For first-time college students, here’s a historical reality worth pondering:

When Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton entered Wellesley College in the fall of 1965, she was an active member of the Young Republicans and a bona fide “Goldwater Girl”—a campaigner for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

According to Donnie Radcliffe’s 1993 biography of Clinton, her high-school civics teacher predicted, “You’re going to go to Wellesley, and you’re going to become a liberal and a Democrat.” Clinton responded: “I’m smart. I know where I stand on the issues. And that’s not going to change.”

But the seeds of change were germinating, and one source was a lifelong mentor: Clinton’s youth pastor.

Don Jones joined the staff of First United Methodist Church (UMC) in Park Ridge, Ill., when Clinton was 13. The church was traditional, but Jones was unorthodox: He introduced the youth group to the civil rights movement but also to existentialist philosophy and radical thinkers like Saul Alinsky, who skewered capitalism and religion.

For high-school graduation, Jones gave Clinton a subscription to Motive, a now-defunct progressive journal for college-age Methodists. The magazine ran a mock obituary of God and also asked, “What would be so wrong about a Vietnam run by Ho Chi Minh, a Cuba by Castro?” Clinton relished the publication.

Jones’ message to his students: The world is messy, but people can fix it. Clinton was hooked. Her interactions with Jones continued until his death in 2009, and his ideas eventually morphed into Clinton’s 2016 campaign message: The world is messy, but government can fix it.

Clinton calls it “faith in action,” but it’s also a version of the social gospel still preached in plenty of UMC congregations, including Foundry UMC, the Washington, D.C., church Clinton sometimes attended with her family when Bill Clinton was president.

Mark Tooley of The Institute on Religion & Democracy (and a proponent of biblical orthodoxy in the UMC) wrote about Foundry and the social gospel last fall when the Clintons helped celebrate the church’s 200th anniversary.

“Under the social gospel … Christ Himself and His message of redemption, not to mention His Church, become sideline, if not almost unnecessary,” Tooley wrote. “Instead, government becomes the primary mediator of justice and grace … with few firm restraints on its ultimate power.”

Indeed, some veins of the UMC give cover for Clinton’s liberal positions: The church’s documents aren’t clear about abortion and offer plenty of leeway for women to decide. Clinton has made a pro-abortion agenda central to her campaign. Hundreds of UMC churches defend homosexuality, and a transgender pastor preached at Foundry in July. Clinton announced her support for gay marriage in 2013.

Still, conservative contingencies of United Methodists soldier on. The church doesn’t approve of homosexuality in its official documents. And this summer, delegates to the church’s General Conference voted to sever the denomination’s 40-year ties with the pro-abortion advocacy group Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. (Some local conferences still support the organization.)

Tooley credits an outside source with the surprising move: Africans who made up 31 percent of the national conference’s delegates. Tooley calls the African delegates the church’s “rising power,” as the denomination loses members in other corners. He’s hopeful they’ll offer biblical leadership in the decades ahead.

It’s the kind of spiritual leadership Clinton could have used in the 1960s when she was forming her own beliefs and asking Don Jones in a letter she wrote after he left the church in 1964, “I wonder if it’s possible to be a mental conservative and a heart liberal?”

By the end of college, and with the influence of liberal professors, Clinton was writing her college thesis on Alinsky’s Marxist ideas. She was also campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.

FOR GOP NOMINEE DONALD TRUMP, a different kind of spiritual mentor emerged earlier in his own life.

Trump was baptized as an infant at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, now a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation in Queens, New York. His parents later began attending Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, and Trump became enthralled with the teaching of the church’s pastor—Norman Vincent Peale.

Peale, the author of the 1952 bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking, worked at the church (a member of the Reformed Church in America) for more than 50 years and became the first major self-help guru of the 20th century.

Peale’s message: The world is full of challenges, but with positive thinking, man can overcome them. Trump was hooked. He has said he loved Peale’s sermons and how they applied to business. And Peale’s theme offers undercurrents for Trump’s campaign message: The system is falling apart, “and I alone can fix it.”

It’s a message consistent with Peale’s teaching. Peale’s book begins, “Have faith in your abilities!” Peale tells readers to “never think of yourself as failing,” and “make a true estimate of your own ability, then raise it 10 percent.”

Such teaching might help explain Trump’s confidence (and his affinity for current-day prosperity gospel preachers), but it may also explain why he doesn’t say he’s a sinner. The candidate famously told a reporter last year he doesn’t think he’s ever asked God for forgiveness. (Peale reportedly told television host Phil Donahue in the 1980s it isn’t necessary to be born again.)

But it wasn’t until Trump proposed last fall a ban on Muslims entering the United States that mainline Presbyterian churches started speaking out against some of the candidate’s statements. Rutgers Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Manhattan condemned Trump’s proposal and asked the Presbytery of New York City and the General Assembly to review his membership standing in the denomination.

The stated clerk of the PCUSA released a statement in December saying that although Trump was baptized in the denomination, there was no evidence he currently holds membership in any congregation: “Therefore, the discipline process that would be necessary to remove him from membership is not applicable.” (The clerk did refer to an open letter to Trump telling him the PCUSA welcomes refugees and calls for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.)

Still, the church leaders didn’t seem publicly dismayed by Trump’s public indiscretions: bragging about adultery, owning a strip club, boasting about a love of money. Even more notable: They didn’t seem to show public alarm about his misunderstanding or potential repudiation of the central gospel message: Christ came to save sinners, and sinners must call on Him by faith.

Trump continues to have trouble admitting faults in a presidential campaign that has been full of them in recent weeks, despite Peale’s onetime claim that Trump displayed “a streak of honest humility.” Trump’s memory of his time with Peale, according to The Washington Post: “He thought I was his greatest student of all time.”

Freedom or folly?

In 2012, when former Rep. Ron Paul mounted his final bid for the Republican presidential nomination, the libertarian congressman from Texas drew the most diverse crowd of any candidate: Marijuana fans, homeschool moms, and fiscal hawks could show up at the same event and show equal enthusiasm.

Paul’s libertarian ideas had something for lots of groups, and some voters are wondering if this year’s Libertarian Party nominee—Gary Johnson—might be an alternative to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Marijuana fans would be happy: Johnson supports legalizing the drug nationwide and says he’s used it himself. (He told USA Today he’s stopped taking it during his presidential campaign.) Fiscal hawks might take heart: As the Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, Johnson cut taxes 14 times and vetoed 750 bills. He says balancing the budget without raising taxes would be a centerpiece of his presidency.

But social conservatives might hit the brakes.

Unlike Ron Paul, Johnson is pro-abortion. Though part of his small-government plan includes a promise not to fund abortion with public funds, Johnson told Rolling Stone in 2011 he supports “women’s rights to choose up until viability of the fetus. … Fundamentally this is a choice that a woman should have.” The same year, Johnson announced his support for gay marriage. (Speaking of marriage, Johnson is divorced: In 2005, he left his wife of 28 years while dating another woman.)

It’s a libertarian deal-breaker for some: Freedom is good, but freedom to do what? (The Bible’s teaching on government in 1 Peter 2 includes this key instruction: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil.”)

For Christians looking to exercise freedom in a changing culture, Johnson doesn’t offer much comfort: He’s called religious liberty laws “a black hole,” and though he’s said religious groups should have exemptions for conscience, “everyday businesses” shouldn’t have those provisions.

Johnson might get a chance to explain some of those views to the nation: To qualify to appear in a presidential debate, a candidate must have at least 15 percent of voter support in national polls. By mid-August, Johnson was drawing close to 9 percent. The first presidential debate is slated for Sept. 26, and the Commission on Presidential Debates has been making plans for a third lectern—just in case. —J.D.