In the hours before and after the election results were in, WORLD writers around the country spoke with a variety of leading conservative political and religious minds, asking for reaction to Barack Obama’s victory but also seeking answers to this question: What should conservative Christians focus on politically over the next four years?

Here’s a sampling:

“No candidate is perfect and no candidate is all bad, in my opinion. To be more specific, I would say, for religious conservatives, John McCain is not our savior and Barack Obama is not the antichrist. … Evangelical Christians ought to be the thought leaders, not the flame-throwers. We ought to make compelling arguments and do it respectfully. We ought to be attractive to other people who look at us, and I don’t see enough of that.”

—Mark DeMoss, public relations executive

“Conservatives can often be ethereal and irrelevant. We must show how our biblical worldview is also a relevant worldview, and that it speaks to what people are dealing with here and now. That means making sure that we’re giving them answers for their particular situations, not solutions so broad that they are simply ‘making America a better place.’ Barack Obama made people on the lower levels feel like they mattered and that their pain was worth making a big deal about. Even if his [policy ideas] weren’t the best strategy, they appealed to people on a personal level.”

—Tony Evans, senior pastor, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, Dallas, Texas

“True Story: On my way in to after the election, I was cycling down Pennsylvania Avenue at dawn. Just as I passed the National Gallery of Art I heard a thud to my left. I looked over, and was astonished to see a big, strong red-tailed hawk, which had pounced on a rat in the bushes. Quite apart from the beauty and thrill of seeing a wild predator hunting right in the heart of Washington, I found it a very comforting symbol of how the natural order goes on—unruffled, adaptable, persistent, and permanent. Men come and go, but always there are longer-term forces that drive forward, that cannot be suppressed, that accomplish unexpected things with a motive force beyond human orchestration.”

—Karl Zinsmeister, White House domestic policy adviser

WORLD also spoke with Robert George, Princeton professor of jurisprudence, specialist on constitutional law and political philosophy; Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; Larry Schweikart, professor of History, University of Dayton, Ohio; U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch; former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America; U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.; and Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.