(Eric D. Woodall/U.S. Coast Guard/AP

Homes near a washed-out road in Utuado, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 3. Puerto Rico has designated Utuado, a collection of dozens of far-flung mountaintop and ravine-hugging settlements connected by narrow roads, as one of the 15 municipalities most affected by the island's worst disaster in modern history.

If it weren’t for her daughter, Silvia Maldonado is not sure how she could have made it.

Living through the two back-to-back hurricanes that brought life to a standstill in her mountain-nestled settlement of 300 residents was bad enough.

But it’s the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria that has the tidy elderly woman feeling overwhelmed: a month and counting of initially damaged services, and then the knock-out of no electricity, no water, and, she says, no sign of help from the civilian and military authorities buzzing around the flood-bashed streets and mud-caked roads of Utuado, a central Puerto Rican municipality of 35,000 people.

“We feel forgotten,” says Mrs. Maldonado, begging pardon for weeping as she revisits what is now simply referred to across Puerto Rico as “la situacion.”

“My daughter was able to fill some jugs of water for me today,” she adds, “but no, we don’t see help coming for the people in Mula,” the Utuado village she calls home.

Such sentiments of abandonment are frustrating for the civilian and military officials moving mountains – sometimes literally collapsed mountainsides – to get everything from food, water, and medicines, to batteries for lamps and tarps to cover roofless houses, to the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who need them.

“It’s painful for us when we hear of people who are feeling like the help isn’t coming, when our attitude is we’ll do what it takes to reach everyone – if a helicopter is needed to access the most remote settlement, I’ll call one up,” says Staff Sgt. José Echevarría, who is in charge of the 250 soldiers, airmen, military police, and engineers from Puerto Rico and the United States assigned to Utuado’s National Guard armory in the storms’ wake.

Working alongside the Puerto Rican National Guard are Katrina-tested engineers from Louisiana and – giving them a periodic assist – airmen and helicopters from New York (home to many Puerto Ricans) and Pennsylvania who are down helping the island effort.

“What we say here is that today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today,” he says, adding, “but we know we still have a long way to go.”

Every day brings with it new stories of daunting predicaments and unmet needs in most of Puerto Rico’s 78 municipalities. Many isolated communities remain out of contact with the outside world, so when people from those areas get out, they bring with them stories of devastation and pleas for help.

Howard LaFranchi/Christian Science Monitor

Staff Sgt. José Echevarría (r.) in charge of Utuado armory, discusses aid delivery with a representative from the Puerto Rican National Guard in Utuado, Puerto Rico on Oct. 7, 2017. A downpour caused a river of mud in Utuado's streets, ceasing the afternoon's delivery missions.

A growing concern across the island is what could be the public health fallout of people without potable water supplies using the waters from streams for drinking, cooking, and bathing.

But Utuado – a collection of dozens of far-flung mountaintop and ravine-hugging settlements connected by narrow roads to the central town – has its own particular challenges, ranging from topography and demographics to politics.

Indeed, the state government has designated Utuado as one of the island’s 15 municipalities most affected by Puerto Rico’s worst disaster in modern history.

Utuado already faced daunting straits before the storms.

Economic vulnerability

Many young people set their sights on the capital San Juan, about 70 miles out of the mountains to the northwest, or even farther afield to the mainland US, leaving behind a population that is about two-thirds senior citizens. The area’s main economic activities, agriculture and a nascent adventure-tourism industry, offered limited employment opportunities. The distances between rural settlements made delivering services difficult.

But after Maria, the Category 5 hurricane that roared through Puerto Rico three weeks ago on the heels of Irma, those problems have been sharply exacerbated, local officials say.

“This is an agricultural zone – coffee, plantains, some citrus – and we’re developing some nature tourism, so you can imagine the economic impact of storms that took out so many trees and roads and flooded so many fields,” says Michael Abid Quiñones, the Utuado district’s representative in the island’s 54-seat assembly.

Indeed, island officials and economists estimate that 80 percent of the island’s crops were lost, and that tourism, Puerto Rico’s bread and butter, will fall off sharply, for months at least.

Overall, an economy that was already experiencing annual declines will shrink further, economists say – encouraging more young people to leave and hasten the decline of towns like Utuado.

Mr. Quiñones is keenly aware of these challenges, but he and other officials here say that for right now their focus has to be on meeting immediate needs – getting tarps to as many as 7,000 houses in the district that lost roofs, power generators to priority sites like elderly residential centers, and food and potable water to the far corners of Utuado.

Partisan feud

The challenge would be big enough if it stopped there, but Utuado has another problem holding things back – a long-smoldering skirmish between Puerto Rico’s two main political parties that has burst into flame in the wake of the storms.

In what might look to outsiders like a mini version of the well-publicized spat between President Trump and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz over the quantity and effectiveness of federal aid to Puerto Rico, the mayor of Utuado and the National Guard here are hardly speaking.

Why? It appears to boil down to politics, and who will be able to claim credit for delivering aid when next year’s elections roll around.

Officials and some residents alike attribute at least some of Utuado’s slow delivery of aid to political conflict: Puerto Rico’s National Guard takes its marching orders from the island’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, who hails from the conservative New Progressive Party, while Utuado’s mayor is from the left-leaning Popular Democratic Party – the same party as San Juan’s mayor.

“I really think the attitude should be that during these times we don’t have political parties, we have Puerto Rico our home, and we are Puerto Ricans,” says Quiñones, who is from the governor’s party. “But I have to admit that the political situation is having a negative impact,” he adds, “it’s affecting people because it’s slowing things down.”

Military officials here express growing exasperation over the impact they say politics is having on their mission. The way the Puerto Rico relief effort is organized, with the military acting in support of the civilian Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA – works well when the local civilian authorities are on board, they say.

Where it doesn’t seem to work seamlessly is in cases like Utuado.

Noting that he holds an all-hands-on-deck meeting every 48 hours to assess progress and shortfalls and to plan the next two days’ aid deliveries and recovery projects, Staff Sergeant Echevarría says, “We have a standing invitation out to the mayor, we need him and his assets there, but he’s only come once. We all need to put the people first,” he adds, “there will be plenty of time for politics later.”

The Monitor tried repeatedly over several days to reach Utuado Mayor Ernesto Irizarry for comment, but was unsuccessful. One Utuado native who declined to discuss the mayor’s motivations directly did note that some members of the mayor’s political party are leery of new initiatives out of the governor’s wife’s office. The programs are being publicly promoted as projects of the “first lady,” and are being implemented with the assistance of the Puerto Rican National Guard.

Individuals coping

One of those programs, dubbed “Stop & Go” and creating one-stop centers for phone calls, device charging, and carry-out hot meals, is set to be in full operation in Utuado this week.

Yet out on the streets and mountain roads of Utuado, politics are the last thing on people’s minds.

Howard LaFranchi/Christian Science Monitor

Idania Gonzalez (l.), and Laura Perez try to find a Wi-Fi signal with their daughters outside the National Guard armory in Utuado, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 7, 2017.

Idania Gonzalez and Laura Pérez, each with a daughter in tow, are hugging a fence across from the National Guard, trying desperately to capture the armory’s wifi signal so they can reach family on the mainland.

“You have to pay cash for everything, but the ATMs are down and the banks are closed. You can’t even use food stamps, because the [card] terminals aren’t working,” says Ms. Pérez, adding, “Pretty soon this is all we’ll have to eat,” and she pretends to chomp down on her arm – to the girls’ delight.

In another Utuado neighborhood, Jeannette Garcia supervises her husband, Roberto, as he prepares to repair his in-laws’ damaged roof. The Garcias flew down from New York, where they live, to Jeannette’s childhood home as soon after Maria as they could.

“It breaks my heart to see the island in this condition, but I do feel like people are helping each other out,” Ms. Garcia says. “And it does seem like help in the form of everything people need is starting to arrive.”

Over the mountain from Utuado in Arecibo, municipal workers are busy handing out FEMA-provided tarps to residents who were able to get to a distribution center to sign up for one.

“The mayor’s office got these tarps, and today we’re distributing 135 in just this zone of Arecibo,” says Sigfredo Torres, who works in the municipality’s finance division during the week but has been spending weekends distributing aid.

“As you can see, there is tremendous need for these tarps,” he says, as he hands one to Dorca Montalbo Román, who lost her entire roof and has been unable to live in her home since Maria. The 20x25-foot tarp she received won’t make her home habitable, but she hopes it will allow her to cover a portion and save some belongings.

Back in Utuado, Jeannette Garcia says she understands why people feel overwhelmed by their post-Maria plight, but she says she’s also doing her best to help her parents see that not all is disaster in their town.

“When we heard that people with no water were bathing in the river, I said, ‘Hey Mom, didn’t you used to tell me that you washed in the river when you were a girl?’ ” she says.

With no electricity for air conditioning and TV, Garcia’s parents have noticed that people are out more visiting with neighbors and sharing the suddenly precious supplies they do have: batteries, potable water, a crunchy lechon de cerdo, or roasted pork.

“When my mom said the neighborhood seemed livelier since the storms, that more kids are outside playing now instead of sitting inside the house with TV or a computer, I said, ‘See Mom, it’s not all bad, in some ways it’s like your good old days.’ ”

The separatist leader of Catalonia stepped back from the brink Tuesday evening, postponing a much heralded unilateral declaration of independence and offering to open talks with the central government of Madrid.

“Today we are making a gesture of responsibility in favor of dialogue,” Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia told the regional parliament. But the loudest applause greeted his insistence that “I assume the mandate for Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic.”

That set the scene for further drama in Spain’s worst political crisis since a failed coup in 1981. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has repeatedly refused to negotiate with Catalan leaders unless they abandon their plans to declare independence.

“Puigdemont opened a door for negotiations to happen, but who knows what Rajoy will do,” says Carles Ramio Matas, a political scientist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. “We’re still in uncharted territory.”

Mr. Puigdemont had pledged to declare his region’s independence after voters in a referendum 10 days ago overwhelmingly endorsed that move. But only only 43 percent of the electorate turned out to vote, and Puigdemont appears to have hesitated in the face of strong opposition from European leaders and signs in recent days that businesses were fleeing the region, fearful of what independence could mean.

Stiff political headwinds

Puigdemont’s caution also reflects the stiff political headwinds he would face in imposing his separatist policy on a deeply divided region where only a 40 percent minority of voters favors secession, according to opinion polls.

Even some supporters of Catalan independence are dubious about the referendum, which was unconstitutional. “I’ve been waiting for the independence of Catalonia all my life, but … I know there is not a majority for independence yet,” said Alex Ros, a middle-aged businessman who turned out with hundreds of thousands of other demonstrators Saturday to demand dialogue.

Susana Vera/Reuters

A man stands on a tractor whilst waving a separatist Catalonian flag at a rally in support of independence in Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 10.

“We should win independence in a legally binding referendum,” agreed by the national government in Madrid, he added.

The Catalan leader’s cautious wording, stopping short of an outright independence declaration, appeared designed to head off the threat that Mr. Rajoy might dissolve the Catalan parliament and call new elections, or even suspend Catalonia’s autonomous status.

Deputy Premier Soraya Saenz de Santamaria had warned that “if there is a unilateral declaration of independence, decisions will be made to restore law and democracy.” A spokesman for the ruling Popular Party had suggested Puigdemont risked arrest.

A hard-line response from Madrid seems less likely in the wake of Puigdemont’s speech, Mr. Matas says. “Rajoy would lose face with the international community” if he assumed direct rule of Catalonia, he argues. “It would mean he refuses to dialogue” while his rival in Catalonia was calling for “de-escalation.”

But the Catalan president’s tactical move disappointed many in the crowd of independence supporters who had gathered outside the parliament on Tuesday evening to watch his speech on a giant screen.

The mood of excited anticipation dissipated as onlookers digested the import of their leader’s words and streamed out of the square in silence. Some, such as 17-year-old student Gemma Giralt kept the faith, even though she said she had been looking forward to an independence announcement.

“We understand he [Puigdemont] was under a lot of pressure. We want to declare independence in a positive way and if he thinks we’re not ready for it, we’re going to give him as much time as he needs,” Ms. Giralt said. 

But Puigdemont’s speech left the political situation in Spain essentially unchanged … and confused.

Experts in Barcelona are unclear about what happens next and say the situation remains as uncertain as it was a week ago in the wake of the referendum. Puigdemont suggested on Tuesday that an international mediator might bring Madrid and Barcelona together.

Appeals for negotiation

Just before the parliament session, the president of the European Union’s Council, Donald Tusk, appealed to Puigdemont to step back from the cliff edge and negotiate with Rajoy.

“Today, I ask you to respect, in your intentions, the constitutional order and not to announce a decision that would make such dialogue impossible.

“Diversity should not and need not lead to conflict, the consequences of which would obviously be bad for the Catalans, for Spain, and for the whole of Europe,” he said.

European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have made it clear they do not support Catalan independence, and their views clearly weigh on both Catalan leaders and the public.

“If unilateral independence is declared, only North Korea and Venezuela will support us,” lamented Mr. Ros, who demonstrated for moderation on Saturday. “That’s not how things should go.”

More pressure came from Catalonia’s business sector. Catalonia is Spain’s most productive economic region, accounting for a fifth of the national economy. Shares in Spanish banking stocks plunged on Wednesday as investors reacted to the uncertain prospects for an independent Catalonia.

Two major banks and several large companies have moved their legal bases out of Catalonia since the referendum, and a team from the Cercle d’Economia, an influential business group, urged caution on Puigdemont at a weekend meeting.

The ball is now in the Spanish prime minister's court. Puigdemont has yielded to pressure and shown some flexibility. Will Rajoy follow suit?

John Locher/AP

People pray for victims of the recent mass shooting at a makeshift memorial in Las Vegas on Oct. 9.

Maybe the American experience with gun violence doesn’t have to follow a dispiriting, predictable cycle after all.

The cycle itself runs like this: a terrible mass shooting shocks the nation. Outrage ensues. Gun control advocates vow that this time they’ll get legislation through Congress. Then, due to the political power of the gun lobby and the cohesiveness of gun owners, nothing happens. The experience divides voters and leaves many deflated and angry.

But observers note there are things the United States can do to try and reduce its scourge of gun violence that don’t depend on polarized national politics. They range from state efforts to take guns from domestic abusers to intensive intervention with urban gangs. Many are ongoing today across the land.

Other issues as models

The US can reduce shootings as it reduced teenage driving fatalities, says Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore. A multi-faceted approach – a higher drinking age, increased license standards, stiffer penalties for intoxication – has lowered a teen’s chance of dying in a car crash by 69 percent since 1978, he says. A combination of limited efforts might have the same effect with guns.

In 2014 Dr. Webster predicted that the US could see a 30 to 50 percent reduction in its gun murder rate over time. He’s no longer that optimistic, due largely to the changing landscape of American politics. But he still has hope.

“I do sense changes in the conversation, changes in the manner [the US deals with guns] I hoped for and cautiously predicted,” Webster says in an interview.

More gun owners are stepping forward to say the National Rifle Association does not speak for them, according to Webster. That is important because any comprehensive approach to controlling gun violence will need to include them, given the national split on the issue and the deep urban/rural, red/blue US political divide. 

“Whenever I talk to groups advocating stronger gun laws, I say you are not going to reach your goals without including gun owners,” says Webster.

States take action

Meanwhile, some states are taking action where Washington isn’t. The move to limit gun access for domestic abusers is a case in point. Since 2013, 22 states have passed laws expanding on existing federal curbs on this issue, according to figures compiled by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun-control group formed after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Democratic senators (from l.) Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, both of Connecticut, hold a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 3 to demand Congress' immediate action to reduce gun violence.

In some cases these laws require those convicted of domestic abuse to turn in guns and ammunition to law enforcement. (Enforcement remains a difficult issue.) Others expand the definition of who qualifies as a “domestic abuser” and require inclusion of this status in databases used to check eligibility for gun purchases.

Mass shootings involving domestic partners can be deadly. In many such incidents, an angry male storms into a wife or girlfriend’s workplace and attacks her and co-workers. A New York Times analysis of mass shootings in 2015 found that 31 percent of fatalities occurred in connection with domestic partner violence.

Rhode Island is the most recent state to move a domestic abuser gun bill. The Protect Rhode Island Families Act, signed into law by Gov. Gina Raimondo last week, prohibits gun possession by those subject to restraining orders as well as people convicted of misdemeanor cyberstalking.

“The interesting thing is that these changes in policy are really across the board in blue, purple, and red states,” says Webster of Johns Hopkins. “That’s encouraging.”

Gang-violence alternatives

Big reductions in US gun violence, however, will require attacking a larger and more complex problem: urban gang shootings.

While the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than the peak of the early 1990s, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, battles over turf and drug profits in cities such as Chicago have helped push the US rate of gun killings up 32 percent between 2014 and 2016.

Yet there are some proven ways to address gangs and guns, say experts. In particular, there are two models, one dubbed “Focused Deterrence” and another “Cure Violence,” which aim to contain and stop gun violence by dealing directly with those at most risk – the gang members themselves.

The “Cure Violence” method is now in use in about 25 US cities, said Caterina Roman, an associate professor of criminology at Temple University and a leading expert on gangs and guns, at an October seminar hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. It involves hiring outreach workers – former gang members, former prisoners, or others who know the streets – to meet and mentor younger gang members. The outreach workers try to stop the cycle of shootings and retaliations by helping to settle disputes and weaning away weakly committed gang youths. They offer social services and use unconventional means, such as turning off illegal electricity hook-ups, to tweak or get the attention of at-risk youths.

“Cure Violence is aimed at changing norms,  attacking the code of the street, changing roles and behaviors with former gang members working to model new behavior,” said Dr. Roman.

“Focused Deterrence” involves faster, direct law enforcement intervention. After shootings, possible retaliators are identified and called in for meetings at which police say all means will be used to stop escalatory killings. The point is to treat gun shootings as infections that must be contained and cured.

“You get quick wins. A lot of that may come from removing individuals from the street,” said Roman.

Both approaches have showed some promising success, though neither is a panacea. The big problem might be scaling up – expanding these pilot approaches into larger efforts that can make a dent in overall US gun violence statistics.

Possible national changes 

As for more traditional national gun control efforts, it appears possible that in the wake of the Las Vegas shootings Congress may act on some sort of ban on bump stocks, the device used by shooter Stephen Paddock that turned his semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic, faux machine guns.

Both Democrats and some Republicans have seemed open to new controls on the devices. The NRA, however, now says it opposes a legislated ban, and favors more limited regulations that may remove bump stocks from the market.

It’s unlikely that Congress will consider expanding requirements for background checks on gun purchases to private sellers, as President Barack Obama tried, and failed, to do in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy. Background checks, an assault weapons ban, and other big moves seem off the table in the Trump era, says Kristin Anne Goss, an associate professor of public policy at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of “Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America.”

Today’s gun violence prevention movement is composed of many more groups than the gun control lobby of the past, says Dr. Goss. It has more money – Michael Bloomberg, wealthy ex-mayor of New York City, is a big benefactor. Parents of Sandy Hook victims and others with personal connections to gun violence are newly prominent spokespeople.

Rick Bowmer/AP

A 'bump stock' device is attached to a semi-automatic rifle at the Gun Vault store and shooting range in South Jordan, Utah, Oct. 4.

This more diverse movement is in part the driving force behind the decentralized, state-level approach to gun prevention, she says. At the same time, the issue of guns remains a good window through which to look at and understand US politics at large. Ideas about guns have long been polarized; other issues are now heading in the same direction.

“Partisan sorting, the fact of politics being deeply about identity, the urban/rural divide – all of these things have been present in the gun debate for decades,” she says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

The congregation sings during a Sunday service at Congregacion Leon de Juda, an evangelical church in Boston.

For Andrew Walker, the current “post-Christian” state of American culture has posed a serious challenge to the faithful.

For a variety of reasons, fewer and fewer Americans now have a grasp of the fundamentals of orthodox, biblical teachings, says Mr. Walker, director of policy studies for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Like many who keep attuned to the country’s religious landscape, he notes, too, the dramatic rise of the so-called “nones,” especially among the young, who may believe in God, but have begun to refuse to identify with a particular religious group.

“They grew up in a nominal Christian culture, where it’s no longer of a cultural or social benefit to identify as a Christian,” he says. “To add to that is, there’s often not only no social prestige to gain, there’s also social prestige to lose, if you say you are a Christian in our society.”

It’s one piece of a cultural shift that has begun to affect even the nation’s most vibrant religious groups. The Southern Baptist Convention, one of the more conservative evangelical Protestant denominations, has lost more than a million members over the past decade. Still the largest single Protestant group in the nation with more than 15 million members, its network of churches nevertheless haven’t baptized so few a number of people in 70 years, the denomination’s research shows.

Over the past few decades, most scholars have recognized one indisputable trend within American Christianity: The country’s more liberal Protestant denominations were losing millions of members. Conservative and evangelical churches, by contrast, were holding steady if not flourishing.

For years, it was more or less conventional thinking, especially among Evangelicals, that “churches that stay with a clear-cut theological orientation will not go the way of the mainlines,” notes Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., citing the influential 1972 study, “Why Conservative Churches are Growing” by the sociologist Dean Kelley. “Liberal mainline churches were then castigated for giving up the true faith and deserving what they got.”

As recently as 2007 to 2014, in fact, mainline Protestant denominations, including Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Methodists, lost nearly 5 million adult members, according to Pew Research.  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Members of Christ Episcopal Church hold Sunday service in October 2016 in Bethel, Vt.

Today, however, there are signs that many of the same trends that decimated mainline Protestantism over the past few decades are now at work among evangelical denominations as well. According to a massive study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released in September, the number of white evangelical Protestants fell from about 23 percent of the US population in 2006 to 17 percent in 2016.

The finding, based on a survey of more than 100,000 Americans, “provides solid evidence of a new, second wave of white Christian decline that is occurring among white evangelical Protestants just over the last decade in the US,” said Robert Jones, head of the PRRI, after the study was released. “Prior to 2008, white evangelical Protestants seemed to be exempt from the waves of demographic change and disaffiliation that were eroding the membership bases of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.”

Perhaps more than anything else, conservative Christians like Walker, an ethicist whose book “God and the Transgender Debate” explores the biblical teachings relevant to gender identity, have had to confront the shock of the country’s evolving sexual mores. This includes the legalization of same-sex marriage, which dramatically upended the traditional moral teaching of monogamous, pre-sexual marriage between a man and a woman.

As many Evangelicals now say they are living in a “post-Christian” era, there has been a sense of urgency to both reassert the fundamentals of Christian orthodoxy – the key to vibrancy and growth, many believe – as well as ratchet up their political efforts to bolster religious liberty in the public square.

Last Friday, the Trump administration expanded the rights of employers to claim religious exemptions to the federal mandate to include contraception coverage in employer-provided health plans. And the for the past few years, conservative Evangelicals, who support President Trump in overwhelming numbers, have been working to carve out religious liberty exemptions for wedding vendors, who object to offering services for same-sex wedding ceremonies.  

Quoting the president, Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday said that “we will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied, or silenced anymore.”

A pastor's kid from upstate New York

Yet precisely because of such efforts, younger conservative Christians like Chelsie Maynard have been conflicted about their religious identities, and many say they no longer want to be associated with the evangelical demographic.

A pastor’s kid from upstate New York, her father is a politically-engaged conservative evangelical minister. Her older brother, now in his late 20s, is a worship pastor, too. Like both of them, Ms. Maynard, a social worker at a children’s health clinic in Boston, has decided to follow the family path and prepare for ordination in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination within the “holiness” Christian tradition that emphasizes living a morally perfected life.

“Wow, but if someone were to ask me if I’m an Evangelical, I don’t know how I would respond to that now,” says Maynard. At least part of the reason for the decline among American Evangelicals is the fact that more young people have already stopped embracing the identity. Today, only 11 percent of Evangelicals are under age 30, according to PRRI.

Don’t get Maynard wrong: “At the root of evangelicalism there’s the call to evangelism, spreading the gospel, and I firmly believe that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life and that he put his church on Earth as a means to bringing other people into the family,” she says.

But she’s come to reject the deep political associations Evangelicals have forged with the Republican Party, and she feels alienated from the general GOP distrust of Islam and efforts to curtail immigration.

And it’s more than politics. Unlike previous generations, Maynard has experienced her faith in an American culture that has become more and more diverse. And as she’s developed close relationships with people different from her, she’s struggled with how to respond, becoming uncomfortable, she says, with some of the rigid moral teachings that many Evangelicals, including her father, have begun to re-emphasize as the country becomes less white, and less Christian.

“For me, a lot of this has especially come into play with the treatment of the LGBTQ community – holding a hard line without listening and without taking that posture of grace and hospitality,” the aspiring minister says. “I want the church to be a place of conversation and shared journey. I’m not ready to throw it out yet. But I do want to see it grow, and change.”

The question of change, however, has long defined the anxieties of many white evangelical Protestants, scholars say. From the fundamentalist controversies of the early 20th century to the politics of same-sex marriage today, evangelical identity has often been rooted in defending traditional biblical teachings from the forces of modernity and moral laxity.

After the Scopes “monkey” trial in the 1920s, Evangelicals began to withdraw from civic engagement as “modernist” ideas and Darwinian science became cultural norms – leading to the emergence of a separatist fundamentalism.

In part a reaction against the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the American subgroup reemerged as a powerful force in politics, a cultural coming out that first culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan, which made it arguably the most influential constituency in the Republican Party ever since.

Historians such as Dartmouth’s Randall Balmer, a leading scholar of American evangelicalism, also point out that the rise of the religious right, especially in the South, was also a reaction against the desegregation of the public school system.

'The Benedict Option'

Some Evangelicals have called for another retreat from society, however, as the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 has led to a “post-Christian” nation. The Christian thinker Rod Dreher has proposed a “Benedict Option,” suggesting that Christians forgo politics and adopt a kind of monastic shield from society.

The religious and spiritual lives of Millennials have been shaped more by a “moralistic therapeutic deism” that replaces biblical Christianity with “feel-good, vaguely spiritual nostrums,” he wrote recently.

Yet narratives of danger and decline also help to motivate the faithful, notes Glenn Bracey, professor of sociology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “White Evangelicals often describe themselves as culturally embattled, and that perspective often increases members’ commitment to their organizations and politics.”

Christopher Driscoll, visiting professor of religion studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., notes that it’s very important, also, “to situate the context of the study within the broader political climate ushered in by ‘Make America Great Again.’ American politics is turning again to a model of white life premised on fear of the other – border walls, Muslim bans, etc.,” he says.

“The fear of white decline is on the minds of more than the far-right who speak of outright ‘white genocide,’ ” continues Professor Driscoll, whose research focuses on race and religious identity in the American landscape. But it’s also important “to emphasize distinctions between real shifts in Christian affiliation and hyperbolic fears,” he says.

'The Nashville Statement'

Last month, a group of more than 150 evangelical leaders, the majority Southern Baptists, announced they had signed the “Nashville Statement,” a series of 14 affirmations and denials that articulate a biblical sexual ethic and view of gender. Released by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, the statement notes that “Christians at the dawn of the twenty-first century find themselves living in a period of historic transition” and that Western culture “has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being.”

For many Evangelicals, the Nashville Statement was simply an affirmation of Christianity’s historic moral teachings and a pastoral document to guide the faithful. But critics noted that the statement went beyond condemning homosexuality and transgender identity: It also condemned those who affirm them.

“We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness,” pronounces Article 10. “We deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.”

The president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Denny Burk, described the statement as “a line in the sand,” noting that “Those who wish to follow Jesus must pursue sexually pure lives. A person may follow Jesus, or he may pursue sexual immorality. But he cannot do both. He must choose. One path leads to eternal life, and the other does not.”

Liberal Christians and others were quick to condemn the statement, but a number of Evangelicals did as well.

“Look at the timing, my goodness, what was it, a week after Charlottesville?” says the Rev. Corey MacPherson, the chaplain at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. and one of only a few evangelical members of the National Association of College and University Chaplains.

“There are all these other issues going on in our world, issues of justice and reconciliation, which are at the heart of Christianity, and here is a statement that isn’t about reconciliation at all,” Dr. MacPherson says. “Younger Evangelicals, especially, they just don’t want to be a part of that – that's not what they want to be associated with.”

This has long been a concern for Chelsen Vicari, the evangelical action director at the Institute on Religion & Democracy in Washington. As a Millennial Christian herself, she has witnessed this trend among young Evangelicals, many of whom have been moving away from evangelical denominations, or away from Christianity altogether.

“As conservative denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention attempt to address sex and marriage and gender with public declarations like the Nashville Statement, these left-leaning young Evangelicals are pulling away more, so perhaps it's created a catch 22,” says Ms. Vicari, who signed the statement.

“But I would argue that it’s due, really, to a lack of theological training, or catechism,” Vicari says. “I mean, catechism isn’t even a word that most Evangelicals know or understand. So I’ve been encouraging faithful Evangelicals to focus on better equipping, better educating younger Evangelicals in the faith.”

'The sociology of Sundays'

As both Vicari and Professor Leonard at Wake Forest point out, traditional Sunday school education in both mainline and evangelical churches have fallen prey to what Leonard calls “the sociology of Sundays.”

“Sunday school was the place where you did small group work, where you developed community, and as I always tell students, Sunday school taught us what the Bible said, if not what they meant,” says Leonard.  

Culturally, however, Sunday has become less a day for worship than for weekend activities – sports, nature hikes, and other leisure pastimes. “We now in this culture have one and probably two generations of Christians who have limited knowledge of biblical content because they didn’t go to Sunday School.”

As Maynard continues her theological education, however, she remains cautious.  

“I had a really good friend say to me once, anytime you draw a line, Christ is on the other side of that,” she says. “So I definitely think the church often loses its ability to take a posture of grace, to be able to say we may not have all the answers, there are some hard things that we just don’t know. I think that’s probably where the church needs to be more often than it is.”

But the majority of Evangelicals, observers say, believe that fidelity to historic Biblical teachings must remain the cornerstone of the faith.

“Once Christianity is loosed from its doctrinal contours, you make it much less persuasive – there’s much less of a persuasive hold over an individual,” says Walker.

Even from a sociological perspective, he says, “I think you will always have more robust sincerity for your faith where you have churches that are more bound by biblical teachings and the confessions of the church.”

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the title of Rod Dreher's proposal. It is "The Benedict Option."

Whitney Eulich

Pola Moffit stands in front of an office building that collapsed in Mexico City's Roma neighborhood during the 7.1 earthquake on Sept. 19. She is part of a team of roughly 10 civilian rescuers, known as Topos, or Moles, who worked at this site for 15 days straight, digging into the rubble, crawling into the building ruins, and trying to rescue quake victims. Ms. Moffit got her start doing this volunteer rescue work on the same day in 1985, when an 8.0 quake rocked Mexico City, killing thousands.

When Pola Díaz Moffitt walks into the wood-paneled seafood restaurant here on a recent afternoon, everyone on staff pauses to greet her.

It’s not the typical reception someone gets when they’ve been popping into the same restaurant for a week, solely to use its bathroom, but this isn’t a typical moment in Mexico City.

Ms. Moffitt, donning a white medical mask around her neck, black plastic elbow and knee pads over her clothes, and a walkie-talkie poking out from her shirt collar, has been working in volunteer search and rescue for eight days straight across the street at Álvaro Obregón 286. The seven-story office building crumbled to the ground on Sept. 19 amid a 7.1 earthquake, trapping scores of people. It’s one of nearly 40 buildings that flattened across the city, killing an estimated 228 people.

Moffitt is a topo, or mole, a term for the citizen rescuers that burrow deep into rubble to search for victims. She and nine other members of the Topos Adrenalina group arrived on the scene here 40 minutes after the earth stopped thrashing last month, and remained until Oct. 4, when the final known victim’s body was removed from the debris.

Those 15 days, though emotionally and physically grueling, are what she lives for – a purpose she discovered exactly 32 years ago to the day, when Mexico suffered its most famous quake. The 1985 8.0 temblor left thousands dead and hundreds of buildings crushed to the ground, leading to the creation of most topos groups. Since then, Moffitt, one of the first female topos, has traveled to dozens of countries and disasters, ranging from earthquakes in El Salvador and Haiti, and New York City’s Twin Towers following 9/11. 

“In the moment, I just ran to the rubble, I felt pulled toward it,” Moffitt says of climbing onto a fallen building in the city’s center and removing rubble with her bare hands for nearly 48 hours in 1985. She kept searching for 1-1/2 months. But it was the sense of being able to help – and wanting to prepare herself and others to do even more in the future – that drove her to dedicate her life to rescue work. She went on to receive formal paramedic training and gives talks at schools and businesses about being prepared for disaster. 

“I was just 20 years old,” she recalls of her first foray into rescue work, when men looked at her on top the rubble and told her she didn’t belong. “I saw so many people who came from other countries to help. I said to myself, ‘When someone needs my help in the future, I will go.′ ” She followed through one year later, traveling to a deadly quakezone in El Salvador.

“The government doesn’t send us. We pay our own way.... We travel to help and represent Mexico with dignity,” she says.

Into the rubble

Topos aren’t your typical search and rescue crews. Most groups were founded in 1985, when citizens responded using their instincts and adrenaline rather than high-tech tools. In the years since, members have had formal training but still shy away from things like heat sensors, instead searching for tunnels created when the structure fell.

“People enter the rubble like little fish. They are swimming, moving themselves through paths we’ve found or created,” Moffitt says, slowly wiggling her body to show how she might use her shoulders, knees, and elbows to shimmy through a tight space, as deep as 100 feet. The teams are skilled in recognizing where wreckage can safely be moved without shifting the entire collapse site, which could put buried survivors at more risk.

“When you’re inside a tunnel, you search with your ears, with your voice,” calling for anyone who can hear to knock three times, she says. “Your hearing becomes very concentrated. You isolate all the outside noises so you can determine what you’re hearing: someone breathing softly, a groan, any sign of life.” 

It’s overcast and rainy on the morning of Sept. 27, a week after the quake and midway through the search. Topos aren’t the only ones involved at this point, with foreign volunteers and Mexican soldiers stand atop the rubble alongside them. Rescuers have moved onto the roof of a nearby building, where they can look down onto the wreckage. The work is slow moving.

Most bystanders are restricted to an area nearly a football field away. For the first few days, even victims’ relatives weren’t able to get much closer – or much information. Government officials weren’t updating families on a regular basis, and, even once there was more communication, about three days post-quake, it was vague. 

“There were families who were spending long days and nights in the rain, waiting for any news about their loved ones, only to learn their child or sibling’s body had been recovered one or two days prior and already taken” to the morgue, says Miguel Ángel Avila Boloñes. The body of his cousin, Erick Martín Acosta Hernández, a 23-year-old working at an accounting firm, was found Sept. 22. The family says an autopsy showed he likely survived beneath the rubble for the first 24 hours after the office building collapsed.

Mr. Avila says his family is frustrated with officials and saddened by their loss. “But the work the [members of] Topos and other groups are doing? We’re so grateful,” he says.

“They are risking their lives to do this complicated work, to save others’ lives. They bring skill and experience to this search,” he says. The civilian response, he adds, has been a silver lining after the quake. “I don’t know if in other countries it’s like this. But many [groups] like the Topos have come out and lifted the people. Mexico isn’t like what you see in the news where everything is bad. Yes, there is bad, but the good [people] far outweigh the bad,” he says. 

By early afternoon, someone on the street below the building passes up a blue tarp to the men and women combing the rubble. Next come several white sheets, brought up in a paint bucket-pulley: telltale signs that a victim has been found. 

Topos together

Any rescue requires teamwork, Moffitt says.“The only time an individual is the sole rescuer is when the victim is sitting above the rubble like a flower, ready to be picked,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s a group effort,” the culmination of hours of moving rubble or scoping out safe paths to tunnel into.

“My motivation is to find one life. That alone keeps me going,” Moffitt says. But being able to return a body to a family “is just as important.” It allows a family to start the long process of grief and “reconstructing their lives.”

Since literally running head-on into this work more than 30 years ago, Moffitt herself has become a mother and a grandmother. And despite the risk, her dedication and drive haven’t faltered.

“I’m hard-headed. I’m persistent, a fighter,” she says. She considers herself lucky to have the support of her family and remembers a point when her three daughters started running to her anytime they saw news of a disaster on TV.

“Do you need to go, Mom? Can we help you pack your bag? Do you want us to look up information for you?” she recalls them asking.

“They grew up with a mom who is not normal,” she says. “But I think they have always understood the importance of this work. Of giving back and helping [people] move ahead.”

The work is exhausting – and it shows. At one point during an interview, Moffitt’s head momentarily dips to her chest. She whips it back up, blinking rapidly. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I disconnected.”

All of the city’s various topos groups are “100 percent volunteer,” Moffitt says. They receive no government support, and most volunteers have day jobs. 

A lot has changed among the topos community since the 1980s. For starters, she says, “I see a lot more young women doing this work.” But there have been other important changes as well. “I feel so much support,” she says. “With all this globalization, it’s no longer just rescuers showing up from Spain, Germany, Israel, the US.

“People are calling us on the phone, setting up [crowdsourcing] fundraisers, sending us messages online,” she says. “It’s incredible. People are taking the time – even if just a few seconds – to show empathy for those who are suffering, and support for others working to save lives.

“All I feel is thanks.”

How to take action

UniversalGiving helps people give to and volunteer for top-performing charitable organizations around the world. All the projects are vetted by UniversalGiving; 100 percent of each donation goes directly to the listed cause. Below are links to three groups providing disaster relief:

Operation USA aids children and families in the wake of natural disasters and other challenges. Take action: Contribute money for the response to hurricane Irma.

Lambi Fund of Haiti aims to strengthen civil society in Haiti. Take action: Donate funds for hurricane Matthew relief.

Partnerships for Trauma Recovery addresses trauma among survivors of human rights abuses through mental health care, clinical training, and policy advocacy. Take action: Support this organization’s global trauma healing center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reuters

Former child soldiers wait to be released in Bambari, Central African Republic, as part of a United Nations-brokered deal in 2015.

In recent years, the United Nations and others have discovered a new tool to curb violence in war-torn nations: Ask the combatants to stop recruiting children as soldiers. It is a heart-touching appeal to protect the most innocent in a society, and one that has brought some progress, according to a new UN report on children and armed conflict.

Last year, for example, the UN was able to remove armed groups in two countries, Congo and the Philippines, from its registry of parties that recruit child soldiers. The UN also obtained new agreements with militants in Mali and Sudan, adding to a couple dozen “action plans” in other countries aimed at halting the practice. In addition, last year’s peace deal in Colombia greatly reduced the number of child soldiers after decades of civil war.

Overall, more than 100,000 children have been released by armed forces or groups. These successes, the UN report states, prove that “engagement on issues such as the separation, release and handover of children can provide an entry point for difficult or protracted negotiations.”

In other words, a path to peace often lies in tapping a shared desire to recognize the need to protect the innocence of children.

In other conflict areas, the UN is finding less success. Last year, the number of child soldiers in Syria and Somalia more than doubled from the year before. And terrorist groups such as Al Shabab, Boko Haram, Islamic State, and the Taliban still use children as suicide bombers.

Still, the progress made so far shows how much global attitudes about child soldiers have changed since 1989, the year the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified. In 2014, the UN launched a campaign to end the recruitment of child soldiers. In addition, many activist groups have been successful in rehabilitating child soldiers from a life of violence in post-conflict societies.

Sadly, the UN says more than 8,000 children were killed and injured in conflicts last year. But one way to end those wars is to focus on children, especially those trained for war. Their innocence is not only retrievable but an easy excuse for peace talks.