For progressives who expected Hillary Clinton to win, Trump’s victory was a shock. “I expected that I would be talking about reaching out to the people who lost,” said Debra Haffner, the minister at the non-creedal Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia, in an interview. “My music director and I had talked about playing ‘Girl on Fire’ as our last song. Most of the people in our congregation supported the progressive candidate.” Instead, she said, “people walked in here like they were going to a funeral. They were grieving, they were scared, and they needed hope. They needed community.”

Other pastors said they’ve heard similar themes in the past few weeks. In a small group discussion at Park Avenue Baptist Church in Atlanta, “many said that they felt personally threatened—especially our LGBTQ folks,” said Trey Lyon, the pastor for communication and engagement. “Most of our folks are fugitives and refugees from the brand of ‘evangelicalism’ that elected Trump—so for our folks it was mostly grieving and trying to figure out how the hell the people they grew up with could call themselves Christians and support Trump after all that he has unapologetically said and done.”

While a number of pastors spoke about their parishioners’ feelings of pain, they also spoke of a newfound sense of mission. “I am finding the coming Trump presidency … to be clarifying,” wrote Timothy Tutt, the senior minister at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ in Bethesda, Maryland, in an email. “As a liberal Christian preacher it helps me find my voice. It helps me know who I am called to be. And helps our congregation know who we are—and who we aren’t.”

Many progressive pastors are also trying to figure out the right political stance to take—it’s difficult to determine how to stand up for their convictions while not alienating politically diverse congregations or their broader communities. “I believe Trump is the antithesis of everything Christian,” wrote Tricia Templeton, the rector at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, in an email. “In the aftermath of this election, and with this administration, we are going to be called on to put our faith in action in ways we may not have done before. I think it is a time of true testing of our faith.”

People’s involvement in church is not neatly associated with the latest happenings in electoral politics. “Church attendance can be affected more by internal church factors than external events,” wrote Ben Hicks, the business manager and historian at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in an email. “There are too many variables that affect attendance to isolate one—weather, summer vacations, a baptism on a Sunday, an interim period, [or] Christmas [and] Easter, where you get people that attend once or twice a year.”