff’s office has just announced a pilot program to use bitcoin in undercover sting operations against child pornographers and other online criminals.

“We’re just in a place where the hackers and the artists are building things that are cool and they’re interesting,” says Mr. Sokolin of Autonomous Research. “The incumbents are a little scared, so they’re playing around with the same Lego pieces. But we’re just in the beginning of what will be a fairly different world.”

Students at Ooltewah High School in suburban Chattanooga are still yawning at their desks at 7:20 on a recent morning when teacher Daniel Ziegenmier says something designed to awaken their consciences.

“OK,” he announces, “time to put away your phones. Everyone come forward and get a Bible.”

Soon their minds are back in Old Testament times with help from a six-minute video summarizing Genesis. At Mr. Ziegenmier’s nudging, sophomore Jacob O’Daniel joins classmates in listing the good qualities of Abraham (blessed, clever), the bad ones of Lot (selfish, greedy), and reasons why keeping one’s word (such as God’s covenant with Abraham) is important. 

For sophomore Jackson Clark, the material isn’t new. He’s already learned it in church. But he says he appreciates engaging with the Bible in a neutral setting, one with no religious agenda and no expectations about what to believe or how to interpret it. And he’s glad private donors give money ($1.3 million this year) to fund elective courses in Bible history for more than 3,700 of his fellow Hamilton County public school students.

“Even if you don’t have access to a church, it’s good to know about [the Bible] and be able to ... enjoy it,” Jackson says. “By taking this at school, they still get all the basic knowledge that you’d get out of church, all the stories and lessons that you get from reading the book.”

 Bible courses are relatively rare in American public schools, where boards, including Hamilton County’s, try to avoid any whiff of religious endorsement or breach of the church-state divide. But here in the buckle of the Bible Belt, their growth is an example of efforts to foster reading the Bible – a practice that is a central legacy of the Protestant Reformation that was launched 500 years ago this month.

From Chattanooga to Johannesburg, in churches, schools, and living rooms, the reform movement fomented by an iconoclastic monk named Martin Luther has shaped how millions of people around the world seek God. Now, in the age of the internet, shifting cultural mores, and falling church attendance, the role of the Bible is evolving again.

In some Western countries, Bible use is in decline. In other regions, it is on the rise – and the internet promises to expand its reach even more. But how people actually interact with the Bible – whether they consider it the supreme authority on questions of faith, as Luther decreed it should be – is changing, too.

Wide World/AP

Martin Luther

Perhaps nowhere are Luther’s legacy and the various ways the book is affecting everyday life more evident than here in Chattanooga, Tenn., the Appalachian city where public monuments quote Scripture and honor devout churchmen who helped make it the unofficial Bible capital of the world.

The man who rocked Christendom 500 years ago and made Bible reading a spiritual staple was among the least likely of revolutionaries. A miner’s son who harbored early ambitions to practice law, Luther turned to monastic life in a moment of panic: He promised during a violent thunderstorm to become a monk should God mercifully spare his life.

Luther fulfilled his vow, but Augustinian monkhood for him would soon involve much more than the usual prayer and fasting. His study of ancient biblical languages would open the floodgates of Protestantism.

At age 33, Luther hammered a fateful nail into the Roman Catholic Church – figuratively, and, according to popular legend, literally – when he posted his 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg Castle in Germany on Oct. 31, 1517. (Most scholars agree Luther’s theses were widely circulated, though probably not nailed to a door.) The pope’s selling of indulgences to those hoping to get deceased relatives out of purgatory had no biblical basis, Luther argued. He dismissed the practice of paying money to be absolved of sin as a corrupt, human invention rather than divine truth, even if the pope sanctioned it. 

Luther’s core ideas – that humans reach salvation by grace through God-given faith, not their deeds, and that the Bible is the central religious authority – had been embraced by prior reformers. But the contentious, moon-faced monk crystallized them at a time when excesses and corruption made the Catholic Church susceptible to change.

As a result, the Protestant Reformation eventually swept the West, aided by new technology. The new printing press with movable type made publishing exponentially more efficient, starting with the Gutenberg Bible in the mid-15th century. Luther and others translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into local vernaculars. 

“When the people could read the Bible for themselves ... in a language that they could understand, that’s what really caused the spiritual explosion of the Reformation,” says Jim Thompson, vice president of Bible League International, a Bible distribution organization based in Crete, Ill.

Since then, Protestants have been defined by the principle of sola scriptura, which holds that while other sources might deliver insights, the Bible is the supreme guide on questions of faith. And every human being should engage directly in what it has to say.

“At the end of the day, sola scriptura was the trump card,” says Thomas “Tal” Howard, professor of humanities at Valparaiso University in Indiana and co-editor of the book “Protestantism After 500 Years.”

“Christians reading the Bible on a daily basis – that didn’t really go on before the Reformation, or only to a limited extent,” notes Kathleen Crowther, a Reformation historian at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Notes are written in the margins of a Bible used during a Bible study session, led by retired professor Herb Burhan, at Trinity Lutheran.

Today Protestants still embrace sola scriptura as an ideal. Forty-six percent of Protestants in the United States say the ­Bible provides all the religious guidance they need, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey. Another 52 percent say they also need guidance from church teachings and traditions, which is consistent with the early Reformers’ view as long as the Bible has the final say, says Mr. Howard. 

But in practice, Americans are spending less time with the Bible and ascribing less authority to it than they used to. The percentage saying they read it at least weekly dropped from 46 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2017, according to the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm in Ventura, Calif. 

“We have a growing biblical literacy problem in the US,” Mr. Thompson says.

Perceptions of biblical authority have been waning, too. Led by Millennials, 19 percent of Americans now view the Bible as “just another book” rather than an inspired text, up from 10 percent in 2011. The internet accounts for at least some of the Bible’s lost stature.

“What’s increased, especially with Millennials, is this questioning of authority in all places,” not just the Bible, says Roxanne Stone, Barna’s editor in chief. “It can be hard to have this sense of the Bible being an authority when you have a universe of knowledge at your fingertips.”

Overseas, proponents of direct Bible engagement face distinct challenges. In Europe, where the Reformation began, only 28 percent of the literate population owns a print version of at least one book of the Bible, according to data from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Mass. Bible access ranks the highest in North America, at 95 percent, but it stands at only 16 percent in Asia and 29 percent worldwide.

Mark Gilliland/AP/File

People fish along the north bank of the Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga, Tenn., a city that spent $120 million sprucing up its waterfront.

One place where there isn’t a dearth of Bibles is Chattanooga. Here, in a city nestled between forested hills and a sweeping bend in the Tennessee River, 50 percent of the population reads the Bible at least weekly and strongly regards it as accurate in its principles, according to a 2017 Barna survey. As a result, the polling firm anointed Chattanooga America’s “most Bible-minded city,” which, given the book’s prevalence in North America, means it is probably the No. 1 city in the world for the holy book.

How that happened is a function of history and culture. Chattanooga is more traditional and pragmatic than it is flashy or trendy. Crafts are handed down to younger generations at places such as the Chattanooga Woodworking Academy. A manufacturing culture remains deeply embedded here: Workers on assembly lines bottle Coca-Cola, make cardboard food trays, and build Volkswagens, though the city also has an emerging high-tech scene. Signs point visitors to local history at every turn: Civil War battle markers, the infamous Trail of Tears, and the Chattanooga Choo Choo, a depot-turned-hotel and exhibit.

Faith and family run deep in this tradition-heavy culture. The area is home to dozens of churches, as well as many other major religious institutions, including five Christian colleges, Precept Ministries International, and the world headquarters of The Church of God (in nearby Cleveland, Tenn.).

“For a long time, [Chattanooga residents] weren’t into all the modernist stuff, high academic careers or being professionals,” says Ralph Hood, a psychology of religion professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “They were more into being laborers and having simpler jobs that were conducive to their faith system.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Pastor Christopher Smith leads a Sunday service at Trinity Lutheran Church.

But even here, sustaining Luther’s vision of sola scriptura requires new creativity. This is evident on a Sunday morning at Chattanooga’s Trinity Lutheran Church. The first thing you see – after a cheery mural depicting Luther and his wife, Katharina – is a smorgasbord of Bible study groups.

In the church’s library, retired religion scholar Herb Burhenn unpacks John 16 verse by verse as a dozen seniors seated around a long table listen and nod deferentially. Down the hall, Mike Brandt leads a second group of adults in a more casual format. In a dining area, kids and adults cluster around small tables, where each offers an interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on reconciliation in Matthew 18.

Trinity offers multiple approaches to Bible study, according to the Rev. Stan Combs, because the path to experiencing the Bible’s authority varies so much in 2017 from one person to the next. That’s especially true in this era when countless experts and potential authorities – whether in religion, politics, or science – are always as close as the click of a mouse.

For some teens at Trinity, the Bible’s decrees are to be embraced no matter how much they go against popular culture. Fourteen-year-old Sam Sosebee, for one, believes his denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, needs to hew more closely to Scripture. “The Lutheran church lets gays be pastors, but that’s one thing I’m conflicted about because the Bible says you shouldn’t,” he says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

People, including Abby Sosebee (2nd l.), attend an intergenerational Bible study session at Trinity Lutheran Church in Chattanooga, Tenn.

His 16-year-old sister, Abby, welcomes how the Bible challenges her group of friends to lead holy lives, such as by shunning the gossip that typically marks teenage social life. This fall, they’ve made the Bible their hardcore trainer for a spiritual fitness regimen that involves reading all 66 books in 90 days. 

“It’s always been present in my life, but going and reading it myself has made it so much more real,” says Abby, still wearing her white vestments after reading the day’s Scriptures in worship. “It’s made me so much more passionate to just get it out there for other people to know about.”

Others at Trinity need interpretive latitude before they can buy in to scriptural authority. Anne Cain, a former Methodist, is learning to heed Scripture in a new way. She had been a licensed local pastor during college, but had to resign after making some “20-year-old mistakes,” she says. Now a facilitator of intergenerational Bible study at the church, she encourages everyone to remember that the book was written for particular people long ago and needs contextual interpretation.

“The way I use it now is different,” Ms. Cain says. “When I was younger, it was: ‘The Bible says this, this is the way it must be,’ without taking into consideration the historical context. But it was written by man, translated by man, had all this stuff done to it by man.... Now it gives me a guide.”

Embracing the authority of Scripture is getting more complex in African-American enclaves as well. Bible use is strong among African-Americans: 31 percent say they read the Bible more than four times a week, versus 19 percent for the general population, according to Barna research. And 49 percent regard the Bible as the actual Word of God, compared with 24 percent of all Americans.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

‘[People today] want to be considered Christian, but not according to Scripture.’ – Rosalyn Hickman, a couples counselor

But even in Bible-saturated Chattanooga, African-American Christians (like others) can be reluctant to let the Bible govern how they live their lives. That’s according to Rosalyn Hickman, a longtime Baptist who, together with her husband, Gary, does couples counseling for about two dozen congregations. They meet in the Hickmans’ living room, where an embroidered pillow captures the spirit: “Faith is all we need. That and some hugs.” 

Some couples say they want to honor God, she says, but then insist on living together before marriage or maintaining separate bank accounts in marriage. Both are unbiblical practices, Ms. Hickman says.

“It’s harder now because I think people are more into themselves – smart, successful, and wanting to have it both ways,” she says. “They want to be considered Christian, but not according to Scripture.”

To help others warm to biblical authority, Hickman tells how the book has made a difference in her family. Her mother came to regret not living according to biblical directives and going out to clubs when she was single with young kids. Hickman took a different route. She came to faith at age 10 with help from white evangelists. By trusting in grace and pursuing biblical standards, she’s been blessed with a strong marriage, she says. Now she’s teaching a new generation of girls to dress modestly, for instance, and make time for daily Bible study.

Beyond Tennessee, the quest to encourage direct Bible engagement stretches across the globe as the Reformation enters its sixth century. It remains a hallmark of global Protestantism, which counts 800 million adherents after a surge of overseas mission activity in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, Protestantism’s center of gravity has shifted from Europe and North America to the Southern Hemisphere. A plurality of the Protestant faithful (295 million) lives in sub-Saharan Africa.

But those following in the Reformers’ footsteps abroad face distinct challenges to the sola scriptura method. Lack of access to the Bible remains a significant problem. Some 160 million people don’t have even one book of the Bible available in their language, according to Bob Creson, president of Wycliffe Bible Translators, a nonprofit based in Orlando, Fla. Technology, as in the 16th century, is helping. Translation software has cut the average time for translating the New Testament into a new language from 25 years to seven. By 2033, every person will be able to find at least one biblical book in his or her language, according to Mr. Creson.

Distribution remains a problem, too. Bibles often pile up in churches, never reaching people in remote locations. But believers are making inroads by using the Bible primarily as a tool for evangelism in countries such as Mexico, Ghana, Kenya, and the Philippines, according to Thompson of Bible League International. 

Disseminating print versions remains important even in the Digital Age. That’s in part because more than half the world’s population still lacks internet access. Even where web usage is the norm, Bible readers prefer print versions by a large margin: 81 percent in the US opt for print over digital for Bible reading, according to Barna’s 2016 “The Bible in America” report. 

Nevertheless, Bible distributors hope the web will soon usher in the highest level of Bible engagement in history. “Some people are calling digital the second Gutenberg,” says Thompson. “I think it one day will be.”

In Chattanooga, some view the Bible as a way to help improve morality among young people. The Bible in the Schools program is founded on the premise that Bible study “diminishes dishonesty, lying, profanity, and bullying” and otherwise improves moral character. (It avoids legal challenges over church-state separation by not promoting any religion, doctrine, or interpretation.) 

“Education in general for the past 100 or more years has put all the emphasis on objective knowledge, so this is maybe the only exposure that they have to broad moral truth,” says Frank Brock, a board member of Bible in the Schools. “It can have immediate impact because [some students have] never heard anybody say, ‘stealing is wrong.’ ”

Still, studying the Bible has been no moral panacea for Chattanooga schools. In two reports on bullying over the past year, the Office of District Attorney General Neal Pinkston identified 122 incidents, called out a hazing culture on sports teams, and flagged “widespread, systemic problems going unaddressed at every level within Hamilton County’s public schools.”

But proponents of direct encounters with the Bible believe it can still have an edifying effect, even with all the countervailing forces in modern society. Some are convinced that the best way forward – for young and old alike – is to rely on traditional methods that worked in generations past.

“I still have the faith of a child,” says Eleonore Williams, a lifelong Chattanooga resident and member of Trinity Lutheran, who is 94. “A child is open to believe and accept.”

A retired accountant and avid hiker of the Great Smoky Mountains, Ms. Williams reads the Bible for 30 minutes daily after breakfast. In encouraging others to trust the holy book, she’s helped at least three people who were suicidal to find hope in God’s promises. “They have to read the Scriptures and believe them, not read them and be tearing them apart,” Williams says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Members of the congregation bow their heads in prayer during a Sunday service at Trinity Lutheran Church in Chattanooga.

Even though busy lifestyles and numerous daily distractions keep many people from reading the Bible today, there are signs of growing interest in the Scriptures. A new Museum of the Bible will open in November in Washington, D.C. A children’s Bible museum, Trek Thru Truth, which will use interactive exhibits to tell 52 Bible stories, is planned for Cleveland, Tenn. 

On this year’s 16th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, about 300 people gathered at another site in Cleveland, the Peerless Road Church. Prayers focused on spiritually uplifting the mass media industry, which 33 percent of Americans blame for the nation’s moral decline. For 2-1/2 hours, singers, dancers, artists, and writers called for a national return to God – and the Bible.

“Take me to the place where a miracle is needed,” cried LaEsha Williams, a fiction writer from Rossville, Ga., before the arm-waving crowd. “Take me to the place of deepest darkness. Let me give light that was given to me.”

Luther, no doubt, would say, “Amen.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Passengers reading wait for the No. 1 subway train on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York. Millennials now, proportionally, pay more for online news than any other group, according to a new study.

Nearly every day during the routine clatter and bustle of her subway commute earlier this year, Shand Thomas began to notice more of her fellow riders shouldering The New Yorker magazine’s beige and black-emblazoned tote.

Then she began to see people walking around with the literary magazine’s shoulder bag – a promotion offered only to subscribers. And when a number of her friends began to complain that it would take six to eight weeks to get their hands on one of these canvas accessories, she knew it was a thing.

“I thought their frustration at the wait for a free bag was funny,” says Ms. Thomas, a 24-year-old freelance writer and editor in Brooklyn. So she wrote a piece of satire gently poking fun at this unlikely New York fashion trend.

Behind her wit, however, her piece hinted at something more than an ironic canvas cachet. As her 20-something friends were clamoring for what she called “the white whale of beige accessories,” they were also signing up for new subscriptions – which came with “the added bonus of being seemingly philanthropic about print journalism.”

It’s a wry observation, and for many within the cash-strapped Fourth Estate, the fact that people might pay for journalism as a kind of civic charity only underscores the depth of the industry’s financial funk.

This past year, a host of left-leaning Americans have been signing up for new subscriptions to the nation’s beleaguered press, berated almost every week as “fake news” by the United States president. And, indeed, nearly 30 percent of those purchasing online subscriptions say their motive is to help fund or support journalism, according to a recent survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

It’s been called a “Trump bump,” and organizations like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others have reported dramatic surges in subscriptions. The New Yorker has sent out more than a half million promotional totes, and can barely keep up with demand.  

But many Millennials, a generation that had long viewed journalism as just more fast-and-ready free content on the Internet, say their decision to go old school and actually pay to get the news goes beyond a kind of civic philanthropy.

“President Trump’s attacks on respected news outlets is a small part of wanting to support good journalism,” says Thomas, who admits that she still just reads copies of her roommate’s New Yorker magazines. “But the sheer volume of news and the in-depth coverage these respected outlets provide is probably more of a reason people my age are supporting journalism. Running out of free articles in a month is also very annoying,” she adds.

Who pays most for online news?

Over the past year, the number of Americans who pay for online news subscriptions jumped from 9 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2017, according to the Reuters Institute report. And while the study noted that this growth has come from the political left, it also noted that the young were also a major force behind the near doubling of paid subscriptions.

Millennials, in fact, have been subscribing to online news outlets in numbers three times greater than any other group, the study found. The number of young people ages 18 to 24 who paid for subscriptions more than quadrupled, from 4 percent in 2016 to 18 percent in 2017.

Those between 25 to 34, too, jumped from 8 percent to 20 percent, making Millennials the group that, proportionally, now pays the most for news online.

Still, Trump’s attacks have taken a toll: as a Politico/Morning Consult poll last week found, nearly half of US voters believe the mainstream press is not just biased, but actually fabricating stories about President Trump.

While Millennials generally lean left, and next year they are projected to have the most eligible voters of any age group, even some younger conservatives have rediscovered the idea of paying for news.

“The 2016 election showed us that we could no longer rely on free sources of information because of the coordinated campaigns waged not only by political parties but also by foreign actors to sway the population through the propagation of misinformation,” says Steven Cruz, a former spokesman for The Libre Initiative, a conservative Latino organization funded by the Koch brothers.

“Having a president that we can't trust has driven Millennials to rely on reputable news organizations and provided a resurgence for print and investigative journalism,” continues Mr. Cruz, a Millennial who is now the president of Resuelve, a D.C.-based political consulting firm.

Legacy news organizations such as the Times and Washington Post say their highest growth rates are among Millennials, according to Politico. The right-leaning Wall Street Journal has seen the number of its student subscribers double in the last year, and the even the Economist magazine said it was “seeing that the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups have been key drivers of new subscriptions.” The Atlantic magazine and The New Yorker report the same.  

“Just years ago, Millennials were raised on the knee of everything being free,” says Marek Fuchs, executive director of The Journalism and Justice Institute at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. “They saw print journalism not as this kind of civic enterprise, but a place that had crossword puzzles and dopey fashion trend stories.”

'Call to action'

But for the first time ever “in 143 years of teaching,” Mr. Fuchs continues, first year students in his classes this year asked him if he could get the school to get them a class subscription to The New York Times. “And I think this is going both conservative and liberal – that there’s a difference between quality, reputable reporting and somebody riffing online. I think the difference had blurred for a long time.”

“Now they’re clearly seeing that the stakes are higher, and that there is worth to quality reporting and journalism,” he says. “And when there’s a perceived premium worth to journalism, they’re willing to pay.”

Not only have many tired of the cascading click-bait headlines on their social media feeds, many have begun to rediscover the traditional democratic purpose of journalism.

“People usually only consume what their Facebook and Twitter algorithms put in front of them as opposed to seeking trustworthy sources,” says Phoebe Lucas, a senior political science major at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del., expressing concern “especially with what we’ve seen of the Russian-linked ads on Facebook having influence on voters.”

“So I find it irresponsible to place this intense distrust on traditional media, especially when there is actual bogus stuff all over the place,” Ms. Lucas continues. “It’s made me value trustworthy sources even more than before.”

She adds that the need to pursue fact from fiction has become “calls to action for myself and some of my peers. We need good journalism and truth-seekers now more than ever.”

In fact, since the election, Lucas says she’s expanded the sources she regularly reads, purchasing subscriptions to The New Yorker and Time magazine, while she gets The New York Times free as a student. “They exist as a major extra-governmental check on the system, a pillar of democracy, so to me, having our president actively tearing it down is so detrimental,” says Lucas.

The Netflix effect

But scholars note, too, that some of the reasons many Millennials have begun to pay for journalism go beyond just the civic and political.  

“Millennials have started to grow up with subscription services – Netflix, Spotify, or apps that charge a dollar every month – so now, I think, it’s not as strange to them they would do that to get good journalism,” says Lindsay Hoffman, associate director of the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware.

“I did used to make them pay for it, and they kind of resented that,” says Professor Hoffman. “Now, it doesn’t seem that they resent it – they seem to be really hungry for valid, tested information. There may be a sense of urgency, a sense of responsibility, and a renewed sense of efficacy – I think they were blindsided by the election,” she says, adding that many of her students admitted that, like many Millennials, they had not voted.

Cultural currency

For older Millennials, not only has getting news from social media become unreliable, reading high-brow material from publications like The New Yorker has  begun to carry a certain amount of cachet.

“You also have this large group of Millennials who ultimately are going to graduate school, graduating from elite institutions, and are seeing the virtue of paid media, or sort of ‘high journalism,’ ” says Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, professor of public policy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They’re subscribing not just for the information, but also for the cultural currency it carries.”

Last week, Michael Longinow, professor of media and journalism at Biola University, a conservative Evangelical school in La Mirada, Calif., presented research at the Associated Collegiate Press convention in Dallas, explaining why some Millennials have begun to prefer “slow journalism.” It appeals to them because “that type of journalism helps them understand cross-cultural encounter better than any other kind,” he says.

And he agrees: “There's a segment that like the prestige of being in a ‘club,’ and paying for access means you're in the event, not on the outside looking in,” Professor Longinow says.

Which is part of the reason The New Yorker’s promotional tote became such “a thing” among Millennials in New York, Professor Currid-Halkett says. “In modern capitalist society we find a way to translate our cultural capital into a commodity and into something that is effective at signalling who we are.”

Which is part of the reason Thomas, the young Brooklyn writer, poked a little fun at those clamoring for the promotion. And of course, already many of her friends have moved on, finding the tote has become “a little cliché.”

“But with the crazy news that is coming out every day, I think Millennials want good journalism from respected sources, and they're more willing to pay for access to that news and support foundations doing good work,” she says. “The New Yorker is a reputable magazine and their tote bag has become a sort of stereotypical status symbol for people – it's also not a bad looking tote, with the added bonus of having a bag to haul your lunch in.”

Reuters

Anti-corruption and pro-European Union protesters gather the Ukrainian parliament building in Kiev, Ukraine Oct.19,

Nearly a year after the presidential election, Americans are finally learning hard details about Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 campaign – just in time to prevent a recurrence of any Moscow-directed interference in the 2018 midterm elections.

On Oct. 30, special counsel Robert Mueller announced the indictments of two former leaders of the Trump campaign while revealing that another former campaign member had pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials about ties with Russian contacts. In addition, Congress learned this week of the extensive disinformation campaign by Russian agents on Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube.

Together, these revelations represent small steps that might eventually help ensure the integrity of the US electoral system. Much more can be done, such as beefing up American cybersecurity and demanding transparency by media giants. Yet the United States can also learn from one of the first countries targeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime with a massive disinformation campaign – Ukraine.

Since the 2014 mass protests in Kiev that ousted a Russian ally, then-President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainians have steeled themselves against Russian influence in their politics and media. Rather than being duped by disinformation, they have embraced their country’s free press and demanded ever-stronger measures against official corruption.

In addition, the country has ended its dependence on Russian gas for its energy supplies. Many Russian-speaking people in a country of 45 million now prefer to use the Ukrainian language and to shun Russian-language media directed from Moscow. Ukrainians also hold firm hopes of joining the European Union and NATO.

To safeguard their democracy, in other words, the Ukrainian people have embraced a national identity based on common ideals of freedom and truth. Defensive measures against foreign meddling are not enough. After years of enduring Russian influence over Ukrainian politicians, citizens there are more demanding of transparency in governance, social media, and the commercial press.

Ukraine’s experience even led it to warn Facebook – back in 2015 – that Russia had planted fake news on the social media platform, according to the Financial Times.

As Americans learn more about Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign, Ukraine provides a lesson in how to respond. A stronger sense of national citizenship can do much to guard the purity of the democratic process.