When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
This editorial began nearly 40,000 feet above the yellow-hazed landscape of Saudi Arabia on an Emirates flight from Dubai to London. It was one of the last legs on what turned out to be an around-the-world pilgrimage with my family to spend some quality time in my Australian homeland. I have always marveled at the
READ MOREMore than 150 diplomats, religious liberty advocates, and guests gathered in support of religious liberty on June 1 at the fifteenth annual Religious Liberty dinner held in the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute in Washington, D.C. The annual event is held to celebrate and bring attention to a central human right: the freedom
READ MOREHave Protestant ideas of human dignity and the importance of the individual impacted modern conceptions of human and civil rights? We have previously looked at the metaphysical ideas behind modern conceptions of human rights, and the rooting these ideas had in Protestant conceptions of human dignity and the priesthood of believers. It is one thing,
READ MORERedcoats—their mere presence a statement. Cochineal-colored Redcoats, with their snappy military trim, are walking village streets and gathering at the parish church, the brilliance of their uniforms both attractive and intimidating. To many residents the British military give the impression of routine maneuvers. Yet something sinister was drifting in, like the maritime fogs that venture
READ MOREOn March 24, 1984, Felipe and Elena Ixk’oj’t and their five children fled Guatemala to the tiny Weston Priory monastery, not far from where I was living in Vermont. My family had loose ties with the popular “singing” brothers via their well-worn LPs and sporadic visits to the monastery. I was vaguely aware of the
READ MOREDuring his presidential campaign Donald Trump reported that evangelical preachers had told him that the Johnson Amendment prevented them from endorsing him from the pulpit, so he promised to take steps to repeal it. In a speech to evangelical leaders Trump said, “If you like somebody or want somebody to represent you, you should have
READ MOREIf we are to come to a correct understanding of Luther’s thought regarding the two kingdoms, spiritual and temporal, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, the best place to begin is with his treatise on worldly authority, Von Weltlicher Obrigkeit (1523)…. Luther insists that it is of primary importance not to
READ MOREOn January 29, 2017, a man entered a mosque in Ste-Foy, a suburb of Quebec City, and, using a CZ-858 rifle and a 9-millimeter pistol, proceeded to shoot men at prayer, killing six and wounding another five. Authorities identified and charged Alexandre Bissonnette for the horrific crime. We need to look at the circumstances that
READ MOREIn book five of The Brothers Karamazov, in the section “The Grand Inquisitor,” the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) has Jesus return to earth in the sixteenth century, at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. That day “almost a hundred heretics had, for the greater glory of God, been burnt by the cardinal, the
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