When Shrugging is Not an Option
- May/June 2025
- April 30, 2025
Today we wouldn’t burn a man alive for what he believes, but our ancestors did. And when you look at the pictures, see what their hands wrote, and look into the faces sleeping in stone and bronze above their bones, they don’t appear much difference from us. Yet they extirpated dissent by burning, and it
READ MOREThe late novelist Gore Vidal spoke of America once as “the United States of Amnesia.” This condition was highlighted all too painfully by the response of many conservative Christians to a remark made by President Obama during the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 2015. Evoking Christian Atrocities Specifically, President Obama’s address noted that while decent
READ MOREIn Steve Spielberg’s 2002 futurist Minority Report Tom Cruise plays a policeman in 2054 on the run. Though he’s trying to be incognito, the surveillance state has so much biometric data on its citizens that, as he rushes through a mall, the stores and billboards not only beckon him by name but also fine-tune their
READ MOREThe South in which I grew up was rather rebellious toward the actions of the federal government. The slowness of the school systems to heed the Supreme Court’s school prayer ruling in Engel v. Vitale (1962) demonstrated that pretty clearly. I can remember daily organized prayer in school as late as 1973. I can also
READ MOREAlong a wall in the 300,000-square-foot building, where I work—the world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—a small [but significant! Ed.] section is dedicated to Liberty magazine. Besides two few framed copies of Liberty, including the first one (1906), and a plaque describing the mission of the publication, 10 photos of 10 men dominate the
READ MOREWhy should American Muslims be the subject of secretive investigations and surveillance if their religious values and practices do not threaten American democratic values? Islamic Compatibility Bernard Lewis identifies classical Islam as a theocracy on a par with that of ancient Israel: “Among the Jews, for whose beliefs Josephus coined the term ‘theocracy,’ God was
READ MOREJehovah’s Witnesses have been victims of persecution in many countries, Canada and the United States among them. In the United States the persecution has often been a reaction, especially during wartime, to their lack of adherence to expected standards of patriotism. They do not vote, they refuse to salute the flag, and they will not
READ MORECrying “Wolf!” is a tactic used by alarmists on both sides of today’s religious and political spectrums. Perhaps this has always been so, as alarm and the perception of imminent danger are often the best ways to energize activists of any kind for the achievement of a specific goal. Peruse publications—online and otherwise—from opposite ends
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