When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
Liberty is not offered on the bargain counters—even in the United States, where too many people take it for granted. Too often we give lip service to the saying "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and then turn our backs and give attention to our own private affairs, falsely believing some imaginary police officer
READ MOREA new report from the U.S. State Department reveals that religious persecution around the world is alive and well. The report says Christians routinely are kidnapped, imprisoned, raped, tortured, and even murdered in such nations as China, Cuba, and North Korea. As articles in the February 15-21, 2004, National Catholic Register pointed out, government officials
READ MOREA remarkable conflict is under way between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of proselytism. It is remarkable because both are branches of Christianity, and therefore, both adhere to the injunction of Christ to spread the gospel into all the world. Indeed, not only have both adhered to the
READ MORE"As a statement of general principle Romans 13:1-7 has for centuries provided biblical validation for a theology of the state–as the secular arm of the one divinely ordered commonwealth (Corpus Christianum), or as an essential expression of the order of creation or of natural law in the overall scheme of things." It has also been
READ MORECan it really be so long since the U.S. presidential elections? What, all of two months! The attack rhetoric is all gone now and, uninterrupted by paid political ads, television programming is back to the usual numbing flicker. It's jingle bells and Auld Lang Syne and elections in Iraq for us. But the political landscape
READ MOREJerusalem. It is refreshing – yet unsettling – to be a Sabbathkeeper in the capital of Israel, clearly one of the most Sabbath-observant nations on earth. As these words are written, I'm wrapping up a week in the land that is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although my main assignment was to see and
READ MOREI know of no form of government that can guarantee my freedom to practice my religious faith ("freedom of religion") except a government that recognizes and honors "transcendent moral truths" These truths must come from a source other than "the people," but must not incorporate any particular religion into the government nor favor or be
READ MOREIn Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift wrote about the long war between "the two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu" over which end of an egg should be broken, the big or the little one. According to earliest historical accounts, when the grandfather of Lilliput's present king broke open an egg in the traditional manner, that
READ MOREThe terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, ushered religion into the center of American politics. In the three years since, President George W. Bush and his administration have made sure it stayed there. And then earlier this year the Catholic Church turned the relationship between faith and politics into a campaign issue. Civil religion is
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