Erin Scott/Reuters

House impeachment managers proceed through Statuary Hall to present arguments in the Senate impeachment trial against former President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 9, 2021.

At a time when many are invoking lofty ideals and the Founding Fathers as justification either for or against impeachment proceedings, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar favors a line from comedian Trevor Noah.

“If you get fired at Best Buy, they don’t just let you steal a TV on the way out,” she says, pushing back against the Republican argument that it’s overreach to hold an impeachment trial for a president who has already left office.

The House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump with one week remaining in his term, charging him with inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 by falsely claiming at a rally outside the White House that he won “by a landslide” and encouraging his supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers were meeting to tally the Electoral College votes showing that Joe Biden had won. The charge cites Mr. Trump saying at the rally, “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

A month later, as the Senate began its trial on Tuesday, all but five GOP senators had indicated they see the proceedings against an ex-president as unconstitutional. In a vote Tuesday night on whether a trial would be constitutional, a sixth, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, added his support. Still, that group of half a dozen GOP senators is far short of the 17 Republicans whose support Senate Democrats would need to convict Mr. Trump – leading some to ask what’s the point of going forward, when so many other weighty issues await legislators’ attention, including COVID-19 relief. (Editor's note: This paragraph was updated to reflect Senator Cassidy’s vote Tuesday night.)

“We have a constitutional obligation to take on these articles of impeachment. They came to us; we can’t shirk our duty,” responds Senator Klobuchar, a former prosecutor from Minnesota. “Secondly, there’s history. ... You have to have a historical record of what happened and hold the person that incited [the violence] accountable.”

Democrats insist there is a moral imperative to establish clear consequences for incitement, and they say impeachment proceedings are the appropriate way to protect American democracy against similar attacks in the future. Republicans warn against turning a mechanism of last resort into a partisan tool that’s being wielded more and more frequently and hastily.

Senate Television/AP

In this image from video, House impeachment manager Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Colorado, prepares to speak during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 9, 2021.

Some also question whether a trial that may last a week and rely mainly on video evidence rather than in-person testimony is the most effective way to establish a comprehensive accounting of the day’s events, including the influence of Mr. Trump’s words on those who spearheaded the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol. Republicans, some of whom remain concerned that a rapid spike in mail-in voting and last-minute changes in election administration led to election irregularities, despite a lack of evidence supporting those claims, also criticize Democrats’ push for impeachment as needlessly vindictive. 

“I don’t think there is any meaningful purpose other than exercising the partisan anger Democrats have towards President Trump,” says Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who has felt that anger himself after Democrats blamed him for contributing to the Jan. 6 melee by calling for a 10-day election integrity audit before certifying the results of the Electoral College in key battleground states that Mr. Trump lost. “We have enormous challenges in this country, including a global pandemic and tens of millions of Americans out of work. And congressional Democrats are more interested in venting their partisan rage than providing meaningful solutions to those crises.” 

Some on both sides of the aisle believe the exercise could help Mr. Trump rebound politically and possibly stage a comeback in 2024.

“I think it’s going to backfire on the Democrats,” says Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, citing Mr. Biden’s promise to be a president for all Americans. “This is not going to bring unity.”

But New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, whose presidential campaign – like Mr. Biden’s – was replete with exhortations to unity, says there have been times in American history when the right thing to do was unpopular or even divisive, like ending miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriage.

“Look, unity around issues that speak to the moral imagination of this country is what we want,” says Senator Booker. “It’s very hard to find justice in this country without confronting often very difficult topics that sometimes do divide.”

“This Capitol was attacked,” he continues, pausing in one of the same basement corridors through which senators were hurriedly evacuated after hundreds of Trump supporters entered the building, shattering windows and doors, attacking police, and chanting things like “Where’s Nancy [Pelosi]?” and “Hang Pence!”

“Right now, where we are standing is a crime zone. People died. And we have to address that.”

Trial opens with arguments over constitutionality

The impeachment trial opened Tuesday with a prayer from the Senate chaplain, Barry C. Black, who invoked the words of New England poet James Russell Lowell: “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.”

Then began hours of arguments over whether a Senate impeachment trial of a former president is constitutional. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, led the House prosecution team’s opening presentation, which included a video montage of snippets from Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and scenes of rioters breaking into the Capitol and attacking police with obscenities and physical force. His team also drew on historical examples to bolster their claim that former federal officials are not exempt from an impeachment trial. They noted that all of the impeachments that occurred during the framers’ lifetimes were of former officials, and the most famous of those cases – which was unfolding as they met for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia – involved Warren Hastings, the former governor general of the British colony of Bengal, who had been out of office for two years.

Representative Raskin, who recently lost his son to suicide, concluded the presentation on a personal note. As he shared the experience of bringing his daughter and son-in-law to the Capitol on Jan. 6, a day after burying his son, only to be separated from them during the violence, the chamber grew still as senators on both sides of the aisle gave him their attention and respect. During a break, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas came up to Mr. Raskin and spoke with him for a couple of minutes, patting Mr. Raskin on the arm in a gesture of compassion as their conversation wrapped up.

Republican senators and even Mr. Trump’s lead counsel, Bruce Castor Jr., praised Mr. Raskin and his team for a strong presentation, in contrast with last year’s impeachment trial. But Mr. Trump’s defense team, while denouncing the violence on Jan. 6 and calling for prosecuting those involved to the fullest extent possible, went on to argue against proceeding with the trial. They depicted the trial as an unconstitutional pursuit hijacked by partisan passions. Attorney David Schoen called out what he characterized as congressional Democrats’ “insatiable lust for impeachment” over the past four years, showing a montage of his own going back to 2017 with clips of lawmakers from Rep. Maxine Waters to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senator Booker.

At the end of several hours of arguments, the Senate voted 56-44 to proceed with the trial, deeming it constitutional.

No impeached president ever removed from office

The House of Representatives has launched impeachment proceedings against four presidents in American history: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Mr. Trump in 2020 and again this year. Mr. Nixon resigned before the full House voted on impeachment, and none of the other three were removed by a Senate conviction, which requires a two-thirds majority. But as former GOP speechwriter David Frum points out in a recent article for The Atlantic, there were “seismic political consequences” in each case. 

While impeachment proceedings echo legal proceedings, they are also an inherently political exercise. There is no established standard of evidence required to convict. The jurors are senators, sworn to be impartial but elected by – and accountable to – their constituents. The trial is held not in a courtroom with strict rules on what can be transmitted to the public, but in the Senate, televised for the nation to see.

With such a stage, impeachment proceedings can influence public thought in a way a court case rarely does. And this may be a key rationale for the Democrats to press forward even if a conviction is unlikely. 

“We think that every American should be aware of what happened – that the reason he was impeached by the House, and the reason he should be convicted and disqualified from holding future federal office, is to make sure that such an attack on our democracy and Constitution never happens again,” Representative Raskin told The New York Times. 

Alternative ways of holding Trump accountable

If the Senate were to convict Mr. Trump, it could then hold a subsequent vote that would bar him from running for federal office. If there is no conviction, however, some worry that could render impeachment an impotent tool.

“Not having consequences would be horrible,” says Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, who has a backup option in his pocket: a censure resolution that would require only 60 votes instead of 67. The resolution, which he worked on together with GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, is based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits from federal office anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

“Impeachment would be historic, but so would using a Civil War-era insurrection statute against the president of the United States,” he told reporters Monday night. 

Although the resolution is on the back burner for now, he says it could still provide an alternative path, depending on the outcome of the impeachment proceedings. 

“We might get into the trial and some Republicans could see evidence that would make them think, ‘We gotta do something,’ and some Democrats could say, ‘Do we really want to see another acquittal?’”

Another option would be a criminal trial, which centrist Democrat Joe Manchin believes would be more effective than impeachment. 

“People look at this as a political trial,” he says, before exiting the Senate Monday night near where workers had spent the day repairing some windows shattered in the Jan. 6 siege. Still, he adds, “If there was ever a reason for the articles of impeachment, this was it.”

After spending five years in Vietnam for her husband’s work assignment, Beth Schultz looked forward to reconnecting with church life in 2016 when her family returned to Portland, Oregon. But she easily gets overwhelmed in groups, she says, and she didn’t feel a warm welcome at her church. She tried practicing faith independently, but habits were hard to sustain with no community support.

All that changed last year, however, when joining another church became an option – a church 2,000 miles away.  

Ms. Schultz began worshipping at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, one of many making room during the pandemic for new “virtual members” who attend only online. She watches services on YouTube in her bathrobe, attends social gatherings on Zoom, and is glad to be rid of what she calls “the judgment factor” that she’s too often felt when visiting churches in person. So when Wilshire Senior Pastor George Mason started inviting online attendees to join the congregation, no matter where they live, she eagerly signed up.

Courtesy of Beth Schultz

“It feels like less pressure when you’re behind a screen. You don’t have to talk, but you can talk when you’re ready to talk.” – Beth Schultz, who attends the online services of a church in Dallas from her home in Portland, Oregon

“It’s nice to be seen, noticed, and welcomed when you show up alone,” says Ms. Schultz, who tithes to her faraway church and sometimes has a speaking role during worship. “It feels like less pressure when you’re behind a screen. You don’t have to talk, but you can talk when you’re ready to talk.”

It’s a pandemic shift no one saw coming at the start of 2020. Churches that had long assumed their members would live nearby are no longer resigned to geographic constraints. As congregations have gone online to maintain ministries while social distancing, new worshippers from other regions have been showing up. Now some are getting even more involved. They’re becoming part of the fabric of church life as members, regular donors, and active participants in a host of church activities. 

“Online really is a way to reach people that maybe we couldn’t reach in a local setting because some people wouldn’t come into a church building,” says Gary McIntosh, professor of Christian ministry and leadership at Biola University in La Mirada, California, and author of 23 books on church growth. “But they will observe a worship service online, and they will get involved in a small group online.” 

Just how many congregations are taking in far-flung worshippers is difficult to pin down. But congregations large and small are reporting notable increases. Wilshire, a church of 2,000 active members, has identified 22 new participants during the pandemic who live too far away to attend in person yet are highly engaged, including seven who’ve formally joined. Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration (aka The Fig), also in Dallas, counts 21 faraway people who are deeply involved. This includes new members who live in Tennessee and England, according to Anne Schmidt, director of evangelism and welcoming ministries.

Courtesy of Pastor Michael Beck

Co-pastor Michael Beck of the Wildwood United Methodist Church in Florida leads an online Easter service in 2020.

In Florida, the Wildwood United Methodist Church has created a new “network partner” category. So far, 12 distant participants have taken the pledge to “participate digitally as much as possible” among other commitments. Hundreds more take part in what Michael Beck, co-pastor of Wildwood UMC, calls “new forms of digital church.” These include “Create” and “Yoga Church Digital,” which are considered expressions of church in which participants make art and do yoga in Christian devotional contexts. 

“For us, ‘virtual’ is real, not less than real,” says Mr. Beck in an email. “Real community forms there with real people. In fact, people seem to be much more open to share personal struggles and get spiritually intimate in an online venue. So we spread these experiences across the whole seven-day workweek, as many people work or do other activities on Sundays.”

Online memberships are changing notions of what church life entails. Faith communities began 2020 expecting members to attend worship in person at least somewhat regularly and receive Holy Communion from a server’s hand. Perhaps they’d come to a potluck lunch now and then toting a covered dish.

Now people can belong, officially or informally, without ever darkening a church door. That raises challenging questions about what it means to be a church where some people can’t take part in defining activities, such as sharing in the Lord’s Supper. Nor can they ever line up side by side to stuff backpacks that will be given to children in need at a nearby school.

“Our new question needs to be: How do we think about mission possibilities that can be adapted to be national or global so that everybody can participate?” says Michelle Snyder, a church consultant in Pittsburgh.

“Like coming home”

Congregations have a lot riding on whether they can turn mere viewers into engaged participants. Part of it is financial. Though a slight majority of churches have seen attendance increase during the pandemic because of their online outreach, 42% say financial giving has declined, according to a September study from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Roman Catholic parishes have been especially hard hit, with 61% reporting declining donations. Small churches have also been squeezed.

The “digital divide has contributed to the struggle to maintain giving in smaller congregations without in-person services,” says the Lake Institute’s COVID-19 Congregational Study. If churches can cultivate online followers, the hope goes, then increased giving will likely follow, as will the spiritual fruits of dedication to practicing faith in a community. 

Online ministries have continued even though most U.S. congregations have resumed in-person worship. In September, 79% of regular attendees at religious services said their congregations were still streaming services, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

In fact, churches are starting to regard their distant attendees as more than a curious novelty. They’re shaping the collective character of congregations. 

In some cases, opening doors to far-off worshippers means welcoming back those who moved away. Consider All Saints Episcopal Church, a congregation founded about 25 years ago in Bellevue, Washington. With no building of its own, the church convened in pre-pandemic times in a rented office park suite, where about 13 people would show up on a typical Sunday. Now that the congregation meets on Zoom, some 21 people regularly attend, from four time zones. They include once-inactive members who have happily reactivated their status. 

Hanne Peterson, for instance, attends from Bellinge, Denmark. She’s been missing All Saints ever since she returned to her native country in 2016, after 50 years working and raising a family in the United States. Having felt disoriented and not warmly welcomed at churches in Denmark, she seized the chance to be active again at All Saints. She’s resumed attending worship and Sunday school. She also receives the newsletter and donates monthly. 

“When I log in on Zoom, it’s like coming home,” Ms. Peterson says. “You can listen to or look at any church services [online], but it’s different when it’s a church that’s your church and you know the people in it.”

To accommodate participants from eastern time zones, All Saints changed its schedules. Christian education sessions have moved from Sunday nights to Sunday mornings. 

Returning post-pandemic to in-person gatherings with no online component would feel like a step backward, according to the Rev. Josephine Robertson, vicar of All Saints, because distant members would be left out. The church is even starting to discuss going further: possibly becoming an online-only church. That way it wouldn’t have to pay rent. 

“A community like mine is going to be asking some really different questions than what churches have asked in the past,” says Ms. Robertson. “What looks for others like, ‘Yay, we get to get back together,’ would be for us: ‘Oh, we’re about to lose a whole bunch of connections to people.’” 

A revived congregation

In some cases, long-distance worshipping is bringing congregations back to life. Before the pandemic sparked an exodus from church buildings to cyberspace, Judah Fellowship Christian Church in Pittsburgh was barely functioning. Having lost its pastor, the Rev. Shanea Leonard, to a new job in Kentucky, this largely African American and LGBTQ congregation had not gathered regularly for worship since 2018. 

Courtesy of Shanea D. Leonard

“People who’ve found the church for the first time are people who reached out personally to me, like some ... in New York, who said, ‘We want you to be our pastor.’” – Shanea Leonard, pastor of Judah Fellowship Christian Church, a congregation in Pittsburgh that has been rejuvenated by adding members online

When churches migrated online, Ms. Leonard could suddenly reconnect with her Pittsburgh flock by Zoom from Louisville. Parishioners could pray together and engage in broad theological conversations about issues that often come up at Judah but many other churches don’t broach, from sexual identity to regulating firearms. That led to reconstituting regular worship and church growth. 

“People who’ve found the church for the first time are people who reached out personally to me, like some people in New York, who said, ‘We want you to be our pastor,’” Ms. Leonard says. 

As word spread about the revived congregation, people became actively involved. Several New Yorkers have joined as members, and the flock has added people in Seattle and New Orleans as well as immigrants from Haiti and Jamaica. The congregation is still based in Pittsburgh, but it’s become a national church with an international flavor. 

In Houston, a congregation was started from scratch through long-distance recruiting. Pastor Mike Whang spotted the potential as he was overseeing several small groups at Chapelwood United Methodist Church. When the groups moved online, he asked: Why not draw newcomers from beyond Houston? With that idea, Oikon United Methodist Church was started as an online community on Oct. 1 with participation coming from as far away as California and Australia. 

Much of what they experience online is similar to what participants would do in a local church. They join small groups in which they confide personal struggles, emotional wounds, and spiritual progress. Indeed, many say they can sometimes develop more meaningful relationships online than they can attending a local church.  

Zoe Whang/Oikon Church

“It’s amazing how God will move when we just create time and space to listen to each other’s stories.” – Mike Whang, pastor of the Oikon United Methodist Church in Houston

Such was the case for Sharon Cho, who’s long attended United Methodist congregations around Irvine, California. Everyone seemed to know each other at the churches Ms. Cho went to, which made her hesitant to join one. She felt discussing past experiences could be awkward. She’s more comfortable opening up about her spiritual life online among people she won’t run into at the grocery store. 

“There is a level of safety when you’re behind a screen,” says Ms. Cho. “When there’s a screen, you can be authentic and real. Then you shut it off and that’s it. You’re done with the interactions. Sometimes when you’re in person, it’s like you can’t escape.” 

Others agree that what’s important are the connections you make at church, not whether you’re in the pews or not. Chelsea Adamson got involved with Oikon last year, even though she was in the process of moving from the U.S. to Australia. She had a friend who attended Oikon, and she finds online relationships are as real as those in person. She sets her alarm for 3:58 a.m. on Mondays. Two minutes later, she’s attending her church’s Sunday service in Texas via smartphone from 9,000 miles away. Then on Tuesdays at 1 p.m., she stops whatever she’s doing to meet by Zoom with two women in her small group.

“We all take notes when we’re asking for prayer requests, so they know everything I’m struggling with and it’s not just like, ‘OK yeah, cool, next person,’” Ms. Adamson says. “It’s very, very intimate.”

Finding family

Joining a distant church comes with unavoidable trade-offs. If you’re hospitalized, the pastor won’t be there to pray at your bedside. You won’t make new friends through chance encounters in the parking lot.

Some people worshipping online say they’ll probably affiliate with a local church, even if informally, after the pandemic rather than just tune into services over the internet. They like the intimacy that comes with sitting in the pews and being shoulder to shoulder with fellow parishioners. 

Nicole Fike sees benefits in both forms of worship. She was attending a local church in Grayson, Georgia, but wasn’t able to get the congregation to back her idea of holding services at a food pantry. But now she receives guidance and encouragement for her ministry project from Wildwood United Methodist in Florida, 500 miles away, which she joined as a network partner in 2020.

“I was interacting with members of Wildwood three times a week over Zoom, so they became our church family,” says Ms. Fike. “It wasn’t something planned. It just happened.”

Yet Ms. Fike still craves being around people. On a family vacation to Florida last June, she and her husband made sure to meet Mr. Beck of Wildwood; his wife, Jill; and their daughter for dinner. Online church is great for yoga and study, she says, but she still longs to spend a week at Wildwood after the pandemic – and even flirts with the idea of relocating. 

“I have thought about moving to Wildwood just because I feel so strongly and support what Michael, Jill, and their leadership team do in their community,” Ms. Fike says. 

Others are finding ways to compensate for what they might be missing out on by worshipping online. Retiree Phil Jackson of Delaware, Ohio, joined Wilshire – 1,000 miles from his home – in 2020. Ironically, he’d thought Wilshire was too far when he lived just one hour’s drive away in Arlington, Texas, from 2011 to 2020. But the pandemic shift to online ministry made it feel close enough to take part as a full-fledged member. 

So far, he’s been able to do everything locals do: worship, attend Sunday school, participate in fellowship time, and contribute to the collection. While most churches are grappling with how far to go in holding services digitally, Mr. Jackson has decided that, for him, reverting to sitting in pews feels too conventional. 

“My personality likes to have a lot more personal freedom,” he says. “So who knows: This virtual membership might have been a heaven-sent opportunity for me. I hope it is.”  

Courtesy of Ginny Ward

“I do it to get to know them more deeply and pray for their concerns and their lives.” – Ginny Ward, who lives in England but attends services online with a church based in Dallas and is active in a group that makes prayer shawls

In Worthing, England, Ginny Ward is planing to keep her long-distance membership with The Fig, 4,700 miles away in Dallas. Ministries there have helped her navigate some important personal decisions, which led her to join the church when it became an option last year. 

On Sundays, she gets up at 1 a.m. to tune into the service and participate in other activities, such as a session with volunteers who make prayer shawls for people experiencing hard times.

“I do it to get to know them more deeply and pray for their concerns and their lives,” says Ms. Ward. “There’s been an awful lot going on in the [U.S.] lately, and I don’t just mean the pandemic. I feel a connection, and I want to grow that connection.”

For in-person support, she maintains her local membership at a nearby Worthing church, where she has introduced the prayer shawl ministry.

Virtual services here to stay?

To foster long-distance connections, congregations are starting to designate people to tend specifically to cyberspace flocks. For example, Long Hollow Baptist Church outside Nashville last year created a new position for Andrew Bolton – digital pastor.

“Yesterday I was talking to a guy in Montana who’s been joining us online for the past couple of months,” Mr. Bolton says. “Now he’s trying to figure out: ‘How do I get in a life group? I live in Montana.’”

As churches cultivate online participation, they can use it to reach out to regular members, too, who may not be able to attend services because they work on weekends or have moved away temporarily. 

“This is a vast improvement in the delivery system for a majority of congregations,” says Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and co-author of “The Other 80 Percent: Turning Your Church’s Spectators Into Active Participants,” in an email. 

One other advantage of digital services may be to draw new people to church altogether. This might include young people who are interested in spirituality but wary of organized religion. Others may desire the support of a church community but don’t want to sit in the pews to get it.

“Now you’ve got millennials who’re looking for online community,” says Ms. Snyder, the church consultant in Pittsburgh. “You’ve got baby boomers who’re becoming shut-ins and need online community. You’ve got introverts who aren’t comfortable in crowds, and you’ve got single people who feel awkward going to a church alone. You’ve got all of these people who’re largely unreached by church as we’ve done it. If we can move to online platforms that engage those people ... it could make all the difference in the world.”

Erin Schaff/The New York Times/AP

Amanda Gorman delivers an original poem at the inauguration of President Joe Biden in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021. She read another original poem at the Feb. 7 Super Bowl to honor the game's honorary captains: a veteran, an educator, and a nurse.

I am being whipsawed by too many conflicting currents driving culture, politics, business, and history in America. What’s enduring? What’s barely a blip? Do I cheer or hide under the covers?

That’s what I asked myself one week after President Joe Biden’s inauguration. It was also three weeks after rioters threatened the lives of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence. Although the riot failed to derail the transition of presidential power, five people were killed, including a Capitol policeman. Here’s a partial list of news and conversations I witnessed at the time, all within just 48 hours:

• The Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin, suggesting that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol may embolden “homegrown violent extremists” to commit additional anti-government attacks.
• The U.S. Institute of Peace (on whose International Advisory Council I sit) marked the 30th anniversary of the reunification of Germany. Although 380,000 well-trained Soviet troops were stationed in East Germany at the time, not one bullet was shot during the transition. The remarkable, and remarkably fast, final dismantling of the Cold War was driven, on the American side, by a diverse team of smart, compassionate, and effective Republican politicians and diplomats. Chief among them were President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker III, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and his deputy, future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. 
• Leaders of the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump PAC of former GOP political strategists, predicted a bitter six-to-eight-year war against the so-called sedition caucus for the future of American democracy. During a recent online presentation hosted by 92Y, Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said, “Democracy can’t be the kinder, gentler side in this fight. We have to turn away from the darkness together!”
• After a five-year drought, there will again be a Black woman leading a Fortune 100 company. Rosalind Brewer has been named CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the nearly $140 billion retailer and pharmacy ranked No. 19. When she takes the helm on March 15, Ms. Brewer will be one of only 40 women running a Fortune 500 company, as well as the only Black woman – and only the third in history. The first was Ursula Burns, who stepped down as CEO of Xerox at the end of 2016.
• And the NFL announced that Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, would perform an original poem at the Super Bowl!

Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP/File

Rosalind Brewer asks a question during a panel discussion at the Walmart U.S. Manufacturing Summit in Orlando, Florida, on Aug. 22, 2013. At the time, she was serving as Sam's Club president and CEO. On March 15, she takes over the helm of Walgreens Boots Alliance, a Fortune 100 company.

Of all the news in this 48-hour period, the Gorman-NFL collaboration was the most unexpected. Football holds an outsize place in the largely male American cultural imagination, and the NFL has coped inconsistently, at best, with incidents – on and off the field – involving racism, domestic violence, and police violence. Yet the league chose this 22-year-old, female avatar of Black brilliance to present an original poem at its biggest game of the year.

Setting the tone with a poem

Ms. Gorman is the first to recite a poem at a Super Bowl, and she may also be one of the few Black women to perform there without incident. Remember the 2016 brouhaha over Beyoncé’s halftime performance, which a former Republican congressman complained was “pro-Black Panther and anti-cop.” Before that was the 2003 commotion over Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” which damaged her reputation but not that of her white, male co-star, Justin Timberlake, despite his role in the incident.

From the start, Ms. Gorman’s appearance has been altogether different. The NFL promoted her not as a halftime entertainer but as a pregame tone-setter. And her subject didn’t involve singing and dancing. Instead, she celebrated (on videotape) the ordinary people – a nurse, an educator, and a veteran – chosen by the NFL as honorary Super Bowl captains because of their community service during the pandemic.

In the aftermath of 2020 – with the election of Kamala Harris as vice president, recognition of the pivotal role Black female voters played in sending a Democrat to the White House, and the frightening ramp-up of white supremacist groups – the NFL’s invitation to Ms. Gorman acknowledges the importance and appeal of young, gifted, Black women and their words.

Reading Ms. Gorman’s interview in Vogue, I was reminded of the biblical reference to “a little child” leading. “I have to interweave my poetry with purpose,” she says. “For me, that purpose is to help people, and to shed a light on issues that have far too long been in the darkness.”    

With her uplifting, expansive vision and mission, Ms. Gorman represents the best of Gen Z.

Forming alliances across generations

In our book, “A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive,” my co-author, Bonita Stewart, and I describe a new phenomenon: “generational diversity.” Our 2019 proprietary research examined the views of 4,005 American female “desk workers” of four races (Black, Latina, Asian, and white) and four generations (boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z). Our data found that Black women and Latinas, especially younger Gen Zers and millennials, are more innovative and more likely to be first adopters of new technology. They are mission-driven and say that their work contributes to the social good to a far greater degree than their white and Asian counterparts. They are also supremely confident that they will control their careers. And large majorities, across all four races, say that “sisterhood” will be important to them at work.

These findings tell us that a new era of leadership is, in many cases, already dawning. Perhaps the NFL is a forerunner in the call for more inclusive leaders fueled by their understanding of cultural differences, leaders who are eager to activate diversity – including generational diversity – as a competitive advantage. 

I’m also encouraged by the ascendancy of the 58-year-old Ms. Brewer, the incoming Walgreens CEO. Another theme in our book is “generational alliances.” When we team up, younger women can provide energy just as older ones provide wisdom.

Maybe that’s the ultimate message from and for this jangly cultural moment. Find your allies and #TeamUp to save our institutions!

A winding road snakes up the hillside of Ayagaures, a hamlet nestled deep in the valleys of Gran Canaria. Goats graze alongside quaint stone houses, a glimmer of the Atlantic set in the distance. The calm tranquility offers a clean slate, the perfect place to start over.

At the Deamenac Ayagaures center for youth migrants, two dozen young men are trying to focus on today’s lesson: math, in Spanish. With classes on the local language and how to navigate Spanish bureaucracy, they hope to be able to do what they spent days crossing an ocean to do: work.

But that won’t come overnight, and no one knows it better than staff member Aboubacar Drame. In 2006 at age 17, Mr. Drame left his family home in Mali, boarded a patera fishing boat in search of better opportunities, and spent four days at sea before arriving in Arguineguín, Gran Canaria.

When he reached port, he was placed in a migrant center in nearby Arinaga. After two years there, the staff offered him a job. Now, at Deamenac Ayagaures, Mr. Drame translates between Spanish and African languages, teaches new migrants the local customs, and helps them fill out paperwork.

And as the Canary Islands face the largest swell of migration since 2006 – around 22,000 people arrived from North and West Africa last year – he has extended his efforts beyond his 9-to-5 job to volunteer with new migrants on nights and weekends.

More than practical support, Mr. Drame and other former migrants like him are proving invaluable resources to aid groups, offering a blend of compassion and tough love – based on their own lived experience – that is helping migrants adjust to their new circumstances while also giving realistic advice about how they can succeed. They’re also countering fears some locals may have of new arrivals, thereby bridging local and migrant communities.

“I tell these young men the truth, that I went down the same path as them ... but that things are not going to be easy,” says Mr. Drame. “Many think they’ll come here and get a job right away, buy a house. It’s not like that. I’ve been here for 14 years, I have Spanish nationality and a job ... and it’s still hard.”

Stepping up amid a crisis

Mr. Drame’s life back in Mali wasn’t stricken with war or famine. He had an education, lived in a meager home, and worked as an Arabic teacher for two years in Mauritania. But he was getting increasingly frustrated, watching all of his earnings go to his father. It’s what ultimately pushed him to leave.

Gibril Nija, from Gambia, had a similar experience. In 2012 at the age of 16, he left for Senegal without telling his parents, working for eight months as a fisherman before joining a patera headed to Europe.

“My mother was very protective of me, but my father always told me I needed to be strong, to be a man,” says Mr. Nija. “So one day when I was home alone, I opened the window – no bag, no money – and left.”

Colette Davidson

The Deamenac Ayagaures center on Gran Canaria, where youth migrants can learn beginner Spanish. Around 22,000 people arrived from North and West Africa last year.

Since arriving in Tenerife, Mr. Nija has worked both in Spain and abroad. But when he returned after a two-month stint as a carpenter in Zurich to find his adopted home in the throes of a migration crisis, he decided to volunteer with a local aid group.

Mr. Nija now works out of a hotel in Adeje, in the south of the island, where more than 400 migrants are being housed. Like Mr. Drame, Mr. Nija helps migrants with police intake, medical visits, and Spanish bureaucracy. He also sneaks in used clothing, mobile phone SIM cards, and skin cream for the men, whose legs and feet arrive cracked and peeling from days spent soaking in the ocean water that lines their boats.

“I’m living off my savings right now, so eventually I’ll need to look for a job,” he says. “But for now, I’m happy doing this.”

“These men are not living like kings.”

Mr. Nija and Mr. Drame’s volunteerism comes when tension across the Canary Islands is at an all-time high. Amid a pandemic that has destroyed tourism and left 30% of people here unemployed, the regional government has faced criticism about its handling of the migration crisis. Some say the government should have been more prepared after the 2006 surge, when over 30,000 migrants arrived on the islands.

“There is an overwhelming lack of room for decent reception,” says Elena Lugli, president of aid group Médicos del Mundo Canarias. “However, we do not believe this is due to lack of financial resources or personnel. Rather, it is due to a lack of political will and coordination between public administrations.”

Despite efforts to relocate them to government facilities, around 7,000 migrants remain in hotels, much to the chagrin of some locals who complain that the migrants are living a five-star life. In mid-December, the Red Cross told migrants across Gran Canaria to stay indoors, after a group of residents in Arguineguín – where several thousand migrants were left stranded for weeks in November – were videotaped shouting insults at migrants and allegedly harassing a group of Moroccans.

“In the Gambia, I never thought about racism, I never thought I’d face it like I have here,” says Mr. Nija. “If you don’t live it yourself, you see it, you hear it, with gestures, looks, words. Everyday. ... It’s extremely painful.

“These men are not living like kings. They’re eating sandwiches and pasta everyday. Many have been here for two months and only have one pair of pants. They wash them at night and dry them over their balcony. They wake up and wear them again the next day.”

Shifting perspectives

Immigration experts say that when former migrants work with aid agencies, they can help new migrants properly prepare for the challenges they may face, like racism, integration, or finding a job – and it’s best that they don’t sugarcoat those hardships.

“Obviously it’s hard. We are not a 100% accepting society,” says María Fonte García, a professor of social education for the El Observatorio de la Inmigración de Tenerife at the Universidad de La Laguna. “Hearing from former migrants is a good thing. They don’t lie to them, and they help them redefine their dreams and goals so they can be successful.”

Mr. Drame and Mr. Nija’s brand of volunteerism can also act as a bridge between migrants and local communities – to anchor them as fully participating citizens in society and provide a long-term impact on how communities see migrants, new and old.

“In order to counteract the fear some people have about those from other cultures, it’s important for [migrants] to hold visible positions in society,” says Ms. Fonte García. “When they do this, they normalize and create a positive image of new migrants.”

At the hotel in Adeje, Mr. Nija is on the front lines. But even as his savings start running dry, he doesn’t plan on looking for a paid job just yet.

“Sometimes when I listen to their stories, it makes me want to cry,” says Mr. Nija. “But hearing their problems, what they’ve gone through, it makes me forget my own.”

Reuters

Former guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) participate in a protest demanding security guarantees and compliance with the peace agreements signed with the government, in Bogota, Colombia, Nov. 1.

As the U.S. Senate begins hearing an impeachment case against former President Donald Trump, the trial raises basic questions common to many countries coming out of traumatic periods: Will it improve national unity? Is airing the evidence enough? How does justice balance punishment and mercy?

Over the past few decades, a handful of countries emerging from protracted conflict have sought national reconciliation by tying forgiveness to accountability and unity to advancement of the collective good. Most have fallen short of the mark, but case by case humanity is refining the model. One example is taking place now in Colombia.

In 2016 the government and a guerrilla movement called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace accord ending a 52-year civil war that left as many as 220,000 people dead with 5.7 million people displaced. Both sides were accused of gross human rights violations and summary executions.

The peace deal has three main components. First, it seeks to extend the government’s reach throughout the country to address rural poverty and lawlessness that were the root of the conflict. Second, it calls for disarming and reintegrating former combatants and tackling the narcotics trade. One novel provision guaranteed the FARC – which was allowed to become a political party – 10 seats in Congress through 2026. And third, it addresses victims’ rights through reparations as well as prosecutions that would exchange leniency to perpetrators for full disclosure of their politically motivated violence.

The accord built on lessons from South Africa’s attempt at post-apartheid reconciliation from 1996 to 2003. That process tied amnesty for politically motivated crimes to a person’s admission of truth and then expression of remorse. While it produced a common narrative of South Africa’s past by bringing victims and perpetrators together in public hearings, it faltered in the follow-through. The government lost interest in prosecuting perpetrators who were denied amnesty. Just as crucial, it largely failed to alleviate poverty.

Since signing its peace pact, Colombia has shown similar vulnerabilities. Many parts of the country remain beyond the reach of the government. Territorial conflicts continue, hundreds of community leaders have been killed, development and land reform have stalled, and thousands of people continue to be displaced.

But Colombia’s transitional justice process learned from the weaknesses in South Africa’s approach. It established a special judicial panel to investigate cases and decide what penalties to apply. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa had the power to grant amnesty but not to prosecute. In Colombia, the same panel that holds the carrot also wields the stick. While perpetrators can earn leniency by cooperating, there’s no free pass. They still face sentences requiring them to contribute to the peace accord’s restorative aims. And unlike South Africa, Colombia is starting with those who ordered atrocities rather than the foot soldiers who carried them out.

That compact now faces its first test. On Jan. 28 the special judicial panel issued its first indictments. Eight FARC leaders, two of whom now hold seats in Congress, stand accused of gross human rights abuses. Having already made earlier acknowledgments of their offenses, they are expected to accept the charges. If that happens, the public’s acceptance of leniency will almost certainly be tested. If they admit their crimes before the panel, the FARC leaders will be required to contribute to redressing the harm done to victims rather than facing prolonged incarceration. But they won’t stand trial or face life sentences. The two members of Congress may even keep their seats.

As jarring as that might be for victims, it is still the better outcome, argues Yesid Reyes, a human rights professor at the University of the Andes in Bogotá. “What is preferable,” he asked in an interview with CE Noticias Financieras: “Five hundred theoretical years in prison or eight effective years of a sanction that, in addition, has led former guerrillas to publicly acknowledge their responsibility, ask for forgiveness, and bring truth – apart from fulfilling the obligation to cooperate in reparations for victims?”

From Rwanda to Sierra Leone to South Africa, and now to Colombia, the evidence continues to mount that truth, contrition, forgiveness, personal reformation, not just punishment, also hold the power to heal broken societies. Each country can build on the experience of others in refining humanity’s insights on the needs for justice considered along with unity and progress.