The GOP’s midterm losses aren’t apocalyptic. Here’s proof.

By Richard D. Land, Christian Post Executive Editor Friday, November 13, 2026

The midterm elections are now over, and the GOP suffered stunning setbacks. Many social and fiscal conservatives are disappointed, even depressed, by the blue tide that produced Democratic majorities in Washington, D.C., and surged into supposed "safe havens" like Texas.

So how should conservative Americans respond? First, we should not despair! As the late, great Chuck Colson often reminded us, pessimism is a sin for born-again Christians. We know that in the end, Christ is King and Christ is Victor, no matter what temporary setbacks come along the way.

Second, we must keep perspective, both historically and spiritually. Politically, the losses in the 2026 midterm elections were significant. However, compared with other historic midterm losses, they are far from apocalyptic. Over the past century, the party in power lost the following combined numbers of House and Senate seats:

• 1938 (FDR): 79
• 2010 (Obama): 69
• 1946 (Truman): 68
• 1994 (Clinton): 62
• 1958 (Eisenhower): 61
• 1930 (Hoover): 60
• 1942 (FDR): 54
• 1974 (Ford): 53
• 1966 (Johnson): 51
• 2026 (Trump): 50 or 51

These setbacks did not keep these presidents from enacting significant parts of their agendas. As many will recall, President Barack Obama reminded everyone, "I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. He was referring to the presidential veto and the executive order, which he wielded quite effectively after losing 69 seats in Congress.

American conservatives should also remember that we are the heirs and beneficiaries of one of the great spiritual and cultural heritages any society has ever enjoyed.

On Oct. 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave an important and thoughtful speech in Athens, with the Acropolis as his backdrop. Rubio acknowledged the immense historical significance of the Acropolis and what it symbolizes:

"For 25 centuries […] Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow. And the progeny of the men who built it — the sons of Athens and Rome — have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the Earth."

Rubio then described the enormous debt that Western civilization in general, and the American republic he represents in particular, owes to this civilization:

"The history of America […] is covered with the fingerprints of antiquity. Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government: in the towering columns, in the domes and the monuments across our capital city."

In fact, as Rubio noted, "the most commonly cited author in the Federalist Papers was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome's great men."

Even a brief look at the founding of the American republic in 1776 reveals the Founding Fathers' deep fascination with the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome. James Madison, the fourth president of the United States (1809–1817) and the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, had read deeply in Greek and Roman history. When I visited Madison's home in Virginia, most of the rooms displayed illustrations of Greco-Roman scenes, with depictions of biblical scenes nearby.

Indeed, as Rubio pointed out:

"much has been written and said about the influence of ancient Greece on the ideas of the American founders […] most of us are familiar with the basic history. Athens gave us democracy. Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy. Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government were shaped in the Greek city-states. Even much of our political vocabulary — words like democracy, tyranny, the word 'politics' itself — found its origins here."

Greco-Roman civilization has been indispensable in providing the fundamental principles of Western civilization. However, our civilization would be far less than it is without the essential introduction of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Acts in the New Testament records a pivotal point of contact that introduced Judeo-Christian truth into Western civilization. Saul of Tarsus, known to history as the Apostle Paul, was uniquely prepared by God to move among the three thought worlds of first-century Mediterranean culture. First, he was born into a devout Jewish family in Tarsus, a major center of Greek culture in the first century. Second, he was regarded as perhaps the brightest and most gifted rabbi of his generation in Jerusalem. Third, he was a Roman citizen, well aware of the privileges and protections that citizenship gave him.

After a life-changing encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul became the "Apostle to the Gentiles." God used him to write between a third and a fourth of the New Testament. His extraordinary missionary outreach to Gentiles was at least partly responsible for the Church having, by some estimates, at least 20,000 Gentile converts for every Jewish convert by the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

In the 17th chapter of the Book of Acts (17:18–34), the Apostle Paul traveled to Athens. Saddened by the city's idolatry, he engaged both the Greek philosophers and the Jews in the synagogue. "He preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection" (Acts 17:18).

The philosophers brought him to the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, asking about his new doctrine. The Apostle Paul stood among these learned Greek philosophers and said:

"Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, 'We will hear thee again of this matter.'

So Paul departed from among them.

Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them." (Acts 17:22–34)

One important consequence of the Apostle Paul's ministry was the introduction of the Judeo-Christian God into Greco-Roman civilization. Ultimately, it helped give birth to our civilization's "common anthropology," which Rubio described as "a common view of man in his place in the universe." Rubio went on to explain that "its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue; of destiny and fate; of truth, goodness, and beauty; of a code that dictates how men ought to live; of objective standards and ideals to strive towards."

We have much for which to be thankful. We have much to defend. With joy in our hearts, let us be about our Father's business.